Songs of Pain and Hope

For the first half year in NYC, I lived in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.  The location of a famous riot, it is a gentrifying mixed neighborhood.  Many Orthodox Jews live there.  Once I saw signs saying “Moshiach is here” and I ask a deli worker who that was.  He replies “We would all like to know.”  On another occasion, three guys wanted to start a fight with me at a chicken joint.  They thought I was staring at them when I was just perusing the menu.

Home to both the Brooklyn and Jewish Childrens’ Museums, the neighborhood also houses a park infamous for shootings and a few murders.  Without much for me to do, sticking out like a sore thumb, and a Tylenol gulping job, I couldn’t wait to go back to Boston on weekends.  

So I took the train.  I’ll say, Amtrak is an open secret.  Mostly pleasant to ride, no security hassle, good accommodations, cafe car.  The ride between New York and New England is picturesque, especially in the fall.  Beautiful foliage, the ocean, sailboats, small towns.

Most trips were smooth.  That was, however, a rough winter.  One time, the outer doors were frozen open and it was freezing in the compartment.  Another time, there was a live overhead wire that delayed us for hours.  And on more than one occasion, overflowing toilets.

While I slept quite a bit, I also read a lot.  Quite a bit on the Middle East – Afghanistan, Israel, etc.  Like those days on the road, it gave me a lot of time to think.  This time mainly about survival and latching on, how to find long term housing.  All which I did not do so great at.  

Pulling into Manhattan was both jaw dropping and depressing.  Pulling into Boston was familiar and comforting.  

80,000 people singing Wherever I May Roam while a slight breeze descends on the stadium. 

I had tears in my eyes. 

The boy asked why I keep repeating the lines – I’ll take my time anywhere, I’m free to speak my mind anywhere.

I told him I tried to live by these words. 

And hoped he would too.

The road becomes my bride

I am stripped of all but pride 

And in her I do confide

And she keeps me satisfied 

Gives me all I need

And only knowledge will I save

To the game you stay a slave…

I’ve met two people who have met Nelson Mandela, one of the greatest humans to walk this earth.  The first was one of his jailers who eventually formed a close friendship with him.  The other is one of my mentors, a former US ambassador who served all over the world (East Berlin, the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and Africa).  She is an example of how greatness and humility co-exist.

She told me stories about Mandela.  How he is the greatest man she’s ever met (and believe me, she has met and worked with every US President since Carter and all the corresponding Secretaries of State).  How he had a temper.  How he loved children.

The story that hit me the most, however, is her surprise at his divorce hearing with his wife Winnie.  Betrayed by the woman he loved, he states how lonely he felt.  My mentor mused on the seeming paradox of such a great man feeling that way.  

For me, it was simple, greatness and loneliness aren’t mutually exclusive, in fact, they often walk hand in hand.  Mandela was lonely because he was great and vice versa.

Churchill once wrote that people who can survive solitude (yes, a different concept) and by extension loneliness often achieve greatness.  He should know.  

I definitely experienced a lot of this in my journey.  I brought the girl I lit the candles for on much of it.  It was enough, but still difficult.  I’m no Mandela, but I told my mentor that what she told me was comforting.  That if this greatest of men could feel that way and be human, I also am allowed to as well.

Mandela, in old age, would make up excuses to go to the mall just to be around people.  To buy some unnecessary item like a pen, a shirt.  The father of a nation.  So great, so human, the image of God.

A pastor told me when I was younger that I did not have killer instinct.  On the most part, it’s probably true – there have been rare exceptions, I’m not even sure of this.  I wasn’t sure how to take it at the time.  I’ve reflected on this thought for some time and questioned whether this was a strength or weakness.

A colleague once told me I needed to be more like Kobe Bryant, with the Black Mamba mentality.  I wanted to laugh because he would somewhat take credit for my work.  Aside from that, I don’t really feel this approach is all that worth it or even that effective in the long run.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m also not the Kumbaya let’s all work together type.  For me, it’s Lee Kuan Yew all the way – do your job really well.  Use person, don’t distrust.  Distrust person, don’t use.

At the end of the day, I think the verse “Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy” rings true.  I taught students the story of David having the opportunity to kill King Saul, who was hunting him down.  David refuses, citing some Lord’s anointed reasoning.  I think it’s more practical than that – if his men had seen him execute a sleeping enemy, one day they would be tempted to do the same to him.

On a closing note, I’ve met killers of all kinds – the metaphorical and literal ones.  They look normal.  I also used to tell this story to my students – at the Nuremberg Trials, a witness broke down in tears when he saw the Nazi officer responsible for his imprisonment and suffering.  Reporters ask the witness whether he felt deep anger or sadness.  The witness replies, none of those, I cried because he looked just like me.

