Ashleigh Brilliant

On what matters the most

Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you. It's a great honor to be asked to come here today and tell you what I think about What Matters Most. As Jack Benny once said, I really don't deserve this honor - but I have arthritis, and I didn't deserve that either. My plan today is to speak first, and then, as a reward for those of you who sit through the speech, to give you a slide show, during which you can ask questions or (if the spirit moves you) hurl insults - but please remember that this place was once a church.

One reason why this seems such an honor is that normally people don't seem to care what I think. It's been a lifelong problem of mine that those I've been closest to are the ones I've had the least influence on. My parents, my sister, my wife, even my cat -- or maybe I should say especially my cat -- have never really taken me seriously. That may help to explain why I finished up making a career of peddling my thoughts to the world in general. At least the world in general doesn't automatically dismiss anything coming from me, that is, so long as I say it in a neat epigram of 17 words or less.

Over the past 40 years, I've published 10,000 of these expressions. And I now have them all in a computer data base, so it's very easy to pull up scores of my own ready-made answers to a question like "What Matters Most?" For example:

"Nothing really matters, except a few things that really don't matter very much."
"Regardless of what you've lost, what matters is what you do with what you have left."
"What matters is not whether the remedy is based on science or faith, but whether it works."
"People who act as if nothing matters are usually considered insane - although they may actually be right."

I could very happily give you many more. But somehow I feel that that would be copping out. You came here today (I have to assume) because you want to know what specifically matters most to me personally at this point in my life, and how I acquired whatever values I have.

OK, let's start with my earliest recollections. One of the most important lessons I ever learned was one of the first, and it was just two words long. I'm not sure who it was who said it to me, and I was probably too young at the time to be able to say anything back, but those two words, and the tone in which they were said, have always been crucial in my approach to the world:
"MUSTN'T TOUCH!"

At the time I really didn't appreciate being admonished in this way. But looking back, I can see that those words pretty well told me all I needed to know about What Matters Most. Don't Touch! Life is full of dangers and temptations. Stay out of harm's way. Leave things alone.

Whole philosophies, whole religions have been built on injunctions like these, which put a high value on distancing oneself from things and people in general. I was a shy, lonely, introverted child. But they also provide a certain objectivity and perspective which people may even mistake for wisdom. In my case, it eventually led to magnificent insights like Pot-Shot #381 "Why should I add to my troubles by facing reality?"

But eventually I did have to face reality, in the form of SCHOOL, where touching was no longer such a big taboo, at least not when we touched our hands to our hearts as we recited the Pledge of Allegiance. Because the lesson now was that What Matters Most is our FLAG and our COUNTRY. But this was always a problem for me, because as a child I went to schools in several different countries. In England, where I started off, I learned to sing "Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves, Britons never never never shall be slaves." At that time I didn't know what "slaves" were, and I thought the song was saying "Britain never never never shall be SAVED." This didn't seem to make much sense, but it gave me the impression that the British must be a very gloomy people.

But then at the age of 5, I acquired a new native land, because, for some reason having to do with a big event which I later learned was called World War II, I had to sail over those ocean waves, and found myself living in Toronto, Canada. And there we sang a different song which, as I remember it, went like this:

"Oh Canada, my home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise, the true North strong and free,
And stand on guard, Oh Canada, we stand on guard for thee!"

So apparently crossing the sea had somehow made me a son of Canada, and I was supposed to be standing on guard, although I wasn't quite sure how, or why, or against whom. But then 2 years later my family moved again, and at the age of 7, I was in another school, in a place called Washington D.C. singing "My Country Tis of Thee, Sweet land of Liberty, Of thee I sing." This was really confusing: "My Country Tis of Thee." For a time I actually thought that "Tis Of Thee" must be the name of the country.

It took me a long time to sort all this out in my mind, but many years later, I sort of synthesized it into one of my Pot-Shots, #995, which says "It's not wrong to love more than one country, but everybody ought to love at least one." And this further blossomed into the gestalt of #38, which simply says "Support your local god."

But school didn't teach me everything I needed to know about What Matters Most. One of my most important lessons came when I went away to summer camp, and it came in the form of another song, one which completely changed my outlook. What this song said was very simple:

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily, merrily , merrily, merrily,
Life is but a Dream.

Here in 18 words I had a whole new textbook about What Matters Most. Obviously the important thing is to row your boat. Never mind how you ever came to be there. What matters is that you're in it now, and your job is just to keep rowing. But you're not chained to your oars. This is clearly supposed to be an enjoyable trip. You're going GENTLY and MERRILY. As for the question of WHERE you're headed, all you need to know is that you're going DOWN THE STREAM. In other words, you're going the same way as everything else. What could make more sense than that? And for the ultimate payoff about WHY all this is happening, here is your answer as clear as can be: Don't worry, LIFE IS BUT A DREAM!

Of course! Of course! Life is but a dream. It doesn't have to make any more sense than any other dream. A dream is something we have no control over. Why not just assume that everything is happening for the best, and simply try to make things as pleasant as possible, for yourself and I suppose for all those other people out there rowing their own little boats down the stream.

If only that were the whole story! But we know, don't we, that it's not. It really isn't so easy just to sing away all the vexing questions about life. After all, how do we know that one of those other little boats out there doesn't contain a suicide bomber?

