Dear Sandy

Dear Sandy,
All those years I'd thought your ready wit and bubbly humor were manifestations of a deeper intellect ... your laughing spirit but a glittering surface on the waters of certain contemplation. I was wrong. You are your surface.

A kind and gentle soul, granted. Tireless, tenacious in performance of life's limitless tasks ... giving always generously to the cause of family and hearth, you are the exemplar of dedication to that cause.

But I don't think it's enough. And neither do you. About two decades ago, you hinted at this ... I felt your desperation on the phone as you considered the tedium of a life in constant attendance to the needs of others ... a seemingly endless cycle that left your days filled but unfulfilled. There was reference to a Peggy Lee refrain ... "Is that all there is?" In that moment, your soul was crying for recognition, aware of greater tasks than those of the daily struggle. You were the child at the lake, so close to the swan, wanting dearly to embrace a deeper challenge and the far horizon, willing for that brief moment to suspend fear and approach mystery ... and then you turned away, back to the comfort of the familiar. So close.

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But contemplation is not easy. Finding that quiet place. A discipline like any other, it requires practice and is almost impossible with the buzzing of life's constant little dramas and demands. A thousand little thoughts buzzing daily in the brain ... this or that to do, these or those to be tackled next, they or them to think about ... countless goals to meet ... little structures carefully assembled one day and carefully dismantled the next ... small satisfactions, little victories ... buzzing ... busy... buzzing ... buzzing ... crowding out the sense to make sense of it all ... buzzing, buzzing ... crowding out contemplation.

Too, there is a natural avoidance of contemplation ... a vague reluctance or fear that deep reflection might get too deep. Uncomfortable. But that concern is unwarranted, for it only amounts to an excuse to avoid thinking.

How long do we remain children, afraid of the duties of maturity, the responsibility for intellectual progress, the debt to consciousness? Sadly, some go to the grave with that fear and a lifetime spent as hollow hating children.

Others do the opposite and learn all they can, refining their perspective and expanding their knowledge base. They become aware that life is more than comfortable routines and static sameness ... that it is a constant journey of improvement in understanding, a deepening of wisdom and spiritual growth. Not religious growth, but spiritual, relating to spirit, soul.

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Any sympathy or patience I once might have had for those in the former category becomes more steadily exhausted. Those who refuse to pursue the swan refuse to accept growth in themselves and others.

I thought, once, that you were my nearest ally ... a mutual devotion borne of blood and understanding. I'd thought our singular and personal bond wore the armor of coequal loyalty. "One for all and all for one" became degraded in time by the lesser loyalties of other family members, which rendered "you for me and me for you" an even more rare and valuable bond. But even that chain has rusted through.

Whether you carried a torch of equal flare in pursuit of knowledge, esoteric or arcane or merely deeper, I could not seek to judge. Just knowing you were there to accept or understand or even champion that torch of mine excused any possible absence of yours.

Presuming your sibling presence in my corner, despite rejection or ignorance by others, gave strength to my purpose and determination. No matter who else might not understand or would too easily dismiss me, I was somewhat bolstered by the abiding and unconditional support I presumed from you. But time has forced me to abandon such naivete'. Wherever your absolute loyalties lie, they are not with me.

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Contact by phone or mail in recent years has confirmed only that my thoughts are unworthy of your time or attention. Even worse, that subjecting you to them was tedious or imposing or only for the purpose of my own gratification ... "always looking for strokes," you acknowledged in echo of your other brother.

But I think you misunderstand, as I told you then. It's not agreement and praise I seek, but only discussion. The ideas in these essays relate to political corruption, the economy, hypocrisy, origins, equality, vision, love, myopia, genetics, intolerance, hatred, bigotry, freedom, rights and sovereignty, progress and, at base, humanity. The fact that neither you nor Jim has voiced any comment on any subject mentioned -- no question or debate or interest -- allows conclusion only that such issues of importance to an average thinking person are not of interest to you.

We're all about fifty, now. Ask yourself: Do I plan to spend the rest of my life with such continued disinterest in my world? Do I expect to exhaust my days in thoughts only of the next birthday or Christmas and the attendant inconsequential ritual, the next obligatory gesture or perfunctory preparation? Ask yourself if what you're doing or thinking is enough, if you expect so little of your time on this earth until it's gone .... Ask if it's even enough to justify all your hard work.

Wasn't having babies enough, you might muse? No, for animals and illiterates have babies, but they aren't blessed with your brain. All the endless hours raising those babies

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and husband, or all the jobs I worked? No, you realize ... that's only treading water. While you're treading, or after, a thought must certainly surface; and in your case, it did ... "Is that all there is?"

Did that question die? No. It's been suppressed, in justification for all that hard treading. It's up to you to decide if your last years will only be for such marching in place or for something more fitting to your soul and presence in this time. You decide.

It all boils down, in the end, to a sense of purpose. If the purpose in any life has only been to earn one's keep or raise more clones to that ethic, following a predictable pattern of hard play to forget that hard work and then back to more of the same ad infinitum ... what contribution is that? It is merely staying alive. A sponge or coral does as well. But those lower creatures owe nothing more to their intelligence. Homo sapiens, however, is obligated to a much higher standard.

No human of true purpose can expect so little of life, unless so little is given. From such lesser creatures, one must anticipate contribution or communication of equal rank ... about weather or family or mundane equivalent.

How can one hope to entertain grander visions by seeing only the near and common ... to reach the heights by merely

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circling the mountain ... or to dare the unknown without courage to try? Maeterlinck put it with eloquence in Our Social Duty:

"Let us think of the great invisible ship that carries our human destinies upon eternity. Like the vessels of our confined oceans, she has her sails and her ballast. The fear that she may pitch or roll on leaving the roadstead is no reason for increasing the weight of the ballast by stowing the fair white sails in the depths of the hold. They were not woven to molder side by side with cobblestones in the dark. Ballast exists everywhere; all the pebbles of the harbor, all the sands of the beach, will serve for that. But sails are rare and precious things; their place is not in the murk of the well, but amid the light of the tall masts, where they will collect the winds of space."