Paulosophia • Paul E. Martin's Personal Blog •

Coronavirus Isn’t Just “The Flu”

April 1, 2020 By paulosophia in Politics, Religion, Spirituality Tags: my life, philosophy, politics

My thoughts on human rights, social justice, mercy, philanthropy, advocacy go far beyond my job as the CEO of an international NGO.

But this wasn’t always the case.

I once sought to live in life sequestered in an Ivory Tower. In my 30’s, I decided I would give my life to thought — hoping to master the canon of western (analytic) philosophy. I would earn my Ph.D.

I finished UCLA with a BA in philosophy at 38, having studied informally and formally since my mid-twenties. (I didn’t go to college after high school. And I think my GPA was under 2.0.)

Preparing to become Doc Martin, I studied for the GRE, fervently. I toured my reach schools and traveled to some campuses — Christ Church, Oxford, Georgetown. I looked at homes in the suburbs north of South Bend, Indiana because I wanted Notre Dame.

As I prepared to pivot my work, my family, my life, I hit a big fat fork in the road: to the left, academia, to the right, social justice.

———————

An ivory tower is thought to be a metaphorical place — a place where people wrest themselves from the rat-race world, in favor of their own pursuits, usually mental destinations.

I had spent much of my life caring for people. Trying to bring physical, emotional, and spiritual healing to those who need it most. I learned most of it from my mom. The one I can no longer see.

A fork in the road. To the left, academia. To the right, social justice.

I chose to stay on the right path. Some of my decision, like all decision, was out of pure selfishness. Job prospects for philosophy professors were, and remain, bleak. One professor friend of mine at UCLA warned me: “I have a BA from Princeton and Ph.D. from Harvard. I work my brain to the core every single day, producing papers, getting published, so that, hopefully, I will be one of a few associate professors here in the past 30 years to become tenured. (I was so glad to see the Pamela Hieronymi was tenured a few years later, and also recently was a chief contributor to the TV Series, The Good Place.)

But what drove me to philanthropy was probably my keen awareness of my limitations. I don’t think I would have made a good academic. Those guys are really smart. I’m more of a generalist, a jack-of-all-trades who knows just enough about a bunch of things (business, history, marketing, music, theology, public speaking, writing, cooking, botany, finance, digital, politics) but not a lot about any one thing.

I’m a hack in so many ways. Just look at the post; what is even really about?

I’m not that good at focusing if you want to know the truth. I get too distracted. I didn’t think I’d be good at being a philosophy professor — those guys are Albert Einstein’s, figuring out the non-physical world.

Plenty of professors live balanced lives — help advocate for these in need, and they remain in academia. But most are not. Most live in their ivory tower.

Believe it or not, Einstein wasn’t one of them.

He did not lock himself in. One can find countless volumes of his letters and articles written on pressing political and social issues of the day. He would advocate for peace and disarmament. He would write to high officials of various countries.

Nearing the end of his life, Einstein said, “I have expressed an opinion on public issues whenever they appeared so bad to me, and so unfortunate, that silence would have made me feel guilty of complicity.”

A decade or so earlier before the Nazi Adolf Eichmann trial, he wrote that “external compulsion can, to a certain extent, reduce but it can never cancel the responsibility of the individual.”

I feel that I have a responsibility to use my voice when I must.

———————

May we never let ourselves feel guilty of complicity.

Ivory towers are not only of those in academia. An ivory tower can be your job, school, church, your image, your family.

An ivory tower is locking yourself up and in so doing, ignoring the crucial social issues of the day.

One of the biggest issues today is ignorance — calling a wicked and unpredictable pandemic, “the flu” because you heard it on some news station or from an email chain.

The other big issue is those millions of children living in foster care — in group homes, without a mother or father to assure them that all will be okay. They don’t know about Coronavirus, but they know they are hungry and more scared than you and me.

Coronavirus isn’t just “the flu.”

I Hope This Virus Goes Away So I Can Go Hug Mom

March 20, 2020 By paulosophia in Blog, Life Tags: family, my life, spirituality

Mom’s 78th birthday today. I am crying.

I would be crying if I was with her. But I won’t be with her.

Her home — that skilled nursing facility — is on lockdown.

I hope this virus goes away so I can go hug mom. That stroke.

