“I was in the library the other day when I came across an old history book. For some reason, I picked it off the shelf—not that I was interested in what the English were doing in the fifteenth century—and randomly (or so I thought), opened the book. Probably, not by the same chance by which I stumbled across the book itself, I opened where someone had pressed a flower. ‘Coincidence? Some devilish fun by a long-gone student?’ I wondered. It was, after all, between two pages devoted to the Plantagenets and the Wars of the Roses. Anyway, there was the flat flower, its colors faded and its volatiles leaked into and out of the book. It was a bit crumbly, so I dared not touch it for fear that I would destroy what someone had for whatever reason preserved.
“And then I began to wonder about what I have long thought: If something isn’t personal, it’s virtually meaningless. Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re saying, ‘That’s not true; I can find meaning in philosophy, math, or science. Those matters aren’t really personal, are they? I can use my higher faculties and think about their meaning; I can give them meaning; I can understand their meaning.’ And, of course, you would have a valid point.
“So, let me elaborate. When I say that if something isn’t personal, it’s meaningless, I am referring to our ability to experience it the way others might experience it. I can be in the midst of a cheering crowd relishing the victory of the home team, and I would ‘feel’ the moment as the crowd around me ‘feels’ the moment. I can go to a funeral, and with others jointly ‘feel’ the moment, the sadness, the loss. But I can also hear about a tsunami taking 250,000 lives of people I don’t know, and I might not be able to incorporate the experience in my being. Years after the loss of a loved one, there’s a lingering personal nature to the loss. Look around to ask who among your acquaintances currently experiences that loss of 250,000 lives. Get what I’m saying? If something isn’t personal, It’s virtually meaningless.
“Now you’re going to argue that you have had genuine personal involvement in distant tragedies like those terrible school shootings, the terrorist suicide bombings of marketplaces, and the assassination of President Kennedy, that you ‘feel’ those incidents. They have become personal. Let me grant you that, but it makes my point. When you can make something personal, you make it meaningful, truly meaningful. Even math. For example, I saw nothing of interest in trigonometry until I learned field mapping. Suddenly, I ‘felt’ trig. I understood trig. I incorporated trig into the way I saw objects and places. But that is of little interest to you, right? So, let me go back to the assassination of President Kennedy. The country at the time underwent a personal experience—probably not everyone did, but generally—over the loss. It was a ‘personal’ funeral like others people have attended for loved ones. It was meaningful. But what about President Garfield’s assassination? How do you feel about that? How meaningful is it, that is, how personally meaningful is it?
“And so with the Plantagenets in that history book. Maybe if I reread Shakespeare’s plays, I’ll incorporate the stories into some personal meaning. Drama can have that effect on us, thus, all the wet faces during the last scenes of Titanic. Drama, indeed any form of artistic expression, can elicit a unification between observer and observed. But in a history book’s retelling of the Plantagenets, the pressed flower seemed to be more meaningful than the fall and rise and fall and rise and fall of King Henry or King Richard and all those others who rose to and fell from power in the fifteenth century. The pressed flower, even though I dared not touch it, seemed more real and elicited a sense of quizzical meaning: ‘Who left this here? Boy? Girl? Impish kid expressing a sense of humor? Romantic?
“Did the flower have a lesson to teach that was more personal than the lesson in the book? Time erases meaning. That flower is not what it once was. Its faded color and two-dimensionality plus its lack of scent dictated that I could not experience what the person who once picked and pressed it had experienced.
“Is time the only eraser? What of distance? Being far from the tsunami might have made the tragedy more intellectual than emotional. Are you beginning to think, ‘When I look around, I guess that many events, though seemingly emotionally charged and highly meaningful for others, really have little personal meaning for me. Gosh! Am I insensitive?’
“I ask myself the same question. I can’t seem to make the suffering during the Wars of the Roses meaningful. I have difficulty making personal the sufferings of others in distant lands. Is it because tragedies abound? Because the innocent suffer in numbers too great for my limited brain to comprehend? Because I’m preoccupied with local, more personal matters, the matters in which I find meaning because of my involvement?
“That pressed flower seems to make a statement about me if not about you. I guess I’m guilty of intellectualizing the meaning of something I cannot ‘feel.’ I can dispassionately say, ‘That’s terrible,’ when I refer to a tragic event or to a war long over, its dead unremembered. People died during the Wars of the Roses. Apparently, the best we can do all these centuries later is see them two-dimensionally, dried out, bereft of sweet odor, and crumbling.
“Some might argue that individually, we can’t spend ourselves emotionally on all the past or current tragedies large or small. To do so would make us ignore that separation of two kinds of meaning. One that is dispassionate; one that is personal. But for most of us the reality is that that which is not personal is not truly ‘meaningful.’”
