The Enduring Message

Ernest Hemingway has been my favorite writer for a long time. He's got some phenomenal stories and books where he did things with the English language that had never been done before, which have influenced people ever since. Without a doubt he lived one of the fullest lives of any person I have ever read about. He squeezed more life into his sixty one years than many people who live full lives will achieve put together.

The thing that always stays with me about Hemingway is the message of his work. In some ways, for me, EH is almost more of a philosophical figure than anything else. In his stories, he cast his characters in terrible situations. They faced war, death, defeat, and loss in a variety of forms and the point that Hemingway routinely made was the importance of showing "Grace Under Pressure." He basically told us that life sucked, and that it sucked for everyone, but that the most important thing you had to do was face it with strength and dignity. When you really think about it, he couldn't be more correct.

I don't think it's negative to say that life is full of disappointment. Thirty two teams compete in the National Football League for the SuperBowl title. Thirty one of them lose in the end. Tens of thousands of people will run in the Marine Corps Marathon every year in Washington, DC. All but one of them will lose. Those numbers are staggering.

We've all faced hard times. There have been periods in my life when I've thought, "I don't know if I can take much more of this." It seemed like loss and negativity were around every corner. But each time things didn't get better, I found myself stronger. In fact, there were times when I realized that I didn't know how strong I actually was and as corny as it sounds, I often went back to Hemingway at those moments. He once said, "To live, one must endure," and that's all I tried to do. When things did finally change for the better, I marveled the most at my own endurance and refusal to give in to those circumstances.

Thanks Papa.

The Zen Dream

Every now and again I think about this little Zen Buddhist story I once heard.

Once there was a man alone in a field. Suddenly another man came running up to him.

"What's going on?" the first man asked.

"I'm so excited," the other man replied. "I just had the craziest dream."

"What was so crazy about it?" the first man asked.

"Well," the other man began, "I dreamt I was a butterfly."

"And...?"

"What I don't know," the second man said, "is am I man, standing in this field, who dreamt I was a butterfly? Or am I butterfly who's currently dreaming that I'm a man?"

The Unmatched Palette

Though I'm fairly adamant about questioning the presence of God in our lives, the colors of the natural world have always made me draw a breath. Despite the many achievements of man, we have never been able to manufacture colors as brilliant as those found all over the planet. The yellows and oranges of garden peppers. The almost electric purple on the feathers of a peacock's neck. The soft pinks inside a conch shell hidden deep beneath the azure seas of the Caribbean. Sometimes the sunsets that spread across our Virginian skies make me forget that anything else exists in the world during those evenings.

The other day I found this picture of a Panther Chameleon in a book of my son's. I just couldn't stop looking at the seemingly infinite number of colors that splashed themselves all over his skin. Even now I really don't have words to describe its beauty. I'm think I'm just thankful to have stumbled across it.

Things I like... Things You Should Like

Andrew Wyeth is one of the last great living American painters. Come to think of it, he has to be one of the greatest American artists ever. His work, so painstakingly detailed at times, so almost emotionally tangible at others, has continued to amaze me ever since I first stumbled upon a book of his watercolors several years ago.

When the Philadelphia Museum of Art put on a Wyeth retrospective last year, I couldn't wait to go. There are so many pieces that I love of the painter's native Chadd's Ford home and surroundings. Of the many art exhibits I have been to over the years, Wyeth's was one of my favorites. Seeing his pictures close up was an incredible experience. On one hand, it's just such an awesome thing to see an image you've admired from afar hanging on a wall in front of you. It's like seeing a dream come to life. On the other hand I thought, "Some people are just so gifted. Thank you for these gifts."

"Marriage" is definitely one of Wyeth's works that I admire so much. It's really just a simple painting of two old people sleeping, but every time I look at it I think, "This is what love in the late stages really looks like." The man and the woman are sleeping, covers pulled up to their necks. The bedroom window is open and outside you can see the cold Pennsylvania countryside at bay. It's certainly metaphorical and really represents all I want out of my life and marriage. When it comes down to it, I want someone to be there for me even in the most unglamorous and uneventful of times... just the two of us fighting the winter that we cannot stop from advancing. There's more love in that image than in most poems and letters a person could write. And I think that's what I really like about Wyeth in the end: He's so good at what he does that he tells you everything about yourself without ever saying a word.

Searching For Atlantis

The other day I watched the IMAX film “Dolphins.” It’s a great movie, by the way, filled with incredibly clear and beautiful photography, interesting information, and a wonderful soundtrack. I absolutely recommend it. There was one part, though, that really got me thinking.

One segment of the film tells the story of a man who befriends a wild dolphin somewhere near the Providenciales Islands in the Turks and Caicos. Each day the man swims out to a local reef and swims around with “Jo Jo.” They blow bubbles together, play with a little rubber chew toy, and swim in these beautiful slow circles around one another. It’s a touching story, but the thing that really struck me was how great of a swimmer this man was. They showed him just spending so much time underwater, swimming inverted half the time. It was pretty amazing. The narrator of the film even commented on what a phenomenal diver this man was, mentioning that at times he was holding his breath for nearly three to four minutes. That’s pretty long. The world record is something like fourteen minutes. As a former swimmer who swam competitively for fourteen years, it was quite a challenge for me to swim fifty meters under the water, which would probably translate into something under one minute. One minute! And this guy in the movie was under for three or four times that?!? I was amazed.

The film also mentioned that Dolphins are mammals, just like humans are. So essentially, we’re a related species in some way. One very basic view of this is to say that Dolphins, along with a number of other mammals who live in water, are just living creatures who can hold their breath for really long periods of time. Now I realize that man never evolved from a dolphin, but is there some genetic evolution that occurred because dolphins and some other mammals ended up living in the sea and humans found themselves on land?

Darwin’s theories on evolution are completely believable. His awesome drawings of birds and the specialized attributes they developed in accordance to their surroundings and living situations make perfect sense. So going back to the diver in the movie… if humans spent increasing amounts of time in the water, would we eventually evolve some sort of greater lung capacity, different eyes, and an altered skeleton to help us survive those conditions? Does that diver in the movie have lungs that are now different than the ones I have, simply because of the life he has chosen to live? It makes you wonder exactly what we could do… what we’re capable of doing in different circumstances?

Here’s a final and related thought: Aren’t there tons of people still born with webbed fingers? What's that all about?