I haven’t seen her in a month. I usually sit with her twice a week. But I had a two-week work trip. Then I was stranded in DC thinking I had the damned Coronavirus. I’m still not sure whether I didn’t. I finally came home on Tuesday.

Mom’s bed is right next to a large French window with shutters. I could show-up and get one of the nurses to put her in her wheelchair. We could sit a few feet apart, separated by glass. I’m afraid it would confuse her more. (I decided after I wrote this to drive and look into her window but not let her see me. At least I’d get to see her on her birthday and feel closer to her.)

Every single time — every single time — I visit her she reaches out and touches and caresses my face and laughs and cries, kind of at the same time. It’s a joyous kind of cry with a hint of sadness if that makes sense. I’m told she responds to me unlike anyone else. I’m not boasting or anything. I’m really not. I just think it’s the only son of an Italian immigrant mother kind of thing.

I didn’t know this for most of my life, but I really was the apple of her eye. This photo was from two years ago. You see what I mean?

I remember those throbbing growing pains around my knees when I was 11 or 12. I’d be moaning late at night because it hurt so badly. She’d come into my room and rub Ben Gay on my legs and bring a hot water bottle and then the pain would subside and I would fall back asleep.

One of the hard parts of being a parent is when your child needs you in the middle of the night and you have to get out of bed – even though you’re super tired.

Every single sports game I played — she’d be there. It wasn’t Dad’s thing to come to my games much. He did come to one flag football game when I was in 6^th grade. Then one tackle football game when I was a sophomore and we played against the high school he went to (and dropped out of). He had other strengths.

How she’d care for the destitute. It came naturally to her. She didn’t flout it. It wasn’t some “cause.” She didn’t go to any swanky galas or anything like that. Her unconditional love — not only for me but for countless orphans and poor people — propelled me to my new role as an advocate for children of neglect, abuse, and abandonment.

Without her genuine compassion for those in need — like her mother, my Nonna, who also truly felt the pain of others — I’d be in the business of moneymaking today.

My heart hurts today.

But hurt isn’t damage.

We all need to know this in this time of Coronavirus.

Inconvenience. Pain. Damage. They are not the same.

Inconvenience. Too many are whining because they have to stay home and watch Netflix. But nobody here is starving. No bombs are traumatizing our children in the way Nazi bombs traumatized Mom and her family in Umbria in the early 1940s. Trauma as a child, damages the human brain, forever.

This Coronavirus is entirely inconvenient. But for the overwhelming 99.9% of our population, it’s a mere inconvenience. Yes, people are scared. And fear has the capacity to bring pain. That’s legit, but it’s still nothing like living in London during WWII.

Pain. Today this virus causes me pain. Emotional pain. Sadness. I can’t hug and caress and listen to Pavarotti and eat Trader Joe’s fig bars with mom — the one who brought me into this world and loved me, without condition — and it causes me pain.

We don’t like inconvenience. We don’t like pain.

And I’m fairly sure that we are all pretty spoiled here in the richest country in the history of the world — that we can’t even cope with either of them very well.

Some believe pain makes us stronger, which is why we push our bodies and push our minds and meditate and go to 12 step groups.

The Marines say that pain is weakness leaving your body. I’m not sure I disagree. All the good biographies are about people who experienced great pain and adversity and overcame odds, not about those wimpy kinds of folks.

Damage. I work with children who are victims — young children — of patent neglect, abuse, abandonment. Children who are locked in closets and thrown against the wall and whipped with bicycle chains. That causes damage. Trauma causes damage.

Damage sticks with you, forever in most cases. It etches literal lines into the carbon of your brain. Damage is due to a physical state of affairs. Literally you have to think of a car after a collision. Damaged.

Aristotle said that the youth are steered by the rudders of pain and pleasure. We crave pleasure; pain, we resist. We can’t help it.

But we can acknowledge the fact that social isolation (when you are well fed and warm and with your loved ones in the comfort of your home) is not going to kill anyone. It’s not even going to hurt anyone.

Mom understood pain. Those who grow up poor understand pain. Those who immigrate from war-torn countries understand pain. The over five million Syrian refugees freezing in the desert would trade places with you and me in a second, even with our Coronavirus situation. They wouldn’t give a rip about the stock market.

