I wrong. You right. I … have the big humility. So, how about you?
In the movie Lilies of the Field from 1963, Homer Smith, played by Sidney Poitier is frustrated when the local families want to pitch in and help Smith build a chapel for their local Catholic community.
When is spite of Smith’s protest, the locals take over the major part of the labor, Smith goes off in a sulk.
Sitting under a tree the owner of the local diner who has befriended Smith walks over and talks.
Juan, played by Stanley Adams, says in heavily accented and paced Hispanic english:
“So… Oh, do not stop now. OK, OK. I thought you was loco. I was wrong. You was right. See, I have the big humility, amigo. How about you?“
“The only wisdom we can hope to acquire Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless“
When I put that together I wondered just what Mr. Eliot meant.
I wondered just what Mr. Eliot meant by humility and I went to the OED for a definition of the word and none of the definitions to me really seemed to work.
Then by chance Lilies of the Field was on TV last night.
I have seen the movie 50 times.
I have seem Big Juan walk over to talk to Homer Smith 50 times.
And for the first time I really heard Juan say, “See, I have the big humility.”
I have the ability to admit and say out loud I was wrong and you was right.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire, Is the wisdom of humility.
fear of fear, frenzy wisdom can hope to acquire is humility
Adapted from TS Eliot in East Croker, Four Quartets: II. Fear and Humility.
Do not let me hear Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly, Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession, Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God. The only wisdom we can hope to acquire Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless. The houses are all gone under the sea. The dancers are all gone under the hill.
I looked up humility in the OED and got back, The quality of being humble or having a lowly opinion of oneself; meekness, lowliness, humbleness: the opposite of pride or haughtiness.
Having a lowly opinion of oneself?
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm,
Meekness?
Lowliness?
Humbleness?
Saved by the last, the opposite of pride or haughtiness.
If you follow the news of late it would seem that it is the lack of humility, the lack of any wisdom we can hope to acquire, is endless
whose study might in modest ways contribute to an understanding
Adapted from the book, The Architecture of Happiness (2009, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton, and the passage:
If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest—in all its ardour and paradoxes—than our travels. They express, however inarticulately, an understanding of what life might be about, outside of the constraints of work and of the struggle for survival. Yet rarely are they considered to present philosophical problems—that is, issues requiring thought beyond the practical. We are inundated with advice on whereto travel to, but we hear little of why and how we should go, even though the art of travel seems naturally to sustain a number of questions neither so simple nor so trivial, and whose study might in modest ways contribute to an understanding of what the Greek philosophers beautifully termed eudaimonia, or ‘human flourishing’.
Adapted from the book, The Art of Travel (2002, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton.
According to the website, GOOD READS, Any Baedeker will tell us where we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us how and why.
As I said in the section on Architecture , what I find irresistible in reading Mr. de Botton is his use of language.
I get the feeling that if you made a spread sheet of all the words, adverbs and adjectives used by Mr. de Botton, you just might find that he used each word just once.
my father’s birthday one hundred and one today century plus one
Dad, Janet, Grandma Hoffman, Lisa and Tim
I will always regret that I was not able to introduce my kids to their grand father.
But there it is.
Not much you can do.
But I can imagine what he might have done and might have said.
And I think he would have enjoyed where I ended up living along the South Carolina coast.
I cannot go to a restaurant down here and not say to myself, “Dad would have liked this place.”
Dad enjoyed food and he enjoyed a good restaurant.
It made him very happy to go a to famous restaurant and order what they were famous for and have the meal live up to the promise.
Conversely not much disappointed him more than a restaurant that FAILED to live up the promise.
Little did many restaurants know that they had had the kiss of death when my Dad would announce that he had “Crossed them off his list.”
He also had a way to look forward to a meal at a famous restaurant in a way that some kids look forward to Christmas.
And he planned many a family outing AROUND restaurants.
They fact that he 11 children just seemed to add to the challenge and the enjoyment.
At Zender’s in Frankenmuth (which we went to the day AFTER he took us all to see Mark Fidrych pitch at a Tiger Game) I think he got a kick out of walking up to the desk and placing an order for the FAMILY CHICKEN DINNER FOR 18.
When the parade of waiters and waitresses came out with platter after platter of Zender’s Chicken and fix’ns, Dad enjoyed the meal even more.
There was Ann Sathers (found by my sister Mary) in Chicago.
There was New Hellas Café in Greektown.
Include the Gandy Dancer and Angelo’s in Ann Arbor.
I wasn’t born yet but he took everyone to Brennan’s in New Orleans.
He also famously arranged his and Mom’s 25th wedding anniversary Sunday celebration at Win Schuler’s in Grand Haven, Michigan.
Again all of us were there including Grandpa and Grandma Hendrickson.
There was one drawback to this dinner though.
They had got married early in May in 1946 and in 1971, their anniversary, their 25th, happened to land on Mother’s Day.
Schuler’s took our reservation but they also took reservations from everyone else in Ottawa County that day.
To my 11 year old mind, the food was great but we sat in that restaurant FOREVER.
My Dad was not all about fancy either.
If he liked something, he really enjoyed it and he didn’t care where it was.
I remember once he called me when I was finishing up a school term in Ann Arbor.
I am coming to get you tonight. Can you be packed?
I was more than a little surprised.
I had had my last exam earlier that day.
I was planning on spending a couple days in Ann Arbor finishing up on all the things you need to finish up.
I was not packed that was for sure.
But Dad was my ride and I told him that I would be ready.
Later that same day as I was moving boxes out on to the porch of where I was living that term, my Dad pulled into the driveway.
