“I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.”
Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Five
The “present” seems to be gone before the word leaves our lips. What do we make of what is ours in time - the dash between our not existing and being done with existing?
More than one sage suggested that continually deciding, “Now, I’m happy” and “Now, I’m happy” could stretch moments into relatively wide hours of wonder and contentment. I think of experiences that were mine to keep, and they stretch across my life, summoned by a scent, sight, touch, taste or sound. Take the music in, Down to the Moon, a New Age album released in 1986 by jazz harpist Andreas Vollenweider.
When, in 1987, I took my 10-year old daughter on a July outing to the New York Aquarium at Coney Island, I turned on my Walkman for the album’s title song as we stood in the dark and faced an enormous tank where a female Beluga whale held court. As if suddenly aware of newcomers, the whale swam up to the glass separating her from us and smiled. As the whale rounded the tank in one sweeping passage after another. Vollenweider's music played. Giddy with pleasure, we smiled back, waved and pressed open palms against the glass, as close to cheering for such royalty as the laws of nature allowed.
Turns out, in the 34 years of her life, the enchanting Kathy the Beluga always smiled and interacted with visitors. In 2004, the New York Times ran the celebrity whale's obituary in which her keepers were quoted as calling her a queen. Millions of aquarium visitors experienced this delightful creature. When I hear Vollenweider’s music, I picture the whale smiling. Ever now, she is mine.
Given the mandate to "choose the contents" of our minds as Gerald Jampolsky wrote in the classic Love Is Letting Go Of Fear (now in its third edition), being selective in what occupies the mind is a decision that takes resolve. With the daily chaos reported in the news, summoning up and taking notice of a pleasant scent, sight, touch, taste or sound ushers in serenity.
One trauma specialist refers to this idea as parenting oneself. It requires deliberate mindfulness for sensory timeouts, especially in the aftermath of trauma. This is healing work, replacing an upsetting thought with a keenly felt pleasant experience. Some July 4th celebrants might even recognize such a mental exercise as the simple "pursuit of happiness" prized in our Bill of Rights.
Our dilemma as Americans is mindfulness of the upsetting state of incarcerated children whose families claim refugee status at our country's southern border. The New York Times reported in June "government lawyers in court argued that they should not have to provide soap or toothbrushes to children."
One rights advocate, in describing the stench at a Texas facility, said conditions were the worst she's seen in 12 years of inspections: “So many children are sick, they have the flu, and they’re not being properly treated,” said Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School. She observed guards for Customs and Border Protection "wearing full uniforms — including weapons — as well as face masks to protect themselves from the unsanitary conditions."
For incarcerated children, "the present: how wide it was, how deep it was" will forever prompt Pavlovian triggers to harken back a time capsule of terrible days and nights, not family outings. It will take tremendous resolve for them to move beyond the experience. Gazing up in a cage, there is the vision of guns in holsters and masked men who look down on them and fear getting sick. For officers ordered to contain the children in an emergency created by abhorrent policy and for those of us who abhor it, that image is ours to keep.
Yet, we seem frozen in the silence of spectators observing a once-unthinkable current event. This is happening. But it appears to be a case of human-family crisis being met with, "They asked for it." Even the release of humanitarian funds comes with non-humanitarian strings.
So, what will move us beyond Executive Branch malfunction and Legislative Branch stalemate on immigration reform? The correct answer is not silence.
View from Here by Ed Morrisey