"Here Am I"

• Posted by Jack Lee February 12, 2012 - 574 views

   

   

   

  “Here Am I”

  By John Lee                                                    

                                                                                         “From far, from eve and morning,

                                                                                           And yon twelve-winded sky,

                                                                                          The stuff of life to knit me

                                                                                           Blew hither: here am I.”

                                                                                                                      A. E. Houseman

   

   

  I recently had occasion to spend a two day visit in our local hospital for several medical tests that fortunately proved, despite my somewhat advanced age, to confirm a strong, resilient Irish heart.  It is a Catholic hospital run remarkably well by the good Sisters of St. Joseph.  As any patient who has experienced such a visit knows, there is ample time to do what most of us hate to do – wait.

   

  I vowed I would not turn on the wretched television that hung above my bed.  Consequently I was able to be aware of the various comings-and-goings of the staff and the audible perceptions incident to all hospital routines.  One distinct sound came through softly and clearly with some frequency: chimes.  At first I thought it was some kind of a clock, but it sounded at very un-clock like intervals.  Then, as I was being attended by a nurse, the chimes quietly rang.  The nurse stopped what she was doing, smiled and announced, “Another baby has just been born.”

   

   

  Forgive me, but while I do think it is a lovely way to announce the advent of another human being into this world, somehow I could not find myself rejoicing in that miraculous occasion.  On the very same morning, I was leafing through a magazine that featured an article of the steadily growing problem of world hunger.  Pictured on the magazine cover was a veritable sea of young, starving black faces.  The author of the article did not hold any editorial punches when he laid the blame to the equally increasing problem of over population (6.8 billion), much of which he labeled, “the barbaric, dark-age birth-control dogma of the Catholic Church.”

   

  All of this simply put my mental mechanics back on the same old track: where in the world are we in the way that we have chosen to run this world?  Am I on the right planet, in the right universe?  The entire experience simply re-confirmed for me what I have long believed: despite the flushing toilet, the two-wheeled bicycle, Kleenex and the computer we are indeed a slowly evolving species.  There was a time when I was certain we, the human race, had failed to turn some important corner.  I am reminded again that we haven’t even reached that corner. Without even considering the incredible mess our own country is currently in, the state of our world wags on with dismal progress.  Perhaps I have been cursed with some dreadful disorder of pessimism, but I know there are others who, when struck with fits of total awareness, reach very similar conclusions.

   

  I well may be accused of some form of outrageous treason. My personal life has been incredibly blessed in so many wonderful ways: I am blessed in a marriage to a beautiful woman who daily deals cheerfully and courageously with a life-crippling disorder – (when told of the chimes her immediate response suggested that perhaps one of those chimes I heard was another Gandhi, a Mozart or a Willy Nelson – another soul to bring beauty into this world.)  Our children, while no more perfect than their parents, are a constant source of love and joy.  I have been blessed with gifts that allow me to move, with some talent, in the worlds of music and creative writing. 

   

  Years ago I saw a photo of a man wearing a trench coat and grey fedora holding what appeared to be a black guitar case in the shape of a question mark.  He looked very much like a man in search of something that you sensed he would never find.  It was a picture perfect portrait of me, right down to the coat and fedora.  Inside the black case I imagined, scrawled in pencil, on an old soiled piece of wrapping paper, were three questions:

  Where did we come from?

  Why are we here?

  Where are we going?

   

  I constantly search my memory in a futile attempt to discover the source of my fixed dilemma.  I look first to eight years of fear, shame and guilt instilled in me and my brothers and sisters at the hands of the Irish Catholic Clergy.  Perhaps it is a genetic legacy left me by my Celtic mother, who to be Irish, “was to hear the music … the deep, deep music of the living, the low, sad rhythms of eternity, the endless hurt of her ancestors, the knock–at-- her heart that was part of her religion.”

   

  Several years ago my family and I had occasion to move to a new home.  In the flurry of preparations I thinned out my library and was shocked to discover I was throwing away over 80 self-help books I had purchased and read over the years.  It was during the same period that I had become a work shop junkie having attended all of the current, trendy classes from EST to Esalen:  all of this in the midst of raising a family and climbing the corporate ladder.  While I am certain that I learned a great deal in what can be best described as my personal, philosophical quest, I never came close to finding the answers to the three questions I still carry in my black question mark box.

   

  As a very poor high school student I once wrote a poem for an English class assignment based on Shelly’s work, “A Perfect Day.”  It consisted of about eight or nine stanzas and while I can no longer remember the entire piece, it concluded with these lines:

   

  “Give me these things and show me my way,

  Then I shall have my perfect day.”

   

  It must have been a well written poem because my English teacher refused to believe I wrote it.  Nevertheless, it does give me a point of departure for my life-long-journey in search of some meaning in this life, this grand, amazing, totally ineluctable adventure we are all involved in.  I have discovered this, if nothing else: despite all that I have experienced, this world has not become any less obscure or inscrutable.  The journey is one of complete mystery and can ultimately only be described as a mystery that, in the end, I can only accept and surrender and like the poet’s lad, “Ere to the wind’s twelve quarters I take my endless way – here am I.” 

  Here am I indeed, still seeking answers, and trying to find a way to live in a world that has no answers.

   

  ********************************************************************************************  

   

   John Lee is the former Vice President and Public Relations Chairman of Compassion In Dying of Washington.  He has taught courses in Conscious Living in colleges throughout the Pacific Northwest.  His Estate Planning Sessions have been sponsored by the Boeing Company, the University of Washington and other business and professional organizations.  He is retired and lives in Bellingham, Washington with his wife Camilla.  He is now a freelance writer, teacher and lecturer.