Hermit of Bel Aire

 

 

March 11, 2013

                                                                         

Dear Allen and Linda,

Thanks for your friendship. You bring me a wide range of thoughts and emotions and even tools. The rocker rocks fine, Allen. I hope you found things improving across the sea, Linda. As parents you have always been there. And, in the end, perhaps that's all we can really do for our children. Until they realize at some point in eternity that Someone Else has always been There for them [as we say], we must stand by and serve--with warm embraces and unconditional love. And that love sometimes means allowing those we love to pivot, stumble, then free fall until they reach the inevitable "bottom" of the abyss. And there is always a "bottom."

 

This parental "work" we do is our battle. Like the ancient Spartan warriors, their ergon, their work was war. But parenting is about peace. Peace and sorrow. Samuel Johnson was gutsy enough to claim that sorrow often leads to a "cure." We are all three, we happy three, engaged in this ergon. Our relentless sorrow sometimes, says Johnson, "rusts the soul." If allowed to build on itself, it threatens to "putrefy and stagnate" our lives.

 

Our hope? Such inertia, such ennui can only be overcome "by exercise and motion." So, your constant "exercise is" is to continue reaching out to others with your hearts [big hearts] and minds [big minds].

 

And so you come to visit the hermit of Bel Aire.