Tag: legacy

Birthday Time

We are not first in making up catchphrases about time, but our cultural time fragments tell a lot about who we are when we say…

“Take your time…[It’s] time to…Running out of time… Free time…Time-strapped…Be on time…Time stopped …[It’s] high time…Time machine…Kill time…Time is money…A waste of time…Manage your time…Save time…Spend time…Time is of the essence…What time is it?”

Time flies, as the saying goes. Roman poet Virgil (70-19 BC) is credited with this timely slogan, first given as “Fugit irreparabile tempus” or “It escapes, irretrievable time.”

And yes, time appears to “escape,” even going faster as we age! After finding how frequently time was mentioned in my retirement survey of 125 individuals (ages 55-96), I wrote about this accelerating phenomenon in Transforming Retirement: Rewire and Grow Your Legacy: “Research backs up this perception. The release of dopamine, the body’s main neurotransmitter involved in time processing, has a drop-off beginning after age 20. This leads to the appearance that time passes faster. Also, your perceptions are different from younger years when you had to process many new events. There are possibilities to combat the speeding timeclock. To make time-travel slow down, do something different! When you are in flow-mode, you do not count hours.”

I just celebrated this blog’s 3-year birthday. Where did the time go? I began writing Pearls of Peace weekly when Mom (1922-2022) was about to turn 99-years-old. I chose Monday morning for online delivery. Why Mondays? At the time, I could not tell you why. Later I realized that my activist mother talked about “Moral Mondays,” as she and her peace colleagues would stand on the corner of the Federal Building in her hometown of South Bend, Indiana, every Monday (yes, even in snow) at evening rush hour to protest ongoing U.S. involvement in war. I stood with Mom a few times when I was visiting her for a long weekend.

As the Middle East/U.S. conflicts churned on, the Heartland reactions of those witnessing this small group of anti-war protestors appeared to change over time. Initially, there were some obscenities shouted out car windows, but people became war weary. I later saw individuals roll down car windows to smile and flash a peace V sign to the protestors. Maybe Margaret Mead was right when she said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” 

Peace seems more elusive today than in earlier post-9-11 days. Wars today are like surround-sound, coming from multiple directions. I make no pretense that weekly writing about pluses and minuses of human nature — to stir a few readers’ thinking about everyday possibilities — might change the world. My Moral Mondays look different from Mom’s, but perhaps we just keep time in our own way.

Thinking of your legacy, Mom, in your Birthday week.

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz 

315. What does the concept of time mean to you?

316. How do you spend time that is meaningful to you?     

Christmas Pearls

Christmas Eve 100+ years ago (2014) found German, British, Belgian and French soldiers celebrating the holiday by singing together in the midst of World War I. Territorial battlelines were crossed. Language borders were crossed. Soldier orders were crossed. The newly installed Catholic Pope, Benedict XV, had asked for a Christmas truce, but his earnest request did not receive any blessing from officers.

Reports from soldiers over the years have blurred war memories, but certain survivors remember a fragile peace on a moonlit night: “First the Germans would sing one of their carols and then we would sing one of ours until we started ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful,’ the Germans immediately joined in singing the same hymn to the Latin words Adeste Fideles, and I thought, well, this is really a most extraordinary thing…nations singing the same carol in the middle of a war.” Other versions of that extraordinary night focus on the singing of Silent Night, Holy Night. No one seems to know exactly where the first singers emerged.

I am reminded of words attributed to anthropologist Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” It can take a long time to change the world, but never doubt that any small change has depth. This 100-year-old Christmas story provides a legacy blessing for our times.

On Christmas Day in 1914 some German soldiers ditched the precarious protection of their trenches and held up signs: “You no shoot, we no shoot.” Some soldiers traded gifts of cigarettes, food, buttons, and hats. The Christmas truce even delivered the ability to bury opposing fallen soldiers who were frozen in place, struck down in territory between trenches. Stories vary, but Adolf Hitler, a Corporal of the 16th Bavarians, reportedly reprimanded German soldiers: “Such a thing should not happen in wartime. Have you no German sense of honor?”

If you look up the word honor, the noun means “adherence to what is right or to a conventional standard of conduct.” As a verb, honor means “to regard or treat (someone) with admiration and respect.” An argument must be made that war defies what is “right” – killing, looting, and other horrors do not treat others with respect. Yet, Hitler found followers to tear down decency.    

Many people on our precious planet commit to peaceful problem solving where we build up one another in times of disaster. It is a possibility that more folks will become thoughtful citizens and change agents in the new year. Might we begin with school children on the playground? Before recess can kids create personal posters with their version of “You don’t shove, I don’t shove?”

A pearl can take from 6 months to 4 years for mature development. Surely, people are capable of maturity. It is our birthright.

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

249. How do you define what is honorable?

250. What peaceful problem solving will you engage in today?     

Legacy of True Thanks

Great-grandmother, Oakland, Maryland

A legacy has 3 ingredients: learning the truth about the past, living in the present, and building for the future, although people frequently substitute learning truths for embellished myths and then live in that past delusion, not in present moments.

This week of Thanksgiving, I keep gathering a long list of things that I am truly thankful for in this moment of time. I am especially thankful for my family, including ancestors with their legacy of strong values. While none are famous in the popular sense of fame, they possessed hero and heroine status in their own everyday ways.

The Wampanoag people who established sophisticated communities for 13,000 years — prior to the 1620 English immigration to “Plymouth” in “Massachusetts” — were everyday heroes and heroines too. (The new settlers named “Plymouth” for the port of Plymouth in England where they had set sail; “Massachusetts” was the first of many U. S. states to be given a Native American name.) 

Truthfully, it was due to the Wampanoag sharing of hunting and planting strategies that kept the Pilgrims from starvation. In October, 1621, 90 Wampanoag Native Americans and 52 Mayflower survivors gathered for a three-day feast. It was the Wampanoag’s daily legacy of giving thanks for nature’s bounty that predates the Pilgrim version of Thanksgiving.

The true Thanksgiving story contains tragedy for both the Pilgrims and Native Americans, but this is rarely the story told to school children. The reason for the Puritan passage was a desire for religious freedom, however an anticipated legacy of future freedom was short-lived for many. Out of 102 passengers (and 30-40 crew members) of the Mayflower’s December arrival, some died enroute and nearly half of the Pilgrims could not survive their first winter of religious freedom in America.

As told by Stephen C. O’Neill (The Life of Peregrine White), one young family’s plight seems poignant. William and Susanna White were Mayflower passengers with their 5-year-old son. Suzanna was pregnant and brought a wicker cradle onboard for baby Peregrine who was the first Pilgrim birth in the “new” land. Dad William died in February.   

The Pilgrims docked at an abandoned village where corn had been planted. Thankful for perceived good fortune, they had no idea that their “discovered” land was abandoned by Native Americans due to a rampaging illness (believed to be leptospirosis spread by rat urine contaminating standing fresh water).

Later, yellow fever was lethal to many English settlers but was especially devastating to the Native Americans. One estimation is that 45,000 Wampanoag, or two-thirds of these heroic people, succumbed to this epidemic.

The legacy of our ancestor stories is a cornerstone in our personalities, yet no one wants to talk about legacies of ancestor illness. For those of us truly fortunate to survive the COVID pandemic, let’s give thanks for health, a wealth far greater than any other.

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

239. What are you thankful for this Thanksgiving week?

240. How might you search for true stories of your ancestors?