Postscript: When the first large outbreak of Ebola in West Africa appeared to threaten countries outside Africa, people took the threat seriously. It could, they felt, hit them personally. In May, 2018, another outbreak hit the Congo. But the news didn't seem newsworthy until the victims multiplied. At the end of July, 2018, take account of how the tragedy becomes or doesn't become "meaningful."
“And then I began to wonder about what I have long thought: If something isn’t personal, it’s virtually meaningless. Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re saying, ‘That’s not true; I can find meaning in philosophy, math, or science. Those matters aren’t really personal, are they? I can use my higher faculties and think about their meaning; I can give them meaning; I can understand their meaning.’ And, of course, you would have a valid point.
“So, let me elaborate. When I say that if something isn’t personal, it’s meaningless, I am referring to our ability to experience it the way others might experience it. I can be in the midst of a cheering crowd relishing the victory of the home team, and I would ‘feel’ the moment as the crowd around me ‘feels’ the moment. I can go to a funeral, and with others jointly ‘feel’ the moment, the sadness, the loss. But I can also hear about a tsunami taking 250,000 lives of people I don’t know, and I might not be able to incorporate the experience in my being. Years after the loss of a loved one, there’s a lingering personal nature to the loss. Look around to ask who among your acquaintances currently experiences that loss of 250,000 lives. Get what I’m saying? If something isn’t personal, It’s virtually meaningless.
“Now you’re going to argue that you have had genuine personal involvement in distant tragedies like those terrible school shootings, the terrorist suicide bombings of marketplaces, and the assassination of President Kennedy, that you ‘feel’ those incidents. They have become personal. Let me grant you that, but it makes my point. When you can make something personal, you make it meaningful, truly meaningful. Even math. For example, I saw nothing of interest in trigonometry until I learned field mapping. Suddenly, I ‘felt’ trig. I understood trig. I incorporated trig into the way I saw objects and places. But that is of little interest to you, right? So, let me go back to the assassination of President Kennedy. The country at the time underwent a personal experience—probably not everyone did, but generally—over the loss. It was a ‘personal’ funeral like others people have attended for loved ones. It was meaningful. But what about President Garfield’s assassination? How do you feel about that? How meaningful is it, that is, how personally meaningful is it?
“And so with the Plantagenets in that history book. Maybe if I reread Shakespeare’s plays, I’ll incorporate the stories into some personal meaning. Drama can have that effect on us, thus, all the wet faces during the last scenes of Titanic. Drama, indeed any form of artistic expression, can elicit a unification between observer and observed. But in a history book’s retelling of the Plantagenets, the pressed flower seemed to be more meaningful than the fall and rise and fall and rise and fall of King Henry or King Richard and all those others who rose to and fell from power in the fifteenth century. The pressed flower, even though I dared not touch it, seemed more real and elicited a sense of quizzical meaning: ‘Who left this here? Boy? Girl? Impish kid expressing a sense of humor? Romantic?
“Did the flower have a lesson to teach that was more personal than the lesson in the book? Time erases meaning. That flower is not what it once was. Its faded color and two-dimensionality plus its lack of scent dictated that I could not experience what the person who once picked and pressed it had experienced.
“Is time the only eraser? What of distance? Being far from the tsunami might have made the tragedy more intellectual than emotional. Are you beginning to think, ‘When I look around, I guess that many events, though seemingly emotionally charged and highly meaningful for others, really have little personal meaning for me. Gosh! Am I insensitive?’
“I ask myself the same question. I can’t seem to make the suffering during the Wars of the Roses meaningful. I have difficulty making personal the sufferings of others in distant lands. Is it because tragedies abound? Because the innocent suffer in numbers too great for my limited brain to comprehend? Because I’m preoccupied with local, more personal matters, the matters in which I find meaning because of my involvement?
“That pressed flower seems to make a statement about me if not about you. I guess I’m guilty of intellectualizing the meaning of something I cannot ‘feel.’ I can dispassionately say, ‘That’s terrible,’ when I refer to a tragic event or to a war long over, its dead unremembered. People died during the Wars of the Roses. Apparently, the best we can do all these centuries later is see them two-dimensionally, dried out, bereft of sweet odor, and crumbling.
“Some might argue that individually, we can’t spend ourselves emotionally on all the past or current tragedies large or small. To do so would make us ignore that separation of two kinds of meaning. One that is dispassionate; one that is personal. But for most of us the reality is that that which is not personal is not truly ‘meaningful.’”
Postscript: When the first large outbreak of Ebola in West Africa appeared to threaten countries outside Africa, people took the threat seriously. It could, they felt, hit them personally. In May, 2018, another outbreak hit the Congo. But the news didn't seem newsworthy until the victims multiplied. At the end of July, 2018, take account of how the tragedy becomes or doesn't become "meaningful."
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