ExplaNation: Letters to My Grandson

Contents

Introduction

Abomination

Alienation

Alternation

Combination

Condemnation

Consternation

Contamination

Culmination

Damnation

Designation

Destination

Determination

Discrimination

Dissemination

Domination

Donation

Elimination

Examination

Explanation

Extermination

Fascination

Hallucination

Hibernation

Imagination

Illumination

Impersonation

Inclination

Incrimination

Indignation

Indoctrination

Nomination

Procrastination

Rejuvenation

Resignation

Rumination

Stagnation

Subordination

Termination

Introduction

May 17–18, 2008

My father was fifty-four years old and I was twelve when he sat me down for the talk.

You know—the talk about sex.

The talk turned out not being much of a talk at all. I got the feeling that it was my mom’s idea, because my dad came across as if he were being terribly inconvenienced.

There was no discussion of the anatomical differences between men and women or the intricacies of human reproduction, no explanation of intercourse, and, most importantly, no discussion of the moral dimension of the whole topic—the rights, the responsibilities, and the respect required on the part of the people involved. All I remember my dad telling me in an angry voice was, Never touch yourself!

Thanks a lot, Dad. Experience has shown me that you could have offered better insight and advice.

Still, our talk left quite an impression on me. I swore to myself afterward that, if and when I had a son, I would do a better job explaining to him the complexities of life. Over the years, I’ve tried. My children and I communicate and commiserate much better than my parents and I did.

I recently turned fifty-four years old.

My children have now grown into mature young adults. I hope I have helped them. But as I write this, I am no longer the same person I was when my children were young. I’ve changed. I see the world differently now than I did when my children were growing up. I hope that whatever wisdom I earned twenty years ago has ripened with age, although I also worry that some of my biases may have also ripened over time like bruised and brown bananas.

At fifty-four, I’ve found neither fame nor fortune. I am not well known in the small community where I have lived for the last twenty years. Up to now, I haven’t brought anything profound to the game.

I like to think that I have learned a thing or two about life and about living well. I have earned some wisdom through the choices I have made throughout my life—good choices, hard choices, and lots of bad choices from which I learned valuable lessons.

After all, growing wiser is, in part, extracting life’s nectar from the thorny experiences one has. It is also maturing as a person, fertilized in the manure of one’s mistakes. God knows, I’ve made my share of mistakes.

The work of uncovering wisdom is also like panning for gold. We swish through the streams of experience, and we find a spangle here and there. We keep panning as long as we value wisdom and we want to find some. We keep looking our entire lives, even when our hands and feet are frozen from the streams of experience we wade through and stand in.

I have no doubt that over time I have either thrown away nuggets of wisdom I acquired, no longer believing them to be of value, or I have lost some valuable insights to time and memory loss. I’m sure that I’ve had eureka moments that I can no longer recall. And I’m sure that I have replaced those insights with other gems of possibly lesser worth. The fact is that certain values I held at twenty-four vanished with time, or I reprioritized them at thirty-four, forty-four, or fifty-four.

I do not claim to know it all. I do not want to be accused of excessive pride or moral arrogance. I am only sharing what has worked for me and still works for me.

No, I am not so prideful to think that what I have concluded to be wise advice will be appreciated in equal amounts by anyone else. Believe me, I’ve had more disagreements and feather-ruffling arguments with family members than I can recall. And, as time goes by, my children and family members have built their own worldviews, which they cling to and which are, in some cases, of little value to me, just as mine appear to be of little value to them.

Yes, my children are grown now, but I do now have a grandson. He is two years old. I hope to be around for years to come, but there are no guarantees. Therefore, I have written some letters to my grandson, and I have gathered them here.

Taken together, these letters express my viewpoints from this stop in my climb up the mountainside of life. As the elevation changes, so does the view. I am just describing my personal panorama at milepost fifty-four.

I do not expect that my grandson will agree with all of my views. Yet, my writing may still prove worthwhile to him, if only to provide him with viewpoints that he can use as counterpoints. By discarding and by rejecting them, he may be able to build a more suitable worldview to guide his own life.

I came up with the idea to use section headings ending with the suffix nation to suggest that my views might be relevant on more than just a personal level.

I want my grandson to understand that I believe my judgments have broader social relevance than my own and his own life. After all, when we share with someone what we think is good advice, we usually believe that it is good advice for everyone, don’t we?

