Completing Life

A little while ago, at a football game in California, four or five people reported ill during a game with symptoms of food poisoning. The examining physician, trying to see whether a common factor existed, discovered upon questioning that all of them had a drink from the soft drink dispensing machine. And so he had to take into account that the syrup might have been the culprit. But then he noticed that the dispensing machine was serviced by copper piping, and that caused him to wonder whether some copper sulfate had leaked into the drink and caused the food poisoning. He felt that as an act of responsibility, all the other people in the stands who might have drunk from the same machine should be alerted to this possible danger. And so a public announcement was made, telling the people in the stands what had happened to a few people and also suggesting that they not consume any drinks from the dispensing machines until such time as the exact cause of the illness could be ascertained.

As soon as this announcement was made, the entire stadium became a sea of retching and fainting people. Ambulances from five hospitals had to ply back and forth. Two hundred persons had to be hospitalized and hundreds of others went to their own physicians with symptoms identical to those of the people who had reported ill: retching, fainting, severe abdominal pain.

But then it was ascertained that neither the water, the syrup, nor the copper pipes was responsible for the illness.

As soon as this became known, everyone became mysteriously well.

Question: How is it possible that a few words in the air could be converted into specific illness? What is it about the human mind that can process sounds into disease?

And if this is true in the case of a vagrant announcement at a football game, just imagine what happens in our daily lives when there are all sorts of words and sounds around us that produce apprehension or despair or illness.

And if this is true in the case of a vagrant announcement at a football game, just imagine what happens in our daily lives when there are all sorts of words and sounds around us that produce apprehension, despair, or illness.

A second thing we have to consider is that, if words can make us ill, then words can make us better. Emotions can produce physical devastation; emotions also produce the ingredients of repair, recovery, and health.

– From “As We Think”

There’s no verse in the Torah from which a vital lesson cannot be distilled. Consider, for example, this prosaic-looking phrase in this week’s Torah portion: “When an ox or a sheep, or a goat is born--” (Leviticus 22:27).

All right, we say, so what’s so special about these words? Only this, according to one Jewish interpreter of our Torah:

An ox at birth is called an ox. A goat is called a goat at birth. They have each reached their maximum potential at the very beginning. A four-year-old ox is not kinder, more understanding or more helpful than a four-day-old goat.

Quite otherwise is the situation with humans. At birth we are not called adults. We come into the world as infants who must go through various stages of growth before we become adults. We’re not born human. At birth, we are candidates for humanity.

And this growth is not merely a physical process. It is not automatic. It involves profound dimensions of mind, spirit, and personality. We are each capable of being a more mature person today than we were yesterday, and tomorrow can find us further along than we are today. And when we forget this vital truth, we have lost sight of the essential meaning of life and the source of its deepest fulfillment.

Among his literary remains, Nathaniel Hawthorne left notebooks which contain random ideas he jotted down as they occurred to him. One of the short entries reads, “Suggestions for a story in which the principal character never appears.”

Unhappily, this is the story of too many lives. The principal character simply never appears. The person we might grow into, the human being we might become, doesn’t show up.

When we stop growing morally, spiritually, and intellectually, we find a sense of discontent gnawing at us. We remain haunted by the “principal character” that invades our dreams at night and mars our serenity by day.

When he was 90 years old, Pablo Casals, the renowned cellist, was asked: “Why do you still practice so many hours a day?” He answered simply, “Because I think I am improving.”

Our principal character is still waiting to appear. Let’s not keep him or her waiting too long.

– From “Don’t Stop Growing”

Professor Charles Eliot, who was president of Harvard University from 1869 to 1909, once had occasion to dedicate a new hall of philosophy and he was searching for an appropriate inscription to place above its entrance.

After much deliberation, he announced his choice – the maxim of Protagoras: “Man is the measure of all things.” With that decision made, the faculty adjourned