“Don’t live your life by comparison.” Heard that before, haven’t you? “Emulate the successful.” Imitation is flattery, but it doesn’t make one original.
 
In Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Volume 1, the biographer reports that Samuel Johnson addressed how children might be disciplined. He argues that a whipping produces an effect “which terminates in itself.” Of course, there are many who refrain from any corporeal punishment, and they have legitimate reasons. Out of these “softer” parents, some discipline by comparison, “Look how little Bartholomew has done his chores. You should be like him.” Johnson sees such “discipline” as inviting trouble down the line. As he says, “by exciting emulation and comparisons of superiority, you lay the foundation of lasting mischief; you make brothers and sisters hate each other.”
 
Emulation and comparisons can do more than generate hate among relatives. Sometimes they can lead to dire consequences, especially when emulation becomes idolization. Shakespeare wrote about such idolization in Henry IV, parts I and II. Not going to retell the whole story, don’t worry. I just want to note that in the plays Henry IV and his son Prince Hal (to become Henry V) have to battle rebels. In one of those battles (at Shrewsbury) Prince Hal annihilates the rebel Hotspur and his forces, with the prince personally dispatching Hotspur. In Part II, Act 1, Scene iii, Lady Percy speaks about Hotspur as one emulated and idolized by his cadre of knights. She says that Hotspur was the “glass” (think mirror) “Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves…He was the mark and glass, copy and book, that fashion’d others….”
 
Here’s what to pay attention to: Hotspur, not receiving backup help from his father’s forces, rushed headlong into battle with Prince Hal’s army, and all those who saw Hotspur as the glass wherein they did dress themselves, rushed with him to their deaths. Wanting to be like Hotspur, idolizing him, the army perished. Not good, Really, imitation led to death. And you know true-life stories that are similar, such as a tale of someone who has risked health for cosmetic surgery in imitation of an unreachable ideal body or reports of people who followed others into a tragic life with drugs, gangs, and criminals.
 
Not that you are going to follow a Hotspur regardless of his actions. Not that you are going to imitate someone just because of fame, fortune, media attention, or even beauty. Originals choose their own fate. Originals don’t join groups that idolize. What can come of such emulation? Before you “dress yourself before the glass” of a personality to live your life by comparison, examine what it is that you want to become.  

You think things are piling up and that people are piling on. You should think that. Most likely, you are not paranoid. Piling up and piling on are the ways of the world, not just the “modern” world, but really, the ways of the world. Think there was only one predator outside your ancient ancestors’ caves? So, what’s your choice? Unless you have independent means with an indestructible shelter and endless supplies, you don’t have an escape option. Even in that shelter, by the way, some microscopic critter with an ability to do you in will keep up the pressure. Better to deal with the piling.
 
You won’t succeed in handling the piling up and on without accepting that you live on a surface interrupted by accumulations, the “piles.” You can level some of them, but not all, especially since some will grow as you reduce others. Your life’s landscape is probably not going to be a plain, but if it appears so generally, you’ll recognize slight changes in elevation, changes that are the natural consequence of your being. Think of this: Even if you stand still for a million years and nothing else around changes, you’ll see that by gravity itself the place where you stand is a different elevation, a lower one because of your mass weighing on the ground, regardless of its material makeup. Look at old stone benches, old porches and roofs on houses, and leaning utility pools on hillsides: You can’t escape the gravity of your existence. No, standing still eventually puts you in a hole.
 
You create an uneven landscape just by being. You could complain, of course. Seems that your job is a continuing one: Level the piles as you can and rejoice that there will always be others to flatten. Remember, however, that if you think you will succeed by standing still, the ground beneath you will compress into a hole. And the longer you stand there, the deeper the hole will become. 

In the story of Amina and Elvino in Bellini’s La Sonnambula, the sleepwalker reveals her true affection for jealous Elvino as she crosses a dangerous bridge. Ah! Trust and truth. Both seem to be difficult acquisitions for some. Elvino thinks Amina has betrayed him until he witnesses her sleepwalking profession of love as she crosses that bridge. Asleep, she reveals the truth of her love and gains his trust.
 