Initially, I worried that using terms like abomination, culmination, destination, or indignation as umbrella themes were too arbitrary and would not logically support my topics. But organizing my thoughts this way worked out well. Everything I wanted to focus on was conceptually tied to one of the headings I kept.

All of the topics I discuss here are concerned with either scrutinizing or clarifying values, or discussing the moral values that comprise our lives. Yes, I take much for granted and, yes, there is much that I do not discuss.

I understand that some readers may benefit little from what I have to say; our worldviews, the cultural paradigms we work within, and our metaphysical, religious, or ethical frameworks are very different and possibly incompatible.

What I offer here is no more than one person’s take on facts of life that we all confront and that we must deal with. I am not offering any great insight into the human condition. I am not offering any insights more profound than common man common sense.

Still, common men may have uncommon insights, while university professors and professional pundits occasionally say the most ridiculous things.

Who knows? Maybe what I am about to share with you, Grandson, has some merit, after all. I’d like to think so. I hope that someday you will agree.

Grandpa

Abomination

n 1: something abominable adj: ODIOUS, LOATHSOME, DESTESTABLE

2: Disgust, loathing

Topic: Little Moral Mistakes

Abominations are weeds in the garden of life. But they don’t appear like windblown seeds; they are planted by human hands.

—Monk Patrick

May 24–26, 2008

Dear Grandson,

I do not expect you to read this until you are ready. By that time, you will need to be able to read well, have the required vocabulary, and have reached a certain age and level of maturity in order for the following discussions to make sense to you.

What I offer you here mostly has to do with laying down values and, more importantly, ethical foundations upon which you can build a basic framework of right choices, good conduct, and upon which you can design your vision of the good life.

Grandson, I want to talk in this first letter about abominations.

Abominations, as I’m using the word, are immoral acts. Abominations are choices to knowingly treat others unfairly and treat them with a lack of concern for their well-being. Abominations are choices to pursue one’s self-interest at the expense of stepping on the legitimate rights of others.

Occasionally, we discover abnormalities in the natural world. Nature sometimes creates abnormalities, but only human beings create atrocities that are true abominations.

Daily across our nation, people adopt attitudes and commit acts that are abominable. People are rude and discourteous to others, even strangers on the street, simply because they enjoy being rude. People bully others and torment and physically harm others for the mere enjoyment they derive from it. Such behavior is detestable. Such acts are real abominations.

Because people are by nature self-centered, our capacity to be selfish and unfair in our dealings with others is strong. We must exert a stronger amount of energy to counterbalance our selfish inclinations. Treating others fairly takes self-discipline and effort. We can prevent abominations. It is not easy, but we can do it.

Grandson, you will likely make many kinds of mistakes as you grow older. Some of them will be abominations.

When you make an ethical blunder, you should strive to understand why it is a moral wrong, why you made it, and figure out what to do so that you don’t make the same kind of slipup again.

Now, I have made my fair share of mistakes in life, and some of them were ethical blunders. I got angry when I shouldn’t have, I didn’t pitch in and help others when I should have, I was downright disrespectful to my mom as a teenager, and I have been rude to family members and friends. I have been lazy, impatient, and dishonest with myself and other people.

And yet, despite the fact that millions of people like me have never committed any felonies and would never seriously consider committing serious moral wrongs, we still may choose to act selfishly and treat others unfairly. We still run the same risk of committing the little white lies and seemingly meek and mild moral mistakes—those unfair emotional outbursts and occasional acts of dishonesty, selfishness, and disrespect—that we all find tempting. These may be baby abominations, toothless and yet to grow fangs, but they remain abominations.

Those occasions when I was disrespectful to my mother, when I was rude to others, and when I was lazy, impatient, or quick to anger were all baby abominations, and there were many of them.

There is an old saying that a small hole can sink a big ship. This saying expresses my belief that even the most seemingly innocuous moral indiscretions, the little white lies and the little white wrongdoings that we find so enticing and tempting and that appear so trivial in comparison to much greater wrongs, may still combine to cast larger shadows over our lives if we repeat them and amass moral accountability for them over time.

Our consciences guide us in how we treat others and in our perceptions of whether we have been mistreated by another. Millions of us strive to treat others fairly. We seldom treat others unfairly and, when we do, we are remorseful, we apologize, and we are usually quickly forgiven.

Still, if we commit too many baby abominations over time, or if our wrongdoings become patterned or habitual, people around us may not be as forgiving. We may still feel remorse, we may feel regret, and we may repeatedly apologize for our mistakes, but we harm our relationships, and we lose the respect and the trust of family and friends. Too