It only took me a lifetime but I finally figured what I write about.
Most of those years I answered that predictable question with an aw-shucks shrug. “I write about me,” I’d say, or “my life” or “what’s on my mind” – true as far as they went but they didn’t go far. All gratuitous writing – or making of any sort – is “about me.” Self-expression arises from a self needing to express. What’s that self trying to say? Tots may blather for attention, but that soon gets tiresome.
Turns out I’ve been writing for an urgent personal reason for fifty-seven years: not to wow or woo or earn a living, but to figure out how to be. I can date my writing compulsion precisely because February 1968 was when my dad died, leaving me with no roadmap to tomorrow. He’d always known what was right, no ifs, buts or debate, but then he got sick at age 46 and his whole edifice of pieties came crashing like the temple onto Samson’s head. His morality couldn’t withstand the shock of his mortality. He died bitter, snarling at God. Time, his son figured, for a new roadmap.
How to be is a daunting puzzle if you start from scratch. Most folks build their value systems on inherited foundations or skip the effort and enroll in a didactic faith. It’s not so hard being a good Catholic or Muslim or Jew, you need only obey the rules, which your minister will explain. Do as you’re told and with luck you’ll die extolled by your tribe.
Dad’s premises and promises had betrayed him so what next? In hindsight I resembled the lost hatchling in that children’s classic, Are You My Mother?, seeking from kitten, hen, dog, cow, car, boat, plane, and finally steam shovel, a way home. I tried religion, poetry, music, politics, journalism, business as berths for my restlessness and none quite fit. Every yes got kneecapped by a but. I ended where Montaigne did, throwing up his hands with “Que sais-je?” – “What do I know? – that is, really know?” – to which the answer was nothing. Nothing is a stony pillow on which to rest one’s head, so I kept looking. At any crossroads we choose, Which way’s best? That search – for the best way – is the science called morality, which became my lifelong topic, like it or not.
Morality differs from theology, which commences with its conclusions, or philosophy, which theorizes impractically. Morality, standing at a crossroads, must decide – left or right, fast or slow? – and defend its decision. Individuals need it – and communities – and nations – for thoughtful life is tricky. (Dog Henry wonders why we bother.) Folks have been wrestling morality for going on three thousand years, for every choice is moral.
The twentieth century dismissed morality as dusty hooey – who knows what’s right! – but nihilism, agnosticism, anarchism, relativism, aestheticism, pragmatism, defeatism are all moral systems which entail consequences. Decisions are inevitable only after the fact. Anything we decide affects those around us. Morality matters.
Morality is not a discipline reserved for experts. Licensed moralist is an oxymoron. We are all moralists. Whom we vote for, what we buy, how we spend our time, how we treat our neighbors are moral choices. As I began to find my moral footing (it took a while), America was losing its. Morally – not economically, not yet militarily – today’s America is in trouble, lurching like Breughel’s blind men into a hopeless ditch.
Morality supplies questions, not answers; suggestions, not instructions. Finding the best way to be isn’t easy. But we must or else.