Apparent, but false guilt v. obscure, but true innocence: That is the juxtaposition of opposites in Bellini’s opera. The sleepwalking transforms one into the other. It “speaks,” “reveals,” even “creates” the truth out of that which is hidden.
 
If you read Heraclitus’ Fragments, you know that for that ancient philosopher the principle that underlies all existence is the Eternal Fire (Pyr Aeizoon), as he calls it. That “fire” is not just a fundamental physical element, as in one of the “Four Fundamental Elements” (Earth, Air, Fire, and Water), but an active process. And it, as in Bellini’s work, is Logos, the Word, speaking to us from a world we cannot consciously know.  
 
In Heraclitus’ view, existence undergoes transformations just as you see transformations in and by flames. Eternal Fire asleep is the transformation into this world, and it returns to wakefulness in a realm beyond our senses. His famous analog is, ironically, not flames but flowing water. You can’t put your foot in the same river twice. Existence is in flux as the Eternal Fire cycles in transformations. Think of a big wheel rotating between knowing sleep and unknowing wakefulness, yin-yang-like, opposites not really opposing, but complementing. It’s a cycle that keeps the world going. Apparently, for Heraclitus, daily living and appearances prohibit us, as they prohibit Elvino in Bellini’s opera, from a full wakeful consciousness of truth in underlying reality.
 
In Fragment 50, the ancient philosopher writes, “all things are one.” Yes, right now, you are the Eternal Fire asleep, a Heraclitean transformation. You are a sleepwalker who like Amina reveals in your existence the deepest tie to transformation in and of the “Eternal Fire.”
 
If Logos operates through transformations, it is not an idea expressed by Heraclitus alone. There’s another work in which we can read of the transformation: John’s Gospel begins, “In the beginning was the Word…and the Word was God, and nothing was made that was not made through the Word.” Logos, transformation, and a juxtaposition of knowing and not knowing the truth: Will we, like Amina, reveal the truth only by crossing a dangerous bridge while we sleepwalk? Is every life a trip across a dangerous bridge?    
 
What do you think? Are you a transformation of the “Eternal Fire”? As a sleepwalker ostensibly awake in this life do you reveal the essence of what you are at the most fundamental level, a being tied to the eternal cycle? Are you, as Heraclitus might phrase it, the God Asleep? Does Logos speak its truth through you, the current somnambulist of the transformation? Are you our connection to the truth of the Eternal Fire? Like Elvino I await on the other side of the bridge, listening to what you say in your sleepwalking. 

No amount of study truly connects us to the vision of the ancients. Nor does study truly connect us to the past in any form. We can’t see as they saw. We can’t have the experiences of our ancestors. Something will always be missing because life is more complex than its interpretation.
 
If you walk into an old house, you’ll see windows that appear wavy. You might conclude that those who lived in the house originally had a blurred or wavy view of their external world, but the reality is they looked through clear glass. Glass is under the inexorable pull of gravity, so it “flows” downward; thus, the waves and distorted view. Varying thicknesses play on the light: Crests refract it in one direction; troughs, in another.
 
The view to the outside changed because of flowing glass, but something else changed, also. That treeless landscape outside the original house now has an aging, giant oak and tall pine that were just saplings 60 years ago, and the street out front has more passing vehicles. So, both the medium of your view and what you see is different from what Great Grandpa saw. You get some idea, but you don’t get the full idea.
 
When you believe you understand what previous generations saw, remember that gravity and time have changed the view by affecting the medium and the things seen. Know, also, that your windows are sagging, though from your point of view, imperceptibly. Your offspring two generations removed will never fully understand your point of view. They might get a general idea, but refraction and a changing landscape will forever hide the specifics.
 
It’s the gravity of time that separates generations by changing both the window and the external world. Great Grandpa didn’t, regardless of your opinion, have a distorted view of his external world. He saw clearly, but his landscape was different.

Quick: What’s the one thing you are sure Adam never said to Eve when they discussed the trouble between their two boys? “Eve, it wasn’t like this when we were kids.”
 
In every generation save the first, the expression, “It wasn’t like this when we were kids (or young, or in the old days)” has been a standard complaint. Yes, things change, but since they change repeatedly, the proverbial pendulum swings from one change back to a previous one.
 
