Sunday, September 5, 2010

A History of Britain

I have just completed all the episodes of A History of Britain by Simon Schama. And only a few days ago, I completed watching eleven episodes of the series Churchill’s Bodyguard. I have found my personal hero in Churchill. He is the embodiment of my mission: to speak, to lead, to inspire.

They don't make leaders like Winston Churchill anymore. Impetuous, passionate, courageous, and tempestuous, he was conscious of his place in history, and strove hard to fulfill his destiny. He was a force of nature. He was the obstinate war leader of Great Britain when Nazi Germany pounded London ceaselessly with bombs. He won the war with courage, conviction, and, more importantly for a debater like me, the power of his words.

They don't make leaders that speak like Churchill anymore. It was he who said he had nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. It was he who spoke of their time fighting for freedom as an era the British would remember as their finest hour. Churchill's words did not win the war by themselves. But they steeled the British nation and the world to fight back with grim determination in the face of an almost unstoppable Nazi war machine.

Churchill not only made history, he often read and wrote about it. He was as much the chronicler as he was the hero. He even won a Nobel Prize for Literature for his speeches and histories. This relationship to history is one more reason I wish to emulate him. Only destiny can tell whether anything I accomplish will be worth writing about for posterity. But there is nothing stopping me from learning more and writing about our past and how it offers lessons for our future. Our nation is at a crossroads. We are on the cusp of greatness if only we are willing to seize it. Understanding how we came to this point will help point the way to our own finest hour.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Things I Learned Before I was Born

Since my mother-in-law reappeared in my wife’s life as a born again Christian, she has given me several books on Christian spirituality. So dutiful son-in-law that I was, I began reading books I would not have been caught dead touching back when I was an atheist. Gracia Yumol’s short work Things I Learned Before I was Born was the sort of short, but sincere testimonial that gave me the jolt of inspiration and perspective I was looking for. Its three lessons were simple, but nevertheless true.

Losing is gaining. Indeed, I have learned a lot from life because I have lost a lot. I lost a competition I prepared hard for, but emerged tougher and wiser relative to my age. I lost in love for a moment, becoming embittered in the process, but I won again, realizing how painful love could be, but that it was still all worth it. I lost my chance at graduating with honors, and having a long bachelor life, but I gained the work ethic, focus, and determination of a young father who wanted his children to be proud of him.

Less is more. My quest for financial freedom sometimes blurs into a never ending race for more material things. I remain almost Puritan in my guilt with buying anything for myself, but I should guard against becoming too attached with worldly pleasures. It is good to savor the fine things in life, but I must always remember they are fleeting and illusory. They do not make us truly happy.

Love is the answer. This is the greatest cliche of all. Need I say more?

The Elephant Vanishes

Three weeks ago, I craved for McDonald's cheeseburgers so intensely I remembered the short story "The Second Bakery Attack" in Haruki Murakami's collection The Elephant Vanishes. To me, initially, it was the funny story of a couple who were so hungry for bread they held up a McDonald's store in the middle of the night. My wife later explained to me it was a metaphor for something missing in their marriage, a hunger pang so deep it could no longer be satiated. I do not know if was typically being insensitive, but since I was not aware of any such profound issue in our marriage, I went ahead and dragged my wife and my kids to the mall where I did not have to attack McDonald's to get my fill of cheeseburgers.

The other story I liked was "On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning" because it perfectly captured a perfect moment that never was. I used to think perfect moments are movie cliches, but I have had several perfect myself - seeing my son for the first time, sensing I was giving a moving speech, falling in love with my wife, and others too mushy to mention. Murakami, by keeping the moment from taking place, succeeds in illuminating how perfect and rare it is.

Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is Robert Pirsig’s semi autobiographical account of his journey across America on a motorcycle together with his son. Along the way, he expounds on his ideas about motorcycle maintenance, his attempt to bridge the gap between the romantic and the classical approach through the concept of Quality, and his thoughts on sanity.

I doubt I will ever go mad like Robert because of an intractable intellectual conundrum. I am no longer as enamored with purely intellectual quests as I was once was when I used to dream of becoming a scholar. I no longer seek immortality through an original idea. I am more interested in making a profound impact in the lives of the people closest to me: my family, my friends, and the people I lead. If a great moment is thrust upon me by destiny, I will seize it. But if it never comes, and I have made the people I love happy, I will die a happy man.

But I seek to be like him in his appreciation of the here and the now. His careful attention to detail, his mindfulness as he takes one patient step at a time to fix his motorcycle, and his appreciation for the precision of tiny machine parts are all manifestations of his ability to focus on what he is doing at that very moment – meditation, in other words. The long journey on the motorcycle, where one is simultaneously with a traveling companion yet at the same time solitary in the experience of moving against the wind, and where the consciousness of nature is visceral and unmediated by a car window that looks like a television, is also one big meditation.