One of the time-space things I wrestle with is that when Dad was driving down to Ann Arbor to drop off or pick us kids up, it have been less than 40 years that he had been at school in Ann Arbor.
I think back to where I was 40 years ago and yes its a long time and a lot of water under the bridge, but it still doesn’t seem that long ago.
He knew his way around Ann Arbor and I think he enjoyed that.
He enjoyed talking to the other students.
One of my room mates was leaving on his way to library to ‘study one more time for the final’ he told my Dad.
My Dad raised his hand palm out and swiped it down to the left and said, “Ahhh if you don’t know by now, you’ll never know it.”
Dad never knew how I took that message to heart.
Dad looks at me and my boxes and says ‘Load them up” and opened the back tailgate of the station wagon.
As I tossed stuff into the car he leans over the tailgate as says, ‘Thanks for being ready.”
I smiled at him and he had this goofy grin that showed up when he had something goofy to say or do.
Like the time he bought a new TV and snuck it into the house before Mom could see it.
While he plugged it in and worked on the cables he told me and my brother Pete to bring the old TV down to the basement.
He figured Mom would never notice.
And she didn’t.
Until my little brother Al said to her the next day, “how do you turn the new TV on?”
I knew something was up by the grin so I waited.
“I had to get out of there,” Dad said.
I waited.
My Dad then said that some lady had called from Church and needed Dad at a meeting.
Dad told Mom he couldn’t go to the meeting as he was driving to Ann Arbor to pick me up.
“So I had to leave,” Dad said with that goofy grin.
I just smiled back and finished packing.
Dad then said he had stopped on the way down and got himself a new McDonalds steak sandwich.
“They are only available for a short time,” Dad said.
“We can stop on the way home and I’ll get you one if you want.”
“Sounds good,” I said.
“If you get one, I guess I’ll get one too,” said my Dad with his goofy grin.
We stopped at McDonald’s in Brighton, Michigan on a warm spring evening I think in 1981.
We sat together and ate McDonald’s Streak Sandwich’s.
And we talked a lot about nothing at all.
I think my Dad would have enjoyed the restaurants down here on the South Carolina Atlantic coast.
I can remember the way he described going to Baltimore seafood joints for crab served on brown butcher paper back when we would visit my brother Paul when he and his family lived in Maryland.
If he had been able to visit us here in Bluffton, I think he would have said he was ready to order a low country boil the minute he got out of the car.
And he would have looked at me and said, “You can order one too, if we go right now.”
And we would have gone to Hudson’s or Salty Dog or Crazy Crab and peeled and ate shrimp and had corn on the cob with redskin potatoes and sausage.
And we would have talked a lot about nothing at all.
allow daylight dreams drag away to far-off shores seeking adventures
Only too well I recalled characteristic incidents of my school days.
Then countless times I was reproved by the teachers for sitting with eyelids held widely open but with eyes entirely oblivious to surroundings.
For I was allowing daylight dreams to drag me away to far-off shores and on and ever onwar,d seeking hairraising adventures among strange peoples — until the harsh words of my enraged preceptors rudely tore me from the willful neglect of my lessons.
Imagine my shock when I picked up a copy of From coast to coast with Jack London only to find myself reading a word-for-word description of myself in school.
From coast to coast with Jack London was written by Leon Ray Livingston.
Mr. Livingston was better known as A-No.1.
That was his hobo mark.
Mr. Livingston was famous as a hobo when the 17 year old Jack London talked him into letting him tag along on a trip from New York to Oakland.
Mr. Livingston’s book wasn’t published until a year after Mr. London’s death.
I was thinking about a traveling life and hobos during the depression era so I got into the google.
That led me to Mr. Livingston.
That led to this book, I mean, who could resist picking up and paging through a copy even if just virtually, of a book titled From coast to coast with Jack London.
And that led me to the first paragraph.
And that first paragraph wasn’t about A-No.1 at all.
It was about me.
The countless times I was reproved by the teachers for sitting with eyelids held widely open but with eyes entirely oblivious to surrounding.
For some reason this little memory has been in my mind for nearly forever.
This took place back in 3rd grade around 1968 or so.
I had recently watched the TV show, The Beverly Hillbillies.
Mind you this was at night when it was a prime time show, not yet in endless day time reruns.
Jed Clampett wanted to call home to Bugtussle and was having a heck of time getting the long distance operator to connect him.
Jed then listed a bunch of other towns in the vicinity and finally mentions the town of Sibley.
When the operator still could not locate these places Jed says in wonderment, “Ma’am, Sibley is the County Seat.!”
I thought about this phrase County Seat.
I worked out that it meant the city was the Capitol City of a County.
I lived in Kent County, Michigan.
I lived in the big city of Grand Rapids.
I raised my hand and my Third Grade teacher, Miss Reynolds called my name and I asked, “Is Grand Rapids the County Seat of Kent County.”
Miss Reynolds just kind of stared a me real peculiar like.
I think she might have nodded her head slowly and might have mumbled yes.
See, as I recall it, we were in the middle of a spelling test at the time.
She was calling out words.
We were trying to spell them on paper.
And I was thinking about the phrase County Seat.
The countless times I was reproved by the teachers for sitting with eyelids held widely open but with eyes entirely oblivious to surrounding.
The next week I was sent to the 4th grade for the afternoon.
Not for my benefits.
For Miss Reynolds.
From coast to coast with Jack London by Livingston, Leon Ray, b. 1872
Publication date 1917 Topics London, Jack, 1876-1916, Tramps Publisher Erie, Pa. : The A-no 1 Publishing Company
