January 16, 2019

Though life is often disappointing, I’m glad to have lived to witness two colossal transformations in the world. No one would have seen them coming when I was a boy. The first is the recognition of “toxic masculinity” and the sad danger women have been in from violence from their men for generation upon generation. It wasn’t invisible, I suppose, but it was interpreted as “just the way things are” and women were advised to find a way to accommodate themselves to a dangerous world. Now that the veil is lifted, or lifting, men too breathe deeper, easier, as on the day you recognize you have been horrible without really meaning to be, and see a way to change. Put on the pink hat, gentleman; kiss your buddy in the street if you want to. The other is related insofar as both have to do with compassion. That is the new relationship building between humans and animals. Maybe You Tube allowed us to see what always was happening, but I think rather that divers endangering themselves to save entangled mantas, that vacationers dragging stranded dolphins back into the water, that men climbing down into crevasses to save puppies, is new to the world. The sentiment that it’s “just an animal” which was current when I was young is embarrassing now. Little boys are embraced by chickens, men by lionesses; women pet wild cheetahs and sit in pastures with the heads of cows in their laps. It is shocking, beautiful, and yet I believe it was the way it was meant to be when the Creator asked us to tend his garden. These two things –there may be others, but I don’t yet see them– are huge. . . like the recognition sometime in the XVIII century that all humans are equal, and that there is no rational way of discriminating among us. That is STILL catching on, so we must be patient. Every dad sitting at a toy tea party with his daughter, every deer coming out of the woods to be petted by the housewife, hurls us forward. 

The cringing Boy who ran Humanities and ended my career there has been fired. Too much time has passed for me to be truly exultant, nor do I feel the inclination to exult. But I want to say to somebody that you would have saved 4 ruinous years had you sided with me rather than him. I was right; he was wrong, and testing that nearly did–or perhaps did–destroy the program. It is a victory I will at least keep in my heart, for I was right in large rather than merely wounded in particular. Maybe I will be bolder next time.