"For
over a thousand years Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of
triumph, a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeteers, musicians and strange
animals from conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured
armaments. The conquerors rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in
chains before him. Sometimes his children robed in white stood with him in the chariot or
rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and
whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting."
Gen. George C. Patton
Gen. George C. Patton
I've had in mind several posts on fame. Well, I guess not fame, per se, but the idea of work and remembrance. There are several ways to go about this, like asking someone to name the ten most influential people in the public eye in 1900, or 1950, or 1970, for that matter. Say the names Joseph Alsop or Walter Winchell to your average 30-year-old and see what you get. These men made and broke people not that long ago.
Yet we all act as if our era was the most important, the most crisis ridden, the most critical turning point of all time. Think of the late 19th Century, say 1880. Now name a US President. Name a major political cause or crisis from the time. Were the economics good or bad? For the average person, this is all that boring time in between the Civil War and Theodore Roosevelt (and frankly they don't have that tight a grip of Roosevelt). We learned the Presidents in high school for some stupid quiz, and then shoved Grover Cleveland and the rest down the memory hole.
So what are we working so hard for? My father, who I've written about here before, was by every measure a success. Raised in poverty, he used the GI Bill money earned for his service in World War II to get both a Masters and PhD from Stanford. He never had to apply for a job, but was recruited from position to position in academics, eventually becoming a college president and then the executive director of a number of educational associations. He edited a book that to my knowledge remains the only authoritative work on postsecondary accreditation.
He retired, by my count, three times, an expert on as many areas of higher education, but as his contemporaries retired with him, he was consulted less and less. By the time we moved from Washington, DC, to Southwest Virginia, the only calls were polite exchanges with former colleagues. All that accumulated knowledge, like the list of late 19th Century Presidents, faded from sight.
At 91, he now lives in a full-time care facility. Though healthy and coherent, he is in what I call a 15-minute reset. Your typical conversation with him will start off normally enough, exchanging polite interest in each others' day, reviewing the weather, and then it will all start again, as if the previous 15 minutes had not occurred, reviewing the same questions and interests. He remembers little to nothing of his career; questioning him about his past generally brings a lost look, as if struggling to find his way in a fog.
He was important, in his circle, if not famous in the traditional sense, and I feel a resentment on his behalf that he has never received the accolades and tributes I feel that work and success deserved. (He used to joke that all his friends had become buildings, as various halls on college campuses were named for his past coworkers.) In darker moments, it can lead one to ask: What's the point?
What of those cut down too soon? A news photographer, covering the biggest story out there -- a civil war upon which all the world's attention is focused. He's been sent as The Guy to get the pictures, celebrated in the field as being at the top of his game. Then, with the burst of a rocket, he dies. All the most powerful people in journalism attend his funeral, his young wife in tears over the casket. At the risk of being crass: Is this the worst possible way to go?
Let's remove the rocket from the scene. He lives, and succeeds with the war. Perhaps there are more triumphs, but as time passes, the stories become less important. New bright stars rise in the field, and he fades into the background, eventually lecturing to bored journalism majors who fail to appreciate the accumulated knowledge before them. His book sits on the remainder table at Barnes & Noble, a bargain at $5.
Perhaps there's another short burst of attention when he dies, as with some of the old LIFE photographers these days, through glowing tributes in lavishly illustrated obits. And then he's gone with all the rest. What did the Second Act bring to the play?
My, how dark.
That's not really where I meant to go with this, though I was hardly heading for bright lights and rainbows. Partly, I had wondered whether our reflexive tragic reaction to a death a the acme of a career wasn't something that should be moderated by questioning if that isn't the perfect moment to leave the stage. And partly, I've been coming to grips that, while we may each be the hero of our own story, that story is probably not the immortal tale of greatness. Even if everyone says it is.
I guess mainly, I search for a more complete understanding of what we do as we shuffle through our tiny role on the grand stage. Perhaps, like all men since the first savage stared upward at the awesome vision of a starry sky, I wonder what I am here to do.
Yet we all act as if our era was the most important, the most crisis ridden, the most critical turning point of all time. Think of the late 19th Century, say 1880. Now name a US President. Name a major political cause or crisis from the time. Were the economics good or bad? For the average person, this is all that boring time in between the Civil War and Theodore Roosevelt (and frankly they don't have that tight a grip of Roosevelt). We learned the Presidents in high school for some stupid quiz, and then shoved Grover Cleveland and the rest down the memory hole.
So what are we working so hard for? My father, who I've written about here before, was by every measure a success. Raised in poverty, he used the GI Bill money earned for his service in World War II to get both a Masters and PhD from Stanford. He never had to apply for a job, but was recruited from position to position in academics, eventually becoming a college president and then the executive director of a number of educational associations. He edited a book that to my knowledge remains the only authoritative work on postsecondary accreditation.
He retired, by my count, three times, an expert on as many areas of higher education, but as his contemporaries retired with him, he was consulted less and less. By the time we moved from Washington, DC, to Southwest Virginia, the only calls were polite exchanges with former colleagues. All that accumulated knowledge, like the list of late 19th Century Presidents, faded from sight.
At 91, he now lives in a full-time care facility. Though healthy and coherent, he is in what I call a 15-minute reset. Your typical conversation with him will start off normally enough, exchanging polite interest in each others' day, reviewing the weather, and then it will all start again, as if the previous 15 minutes had not occurred, reviewing the same questions and interests. He remembers little to nothing of his career; questioning him about his past generally brings a lost look, as if struggling to find his way in a fog.
He was important, in his circle, if not famous in the traditional sense, and I feel a resentment on his behalf that he has never received the accolades and tributes I feel that work and success deserved. (He used to joke that all his friends had become buildings, as various halls on college campuses were named for his past coworkers.) In darker moments, it can lead one to ask: What's the point?
What of those cut down too soon? A news photographer, covering the biggest story out there -- a civil war upon which all the world's attention is focused. He's been sent as The Guy to get the pictures, celebrated in the field as being at the top of his game. Then, with the burst of a rocket, he dies. All the most powerful people in journalism attend his funeral, his young wife in tears over the casket. At the risk of being crass: Is this the worst possible way to go?
Let's remove the rocket from the scene. He lives, and succeeds with the war. Perhaps there are more triumphs, but as time passes, the stories become less important. New bright stars rise in the field, and he fades into the background, eventually lecturing to bored journalism majors who fail to appreciate the accumulated knowledge before them. His book sits on the remainder table at Barnes & Noble, a bargain at $5.
Perhaps there's another short burst of attention when he dies, as with some of the old LIFE photographers these days, through glowing tributes in lavishly illustrated obits. And then he's gone with all the rest. What did the Second Act bring to the play?
My, how dark.
That's not really where I meant to go with this, though I was hardly heading for bright lights and rainbows. Partly, I had wondered whether our reflexive tragic reaction to a death a the acme of a career wasn't something that should be moderated by questioning if that isn't the perfect moment to leave the stage. And partly, I've been coming to grips that, while we may each be the hero of our own story, that story is probably not the immortal tale of greatness. Even if everyone says it is.
I guess mainly, I search for a more complete understanding of what we do as we shuffle through our tiny role on the grand stage. Perhaps, like all men since the first savage stared upward at the awesome vision of a starry sky, I wonder what I am here to do.
No comments:
Post a Comment