In the eighteenth century Christopher Pinchbeck made an alloy of copper and zinc that looked like gold. Over the course of the ensuing decades, his alloy became associated with its creator. Pinchbeck was artificial gold used to make jewelry that the less fortunate, women of “slender means,” could afford: We call it costume jewelry.
 
As pinchbeck became popular among the lower classes, it drew the disdain of those who could afford real gold. High society in the nineteenth century frowned upon those who would adorn themselves in pinchbeck. Enter Mrs. Lucia Gilbert Calhoun, who introduced a series of articles in the London Saturday Review that was collected and published in 1868. The collection, entitled Modern Women and What Is Said of Them has a section devoted to pinchbeck.
 
As in all cases of “it wasn’t like this when we were young,” the section on pinchbeck decries the affinity “modern women” have for wearing such artificial gold. “Not many years ago no really refined gentlewoman would have worn pinchbeck… pinchbeck was considered as at once despicable and disreputable.” And then, the change: “We are in the humor to rehabilitate all things, and pinchbeck has now its turn with the rest.” Seems that the women of “slender means” have become fond of wearing pinchbeck. Now the point arrives before us: “The whole anxiety now is, not what a thing is, but how it looks—not its quality, but its appearance. Every part of social and domestic life is dedicated to the apotheosis of pinchbeck.”
 
Shocking! We have elevated pinchbeck. Copper and zinc replace real gold. What is this generation coming to? It wasn’t like this when we were kids. And in the view of Mrs. Lucia Gilbert Calhoun, pinchbeck symbolizes all artificiality, such as stucco columns substituting for marble ones and cheap champagne replacing the good stuff. You get the idea: Formica for granite countertops, Naugahyde for leather furniture, and pressed woodchips for walnut panels.
 
Appearance over quality. The complaint that every older generation makes about a younger one is no different from the complaint that those who wear pinchbeck have somehow lost the sense of quality. Is this just a pendulum’s swing? Or, rather, is there some underlying truth that plays out overtly in an age when we are daily exposed to the praise of appearance?
 
Tell me. Given a choice between two candidates for any position, such as a job or even a political office, do you favor pinchbeck or gold? In the arena of opinion, do you favor those of fashionable appearance or those of philosophical quality? In some instances, you might argue, either is as good as the other. In other instances, gold is actually better than artificial gold. If we can get past “it wasn’t like this when we were young,” we might be able to discern when the swing of the pendulum between appearance and quality actually makes a difference. Oh! To be Adam or Eve.   

Either/Or comes and goes, sometimes simultaneously, differing only in place. “It’s this.” “No, it’s that.” “It’s black.” “No, it’s white.” “It’s acceptable.” “No, it’s not.” The peaceful end to the argument? “Let’s just say we agree to disagree.”
 
Then there’s the grey, the sliding scale of detail, the contradictions great and small, and the spectrum of truths that embed their falsehoods. Either/Or and grey: Apparently, we all have both the ability to and the penchant for different perspectives. We’re all utilitarian in this: Perspectives of convenience; convenience of perspectives. 
 
In the middle of the nineteenth century Théophile Gautier wrote, “Je suis un homme pour qui le monde extérieur existe” (“I am a man for whom the outside world exists”). Selfish? Self-centered? Not quite. In varying degrees at various times he supported through journalism and his poetry and drama, two mistresses and three children. Somehow, grey slipped between Either and Or. Either/grey/Or.
 
Théophile had a nickname: le bon Théo. Somebody obviously thought highly of him. In fact a number of famous French writers held him in esteem, and some became his intellectual and artistic offspring. The origin of le bon Théo’s first name is Greek: Θεοφιλος, a name meaning something like “friend of God,” and “love of God.”
 
In most religions the world exists as a creation, and the creation exists for the Creator or creators. The statement by le bon Théo about his relationship to the “outside world” (“le monde extérieur”) reveals a perspective that some might find antithetical to their own perspectives. How do you see it?
 