When the spirit of Obi-Wan Kenobi tells Luke Skywalker during his Death Star trench run to use the Force, suggesting he turn off his targeting computer, there’s a lot of wisdom behind this scene.

Instincts.  Intuition.  So important, so underrated.  Absolutely crucial in life, at work, play, etc.  

A major part of D in OODA – Decide.  Don’t get me wrong, you still need to use your brain.  Don’t trust the feeling types who don’t analyze or think.

This principle works for both long term endeavors or split second decisions.  In policing, seconds aren’t seconds, they can be eternities.  I’m no cop, but I am intimately familiar with the use of force, including deadly instances.  Normal becomes problematic in a flash.  That’s where and when instincts matter, honed of course by training and experience (sometimes inadequate, but this is for another time).

Also absolutely integral when reading people – probably the most crucial application.  My orphan grandmother would often say she could look at someone’s face and tell who they were.  We used to dismiss this as her grouchy old woman thoughts.  I’m not so sure anymore.  Grandma survived a lot and knew a ton about human nature.  

On my end, I used my instincts / intuition quite a bit for many situations.  It has saved me many times.  I told a friend that while I’m not the most precise (takes me time to nail down details), I’m generally accurate – will get into the ballpark relatively quickly.  It also helped me when I played goalie, the outfield, or rebound in basketball.  This will sound silly, but I could feel where the ball would be.

But don’t take my word for it – Bruce Lee “Intuition is true seeing.”

One of my favorite movies for many reasons – Midwest, Chicago, 1930s organized crime, father-son themes.  One of my favorite scenes is when Paul Newman, the mob boss plays a piano duet with Tom Hanks, his chief enforcer.  Touching.

The other is when Newman knows he’s about to be killed by Hanks, and he is at peace with it.

“I’m glad it’s you.”

A lot of the things I had to do in life won’t show up on paper – survive, thrive, pave the way for my children as an immigrant.  Break various generational cycles.  Pursue legitimacy as an Asian in this society not set up for people like us.  With limited support and many obstacles.  All while trying to keep the faith.

Ok.  I can live with what I did.  That’s my Paul Newman moment.  While I did not accomplish all thaf I dreamed or hoped for, I am mostly at peace.

The opening line to the movie goes “When people ask me if Michael Sullivan was a good man, or if there was just no good in him at all, I always give the same answer. I just tell them he was my father.”  I’ve had similar sentiments repeated back to me by several friends who have lost their fathers.  

In the graphic novel the movie is based on, the enforcer’s son does a 180 from his father’s path and becomes a priest.  One of my students actually lived this out – his father was an enforcer for Whitey Bulger and went to federal prison.  My student ends up becoming a prosecutor, in Philadelphia actually.

Several of the people I respect and love the most have issues with various substances. They are still strong, brave, kind, wise.  Just human.  

A friend recommended a prescription for one of my other friends to help curtail the desire to drink.  I replied that’s probably the last thing desired.  We all need our crutches to get through.  If being honest, we all have them – just some are more accepted and even praised by society – career, relationship, kids, and even religion, actually especially this.

I suppose we need to carefully choose that crutch.  I offer the late writer David Foster Wallace’s insights as food for thought.  In the context of worship, but still applicable:

Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship… is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough.  It’s the truth.  Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant your cold skeleton in the ground.  Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay.  Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.  And so on.

There’s a saying that’s supposed to be inspirational – “Do not forget in the darkness what you learned in the light.”  Trust me, when you’re in darkness, you don’t really remember anything other than to somehow breathe and try to get through.

But I shouldn’t scoff too much, there is much truth there.  I also think the converse principle is true, maybe even more so.  That you learn quite a bit in the darkness.  Maybe even more.

There’s something about darkness that makes everything clear.  What matters, who you are, what you believe in, etc.  I would say few better teachers.

One of my favorite characters is the Taoist monk in the Marco Polo series.  A kung-fu master who almost single-handedly resists the Mongol takeover of his temple, he gets captured.  After an unsuccessful escape attempt (where he kills the original Subutai’s son – props to the writers for this reference), Kublai Khan blinds him with a poisonous snake.

The monk is gutted, he can barely stand up, much less fight.  But slowly and surely, he somehow finds it in him, in both figurative and literal darkness, to regain his skills.  In fact, he is even better than before.

He tells the Khan that the physical blindness inflicted was a gift, that he now sees the world with a hundred eyes.  And in true warrior monk fashion refuses tea and demands wine instead, insisting that he not be confused with the Khan’s other Buddhist priests.

There’s also this song by the Hours “Ali in the Jungle” once used by Nike in a great commercial (unfortunately had to be pulled because it featured Lance Armstrong and Oscar Pistorius).  The lyrics reference people who faced tremendous odds and prevailed – including the blind Helen Keller and deaf Beethoven.

Learning to see with a hundred eyes.