Time for Reflection

Instead of meeting Chuck at Sichuan in Carmel yesterday, I called him first thing in the morning and suggested we meet at the house. I would fix lunch for us and talk business afterwards. I didn't want the temptation of a Chinese buffet and apparently neither did he.

We learn from others. I had always objected to the idea of "learning" invoked, for instance, by people rationalizing painful experiences as occasions for learning. For me learning was acquiring knowledge that changed how we thought, made choices and subsequently acted. 

Yesterday's meeting made me reconsider the idea of learning. A glimpse of another person's life adds to the breadth of our own experience. Sometimes that glimpse actually changes our understanding of the world in which we take action and experience its results. More often when we don't take the time to reflect, compare and study what we have seen, we interpret it according to our existing understanding and our understanding remains unchanged. In both instances, we do "learn" in the sense that these new images are added to our panoply of images available to us when the subject comes up again.

In the last fifteen years, I have grown to value vicariously acquired images. I don't have to own majestic houses to enjoy their exteriors as I drive past them. I don't have own the garden to treasure memories of the flowers, shrubs and trees in someone else's garden I visit. Ownership is primarily psychological. We own something because it has entered our mind's eye. We call this experience. Material things though we own as a legal and civil concept. Our nature rejoices in the idea of ownership and aggrandizement is simply an expression of Self, this force within us that always seeks more of what is pleasant, less of the unpleasant.

Chuck has been regaling me with the delight he and his family takes in owning a powerful SUV and the trailer is hauls. Their vacations consist of taking these mammoth machines, icons of the wealth of this country, to drive to Florida or some other picturesque locations. This weekend he is taking his portable home to IU to spend time with his son, Adam, at Adam's fraternity house celebration.

For some, a portable home no matter that gas recently cost over four dollars a gallon is the icing on the cake we acquire from the labors of our lifetimes. We might envy them for the icing in their lives or feel puzzlement how they could value this or that so highly. We would like to think that people in a society hold the same values but this is true only so far. The idea of democracy is built on this premise: individual differences keep extreme communal action in balance.

What has this got to do with duende? Duende is not just the dark, mysterious, almost erotic force in art and experience that pulses with life and makes us dread and feel awe in its presence. It is to me ultimately the quality over time that I sense in my life. We have a set of standards for quality by the time we are, say, fourteen years old and these change little if we lived sixty, seventy or eighty more years. Beyond the acquisition of material objects, wisdom might consist in understanding the foundation for our happiness -- what makes us feel contented and charmed at the end of the day, satisfied at the end of our lives. Since we are seldom born with either wisdom or happiness, we acquire these through learning. 

To learn is to grow, to add to what we know and to what we can experience.