Life expectancy in Afghanistan is just over 50 years of age today.

Approximately 15,000 Americans die each year from gun violence. That doesn’t include suicides, just homicides.

Pol Pot oversaw the deaths of an estimated one to two million people from starvation, overwork or execution.

Just over 100 people in the U.S. have died from COVID_19.

I hope this virus goes away so I can go hug mom.

And I hope that all those stupid college students partying in Florida realize that they could kill people like my mom.

Stuck in DC Maybe With Coronavirus

March 10, 2020 By paulosophia in Life, News, Personal, Top Stories Tags: my life, parenting, philosophy

I am stuck in DC maybe with Coronavirus. I am not afraid of Coronavirus — not one bit.

Funny thing. I met yesterday here at The Department of Health and Human Services. We met regarding how the organization I run should respond given our extensive national and international work, with children.

While I was sitting in the Hubert Humphrey building, taking notes, asking questions, developing a communication plan, I started to sniffle. A few minutes later, a dry cough. A few hours later, in my hotel room, my body temperature seemed a bit off.

Slept nine hours without waking-up once — rare for me. Had bad dreams, too. One was about our pet German Shepherd. We actually don’t own a German Shepherd, we own a Maltese/poodle mix. I used to raise German Shepherds. Anyway, people today want to call mutts fancy names these days, like Maltipoo. I don’t go for it; Luna is a mutt. Plus, maltypooh just kind of sounds off.

Back to the dream. The German Shepherd ran away. We searched and searched. We found him at a park. Some big bald hairy guy wearing overalls was holding her above his head, running toward me, then body slammed our dog to the ground and killed her.

So there was that.

I was to fly home at 5:14 this afternoon. I spoke to Gina for a while. I read and re-read CDC’s website. Please, if you are going to read anything about the Coronavirus, read this, even though some swear by wacky conspiracies from emails or random websites.

I decided to stay in DC for (at least) another day. Airlines are working with potential carriers of the virus, so the flight change was just fifty bucks.

I am not afraid of Coronavirus — not one bit.

But I couldn’t imagine being on a plane a spreading the virus to someone with a weak immune system. And seniors are more susceptible. As my friend Kristen Howerton just wrote, “TRY TO HAVE PITY ON THE MYRIAD OF OLD PEOPLE YOU COULD EXTERMINATE.”

In my room now. I have a beautiful view this trip. The cherry blossoms in DC captivate me. I took a photo of them on Sunday, during a run, and posted on Instagram. I took this photo with my Leica just now.

Outside, it’s in the mid-sixties. I have the patio door open. There’s a gentle breeze.

I’ve been away from home for 11 days.

It used to be that when I was stuck in a city I really couldn’t get any work done. You probably remember. Now with Slack and Zoom and email, there’s just about anything you can get done from a hotel room.

Bree attends Columbia Medical School. They just shut the school down, and she might come home for a few weeks, or longer.

Avery (my stepdaughter) is doing a semester in London, via Pepperdine University. All those are being sent home immediately.

If one decides to look at history, and the way most of the world lives — today — this anxiety of Coronavirus is indicative not of a health crisis. The anxiety is a symptom of a society addicted to data and certainty, and focused on pathology.

I’m not in any way saying we shouldn’t take precautions. We should read what the CDC says, and WHO, daily. Again, I’m staying in DC, as a precaution. I am instructing our staff and tens of thousands of our volunteers, around the world, to educate themselves.

But let’s get serious — hundreds of people in lines a mile long buying a year’s worth of toilet paper at Costo? I am not afraid of Coronavirus — not one bit.

There are so many kinds of anxiety. Or fear. One, of course, is death. Another is of being embarrassed, publicly. I wrote about that horror here.

I will close with a quote from a man who changed my life over ten years ago. I’m serious, he did. His name is Edwin Friedman. He was a Jewish rabbi who died in 1996. He was a counselor to corporations, presidents, families.

Consider his words. Let me say it again, in light of the Coronavirus crisis, consider Friedman’s words. And stay informed.

I will remain stuck in DC maybe with Coronavirus. And we will all be fine.

