As a species, we kill, maim, rape, pillage, torture and massacre one another, not for food, but for grandiose fantasies that have no place on this planet, if life in our form is to survive here.
I've campaigned against war and violence and racism all my adult life. I have never killed, maimed, raped, pillaged, tortured, or massacred anyone, but I did once break a friend's nose in a football game, and also, in what was my worst crime, I hit one of my cousins over the head with a shovel, I think.
Both of my victims survived; the nasty move with the shovel inflicted just a minor gash, and the broken nose was an accident.
Nevertheless, I offer these incidents as proof that I, too, have been a bad steward of our common planet. Not only that, I confess to having sprayed household pesticides against ants when they invaded my houses, against all of my published principles.
Now we've got that out of the way, I want to write about the love we all have for one another.
My recent trip to New York yielded some images that may help make my case.
My lovely companion is Michelle Won, one of the best students when I was teaching at Stanford. Michelle is now a TV reporter in Trenton, N.J., and you can view some of her recent work at Michelle's Demo .
It's pretty thankless work for a reporter who loves to do investigative stories and has a wonderful sense of humor to chronicle the sad tales of senseless murder, preventable car accidents, and so on, in one of the places most Americans tend to ignore, but that is what she does, with grace and empathy. The New York TV market is hard to crack, but I look forward to day that one of the local stations discovers her, because Michelle is a talent waiting to be found by one of these stations competing fiercely for eyeballs.
This photo of the two of us walking in the Murray Hill district was shot by an extremely talented photographer, Jeffrey Lau, several of whose photos I have posted on my site tonight. You can get an idea of how Jeffrey uses his sense of perspective and commitment to honesty by viewing his work at Jeff's site , and I urge you to do so. This is a young photojournalist who would be a major find for one of the New York media companies that need new talent.
I look this photo last fall, on my previous trip to New York. My friend Nan is talking with my daughter Julia in this photo. I love their expressions. Nan grew up in China, then Japan, and came to the U.S., where she married an American. Now she is working on her PhD in Japanese Literature at Columbia, and is that university lucky or what? I have never met any other person who can so thoroughly integrate in her speech, manner, and insight these three great, but distinct cultures -- Chinese, Japanese, and American.
Tonight it is warm and sexy in San Francisco. Green leaves have joined the blossoms on our plum tree. It is the season that babies get conceived and fruits get born. Love is in our air.
Every person mentioned in this post is somebody I love. Yet, none of them, obviously, is my lover. The largest portion of love between people is based on our emotional connections with one another.
I will write about additional types of love this week, but I wanted to start with this one, the universal ability to connect with each other and appreciate one another's creative gifts. This is, IMHO, the type of love that can help carry our species forward, in a time of many hazards, that if not checked, may well obliterate all of us from this planet, for all time, our screams floating endlessly out in a universe much vaster than we can possibly appreciate.
If our lives mean anything, they mean we should love each other to our fullest capacity, in all ways, and at all times.
That should be my epitaph.
1 comment:
That's a great photo of Nan and Julia.
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