Necessities, not luxuries: The title of today's entry is a quote from the Dalai Lama. Read it again while breathing slowly and deeply. Take the words in and let them sit for a moment...
"Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive." --Dalai Lama
Basics: When we speak of what should be coverable by a "minimum wage" we often list food, clothing and shelter. I think there should be more. I continuously ask my students if we should be adding
adequate health care and
education to the post secondary level to that list, hoping to provoke a questioning response. Although the intangibles of
love and
compassion cannot be quantified nor guaranteed, nor do they add to a "cost" applicable to a minimum wage, I have long believed (and know now deeply in my heart), that these are also essential for our survival as something more than beasts...
We must love one another or die:
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Tuesdays are my toughest days these days: I came to know W. H. Auden's Poem,
September 1, 1939 when I read Mitch Album's
Tuesdays with Morie. Morie loved Auden's poetry; as he approached death, Morie began teaching his living wisdom to those around him, and especially to his former student Mitch. Morie lived a difficult and blessed life. He saw the world clearly and was unafraid to speak his heart and mind to his students and loved ones. The verse that Morie offered (according to Album's rendering of the tale) is reproduced above. It is somewhat controversial; Auden seemed to dislike this stanza and especially the last line of it. He grew to hate his poem, trying to keep it from publication stating it was flattering to himself and his readers, calling it trash, and proclaiming shame in having written it. He allowed it to be included in one anthology years later, changing the last line of the stanza from "We must love one another
or die" to "We must love one another
and die" (my emphasis). The meaning behind each of these lines is substantially different. The first, a forceful mandate on how we need to progress through the hell of the chaos around us. We are presented with a choice. Love and endure, or else we die. It is sentimental, and in my opinion, excellent. The second writing (after being deleted all together for a while) offers a softer, fatalistic progression. There is no choice offered, love
and die, not love
or die. Either way, Auden demands that we love in order to progress out of the darkness in the world. The poem became widely popular despite Auden's attempts to keep it out of print. I offer below his original version for your enjoyment. We must love one another or die...
September 1, 1939
W. H. Auden
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the dead,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
“If we think only of ourselves, forget about other people, then our minds occupy very small area. Inside that small area, even tiny problem appears very big. But the moment you develop a sense of concern for others, you realize that, just like ourselves, they also want happiness; they also want satisfaction. When you have this sense of concern, your mind automatically widens. At this point, your own problems, even big problems, will not be so significant. The result? Big increase in peace of mind. So, if you think only of yourself, only your own happiness, the result is actually less happiness. You get more anxiety, more fear.”
