Am I like a lesson-teaching clown to you?

So you want lessons? Lessons learned?

From a man who spent part of the rainy weekend watching Spongebob Squarepants?

My little girl wanted me to see this new, very special episode (kind of like "Blossom," where every episode was "very special" and to be watched by your entire family).

We didn't find it but we did make lemon-poppy seed scones for breakfast and we recorded Clare's instructions on the six steps to successful baseball pitching for her own blog.

As always, our time went too quickly and I spent the drive back in full mope -- aided by two extra hours on I-65 because some dope failed to understand that "merge" doesn't mean "come to a complete stop in the middle of the highway."

I moped because I missed Clare and because I did not fulfill any goals for the furlough. I didn't read as much as I wanted. I didn't write as much as I should have. Exercise became relegated to two hikes in the dunes. My diet included as many bad things as good.

And the mope set in because I had not learned real lessons or become a better person. At the end of these nine days, I am, still yours truly.

Being stuck in traffic outside of Remington did leave time for much thinking, unless I wanted to choose between country music, classic country, contemporary country or gospel country music. I did not like the choices (I had my heart set on emo country.)

So I thought as I listened to a CD about the Enlightenment, a series of lectures so far above my head I need to get a dish installed in my noodle to pull them in. The professor started to talk about a paper my Immanuel Kant, who at one point made a distinction between private reason and public reason and how many readers in the 200 years since have misunderstood the phrases. (Private reason could be compromised: a teacher hired specifically to teach Lutheran dogma in a Lutheran school should not switch to teaching Buddhism. Public reason, though, including discussion of liberty, freedom, justice and the like, must always remain constant and resolute.) You can read his "What is Enlightenment?" here: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Etexts/kant.html

It caused me to contemplate the difference between the internal and the external, ideas I struggled with all week. I've come to believe that most of what we consider important -- morality, ethics, intelligence, reason, personal choice, happiness even -- these are all internal issues, under one's control at all times. And while this is a freeing revelation, that we can even control own own happiness regardless of circumstances, it carries with the idea a burdensome responsibility, one that can crush you if you allow it. Personal, internal control becomes scary when you realize that life is not lived in the hall of ideas but in 10,000 or more personal decisions each day. You can be a scholar on ending the death penalty, but if you treat your children poorly, where's your morality? If you're an nationally known advocate of either pro life or pro choice but you stiff the waitress after a nice meal, what is the import of the macro issue?

That said, stifled in an apartment for the first half of the furlough -- reading, writing ,thinking -- meant quite little until I braved the world again. I had dinner with a friend. I consoled a co-worker who lost his job. I tracked down someone who's absence left me less than whole. And I spent two days with my favorite person in the world, my little girl.

So what is internal control without the external act? Mere intellectual practice putting? Stretching out but never going for the run? Ethical tiddlywinks?

I should have better read my monastery hero, Thomas Merton. In thinking about his body of work and how it changed over 20 years, I rememberd how he moved from strict ideologue to a loving, giving spirit who encouraged his literary visitors to smuggle some scotch into his hermitage.

As you cannot have light without darkness, you can't have the brave internal without the acting external.

Is that my lesson? Is that all the reader gets for braving nine furlogs?

No. Because Spongebob has taught me this much:
1.) Be nice to people, even if they're not nice to you.
2.) Be loyal, because it's the most you can give.
3.) Work hard, even on simple tasks, and take joy in them.

And finally, for a real lesson, here are the six steps to pitching:




Thanks for reading and thanks for the comments.