Are you either one for whom the outside world exists or one who exists for the outside world? Yet another question: Is your perspective somehow neither one nor the other, but rather the grey perspective slipped between the two? In what sense are you a “friend of God”?

On their way to fight in the Battle of the Somme, the Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry, also known as the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion, marched on dusty roads in the warm temperatures of summer. They had just survived the wintertime trench warfare, and they were on their way to fight again.
 
Trench warfare during World War I was hazardous in many ways. Staying in a trench meant being a stationary target for artillery. Climbing out of a trench meant sticking one’s head above the protection of the trench while bullets from machine guns passed over the ground like banshees. Advancing on the enemy meant crawling in the dark closer to an enemy trench, placing barbwire in a defensive line, and digging a new trench as quietly as possible. In the case of the Highland Light Infantry, the digging of a new trench in the winter took men 600 yards across no man’s land toward the German trenches under the cover of darkness. There they were able to dig a new trench without attracting the attention of their enemies until all the Highlanders were once again safe in the trench. The Germans discovered the new trench and a closer enemy in the morning.
 
That was winter, cold, damp, dangerous. Then with rains came the task of rebuilding slumped parts of the trenches and pumping out the muddy water filling the trench bottoms. In that new trench, the Highland Light Infantry had to survive the ensuing bombardment by the Germans. Wintertime trench warfare was a terrible ordeal, but these were brave men. In April 45 Highlanders crawled out of the trench to raid the German trench. They inched toward the Germans while their own artillery whizzed over their heads and exploded before them. They cut and blasted through the barbwire, and jumped into the German trenches, taking prisoners and killing enemy soldiers without any fatalities of their own though eleven Highlanders were wounded.
 
Successful in trench warfare, the unit was moved out of the danger zone, that is, away from the bombardments and machine guns of the Germans. They were removed a sufficient distance that they could even play sports. But they also trained for, as they report, “a big stunt.” That big stunt would be the Battle of the Somme. In the summer weather and peaceful rest, each could recall the winter’s fighting:
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     “To each man there remained the joy of remembering days and nights that were unpleasant—for it is a joy to remember, in the comfort and happiness of today, the discomforts and sorrows of yesterday. Now the sun was shining”—so reads the account of their battalion.

The Highland Light Infantry fought in the Battle of the Somme. On the first day of that offensive in July, 1916, the British divisions that included the Highlanders suffered about 57,500 casualties. The Highlanders lost 22 officers and 447 infantrymen. But in those days of rest between the winter and summer fighting there was joy in remembering, in the comfort and happiness of that time, the discomforts and sorrows of the past.
 
Have you had your wintertime trench warfare? Do you recall your discomforts and sorrows? Is the sun shining now? That you survived to remember in the comfort and happiness of today should bring you some joy. You survived. The sun is shining. Yes, you might have to face “a big stunt,” a future battle of some personal Somme. But today the sun is shining. Find joy because you can remember your personal trench warfare in the comfort and happiness that you have today.  

Reality TV. It’s here to stay apparently. The situations and participants vary widely, all fitting with the audience draw of the supporting network. Obviously, reality shows must be entertaining and must draw significant numbers of viewers; otherwise, they would go the way of westerns, a viewing staple of the 1950s and 1960s.
 
A chief tenet of quantum physicists is that observation changes what is observed. It is also a tenet of psychologists. I can’t go into a group of strangers without making my presence part of their makeup. By observing, I change what I want to see. If I show up in a Brazilian rainforest to confront a group of people previously unmet by outsiders, I’ll change them. Brazil knows that, so the country does what it can to protect the lifestyle of indigenous peoples from corruption from the outside.   
 
Reality TV is observation on steroids. So is speaking to an audience—anywhere: classroom, place of worship, public square, or even large family reunion. That makes me wonder. Shouldn’t we accept that we are not, any of us, “one” person?
 
We are different as we enter one place or another. Place really does have a bit of control on us, and it does so to a greater degree when it is peopled. Yes, Shakespeare wrote it succinctly, “All the world’s a stage.” You know the rest. We are players.
 
As you move through your day, look at the stage on which you stand. Look at the audience. Look at your role. Are you a “real person” or are you merely playing one?