“Chronic anxiety is systemic; it is deeper and more embracing than community nervousness. Rather than something that resides within the psyche of each one, it is something that can envelop, if not actually connect, people. It is a regressive emotional process that is quite different from the more familiar, acute anxiety we experience over specific concerns. Its expression is not dependent on time or events, even though specific happenings could seem to trigger it, and it has a way of reinforcing its own momentum. Chronic anxiety might be compared to the volatile atmosphere of a room filled with gas fumes, where any sparking incident could set off a conflagration and where people would then blame the person who struck the match rather trying to disperse the fumes. The issues over which chronically anxious systems become concerned, therefore, are more likely to be the focus of their anxiety rather than its cause.”

I Miss My Mom.

February 19, 2020 By paulosophia in Personal, Relationships Tags: my life, parenting

“I miss my mom.”

I posted that on Facebook yesterday. It was a rough night. I needed to talk to her. I always called her when I was struggling. And last night I was struggling.

Many kind people, very helpful people, commented.

“I’m so sorry. Praying loving memories of your Mom will soothe your heart.”

“I feel your pain.”

“Losing a parent is one of the toughest things you’ll ever endure. In time, you’ll learn to work around the hole she left.”

My mom is not dead, though. I didn’t lose her. She just can’t really talk anymore.

She’s just not the same.

She’s here and she’s not here.

My post on Facebook was about missing that giant part of her – the love and compassion and care.

That’s the part I was referring to last night. That’s the part that’s largely gone — her mind. And even though she’s here in the flesh and I am so incredibly grateful to be able to hold her frail hands, and caress her and kiss her and sometimes make her laugh, we can’t communicate.

Every Saturday, at a minimum, I visit the skilled nursing facility, also known as, her home.

Her room is near the end of the corridor to the right of a lobby. I walk down the corridor. Often, there is a very elderly woman with the knit beanie. Scuttling on the floor with her slippers, back and forth and back and forth, she mummers to herself. She has no teeth. She must weigh no more than 75 pounds. She holds a bald baby doll as if for dear life. Back and forth and back and forth, she scuttles. Others sit in the corridor in wheelchairs.

Mom has a roommate. There is a drape that separates them. It’s dull yellow. I’m not sure of the name of the lady she’s with this time. Over the past four years, there have been many. Some have died. I especially remember Mary, and wrote about her and this entire nightmare, here.

As I walk down the long corridor, I always look into the rooms to the right. It’s not a pretty sight, all these stroke victims or cancer victims or life victims. I’m telling you, it’s not nice to see.

Some of you know what I mean.

Mom’s bed is adjustable. She doesn’t walk anymore. I always lie next to her. I used to get her into her wheelchair, push her outside, then we’d sit on the outdoor sofa near the entrance. I would escort her around the rose garden, holding her left arm as we walked slowly. She would always look at the box hedges and say, “those are mine.” At her house (we had to sell it after the stroke) she had box hedges in the front yard. Often she would trim them.

We’d walk around the rose garden once or twice. Then we’d sit for hours — me to her right. We’d laugh. I’d show her pictures of her mother and father, my Nonno and Nonna. We’d listen to Pavarotti. I always brought one of those fruit bars from Trader Joe’s.

I still bring the fruit bars and show her the pictures and we listen to Pavarotti. But, as I said earlier, she doesn’t walk anymore. I still take her outside. We sit. I took this photo on Saturday.

I was happy because I made her laugh. You take what you can get.

I miss my mom.

Pleasure, Status, Or Knowledge?

February 12, 2020 By paulosophia in Culture, Philosophy Tags: philosophy, spirituality

I woke today thinking about Plato — his three appetites of the soul.: pleasure, reputation, and knowledge.

Who can be sure whether the drive for pleasure exceeds that drive for status — reputation?

But knowledge, especially today, comes in last. And society pays a high price.

Postscript. Perhaps there is no greater topic to man than that of appetites. The billions of dollars spent on advertising, to create needs that don’t really exist. The “top university” facade. Substance abuse. Brands. All creating the deepest forms of anxiety and depression due to envy. I’m not claiming to have an answer, other than to say that once upon a time, only the privileged could receive an education. Only those in the minority could be learned. Around 50 years ago, higher education in America became an instrumental value, versus intrinsic. Today learning (the pursuit of knowledge) is a means to an end: money, pleasure, status. Envy hurts society.

1 2 3 4 5 >»