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October 3, 2008
Dead On
Ira Rifkin
Special to the Jewish Times
Raise your hand if you’re disheartened by the news from Wall Street, the presidential campaign trail, Israel, Russia, Pakistan — you name it. We are in deep and uncharted waters and there’s no guarantee — absolutely none — that, somehow, everything will turn out satisfactorily.
Do I believe that the next president, whoever it is, will actually be able to solve the extraordinarily complex problems he will face come Jan. 20? No, I don’t. The problems are so deeply ingrained, the body politic is so divided and the cost, on many levels, of real change is so vast that all we’re likely to get, at best, are more Band-Aids — more (here’s that expression again) lipstick on the pig.
So what’s a worried cynic like me to do?
One answer is to cultivate sensitive friends, like the one who gave me a copy of writer David Foster Wallace’s 2005 Kenyon College commencement address. Mr. Wallace was a superbly gifted writer, who, like so many possessing profound powers of observation, was far better at recognizing the human condition than coping with it; he committed suicide in September. The Wall Street Journal recently published his address. I’m guessing it did so as solace to its subscribers contemplating suicide themselves after sustaining huge investment losses.
The address was quite long — no surprise since Mr. Wallace’s novel “Infinite Jest” ran for 1,079 pages — but displayed throughout a subtle intelligence anchored in a profound religiosity. (Mr. Wallace was, I believe, a liberal Protestant Christian.) His message centered on the importance of perspective and the need to remain focused on the search for light no matter how dark the moment — which coincides with my non-doctrinal understanding of the meaning of the High Holy Days.
This is not an easy task, Mr. Wallace emphasized. But it begins with the realization that despite our sense of starring in our own drama, none of us is the center of the universe. And until we stop thinking that we are, we’re bound always to feel that the world is closing in on us — undercutting our hopes, stoking our fears, enabling our jealousies and accentuating our dissatisfactions. Rather, it’s about how we react, internally and externally, to others, and the stresses and seductions of everyday life.
“On one level,” Mr. Wallace said, “we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness.”
Ah, yes. That is the trick, one I too often forget (as this column’s opening paragraphs should make obvious). Again, I ask: What’s a cynic like me to do?
Here’s Mr. Wallace’s advice:
“In the day-to-day trenches of adult life there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it J.C., or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles — is that pretty much everything else you worship will eat you alive.”
Does it seem odd to take spiritual advice from someone who killed himself? Perhaps. Still, here’s hoping you are blessed during this High Holy Day period to hear a sermon that comes close to the spiritual power of Mr. Wallace’s commencement address. ••
Ira Rifkin’s column runs monthly. He lives in Annapolis.