That, of course, is why we go to college. College is the place where we get clued in to the Big Picture. It's where, if your teachers are any good, they make you face these disturbing problems. I actually went to 5 different colleges and universities, and got degrees at several of them -- but, as far as What Matters Most is concerned, there was only one class, and one book that made any impression on me. I've forgotten what the class was, but the book was a novel called Candide, and it was written about 250 years ago by a Frenchman named Voltaire.

If you've read it, you may recall that Voltaire's hero Candide is a young European who goes all over the world having all kinds of incredible misadventures, even getting involved in the great earthquake in Lisbon -- a real event which occurred in 1755 and killed about 60,000 presumably innocent people.

Voltaire was satirizing a view which was then popular among philosophers that everything always happens for the best. And of course the reader keeps wondering, if all the confusion and suffering in this book is happening for the best, what is it all leading up to? How is the book going to end? Well what actually happens is that Candide and a few of his friends somehow finish up farming a little piece of land in Turkey. And Voltaire just leaves them there. In the very last paragraph, Dr. Pangloss the perpetually optimistic philosopher rehashes his belief that everything they've suffered has somehow been for the best. And Candide in reply ends the book with these famous words: "Excellently observed -- but let us cultivate our garden."

So there we are again - one more basic rule distilled for you at no charge from my own lengthy, expensive, and sometimes painful education: What Matters Most is to stay out of harm's way; honor the local flag or local god (whatever flag or god it happens to be); row your boat gently down the stream; and above all, cultivate your own garden.

If we could sum this all up in one word, what would it be? I was puzzling over this question a few weeks ago in order to have an answer for you today when one dropped down upon me in a most unexpected way. And it came from the very person who had set the question -- Mrs. Marsha Karpeles, the lady who established, this whole series of talks.

Feeling that it might help me prepare for today's event, Mrs. Karpeles had sent me something by email. It was a sort of essay she had written about how this series got started and about some of the earlier speakers. One of them was a woman who had had terrible experiences in Europe during World War II during the years when I was learning to row my boat merrily down the stream. Another was a baker who developed his own brand of philosophical fortune cookies, about the same time I was cooking up my Pot-Shots. And there was some fascinating information about Mr. and Mrs. Karpeles themselves, how they acquired their wealth, and how they decided to share it in ways to benefit other people.

But what particularly interested me was something that had nothing to do with any of this, something totally irrelevant and accidental. It was the computer filename which just by chance Mrs. Karpeles had chosen to give this document. Apparently she had planned to submit the piece for publication. I don't know whether she actually did so or not, but the file-name she gave it was: "What Matters Most Submission."

Think about that for a moment. "What Matters Most?" - SUBMISSION! As soon as I saw that word "Submission," all kinds of fireworks went off in my head. Yes! I thought, That's the answer! Submission! That IS what matters most! That's what rowing your boat and cultivating your garden and the rest of it is all about! Thank you, Marsha!

But submission to what? To whom? - Actually, that part hardly matters. It can be to Fate, to Providence, to the laws of Physics, to the will of Allah. (Did you know that the very word Islam means "submission?") The point is that we must all go with the flow and tend our garden. And we should do it without touching or infringing too much on others, without being too concerned about making any big changes in this overwhelmingly big and complicated Universe. Have the good sense to know what little you can change and accept all the rest that you can't. If you feel the need to change anything at all, your best course is to concentrate on changing and improving yourself.

Many other very respectable authorities have said this same sort of thing in different ways, including Saint Francis of Assisi and the guys at Alcoholics Anonymous. But of course, not everybody agrees about whether it's really SUBmission that matters most, or whether we shouldn't all be looking for some other mission. Coming right down to it, with so little time to spend in this world, are we really supposed to be passive or active? Should we be LETTING things happen while we row our boat and cultivate our garden -- or MAKING things happen by going out there to change the world? As Dylan Thomas put it, do you "go gentle into that good night" or do you "rage, rage, against the dying of the light"? Or, as Ashleigh Brilliant put it, in Pot-Shot #1200, which was meant to be used as a sign for people to put on their doors, "If I'm not home, accepting what I can't change, I'm probably out, changing what I can't accept."

Actually, there have been only two occasions in living memory when I myself really did set out to change the world, or at least that small part of it in which I live. The first effort was remarkably successful. About 10 years ago I led a 3-month initiative campaign which resulted in our local ban on gas-powered leafblowers. That will tell you how high on my personal list of What Matters Most is the simple value of PEACE and QUIET.

My second bold campaign was only a few months ago. Don't laugh, but I decided that I wanted to be the next Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara. When I heard that the position was open - a 2-year appointment with a $1000 honorarium, I genuinely felt that I was well-qualified and could do a good job playing that role. And I was actually nominated by eleven highly cultured citizens. It's true I had to twist their arms to get them to write the nomination letters - and in the end, I didn't get chosen - but this was something that I decided really did Matter a lot to me, so I gave it my best shot.

Why did it matter so much? You can blame it on another of those silly mantras which had stuck with me from my schooldays. One of the school books which made the biggest impression on me during my teenage years in England was called An Anthology of Modern Verse, and in the introduction, it said that wanting to be a poet was "the noblest of ambitions." At a time when I was looking for a goal in life, those words engraved themselves on my heart. "The noblest of ambitions." But how would I know when I had reached that goal and become a Poet? After all, anybody can call himself or herself a poet. The important thing is to be recognized as a Poet by other people. I've always claimed that my Pot-Shots were poetry reduced to its essence, and in fact before calling them Pot-Shots I called them "Unpoemed Titles." But I never found a crowd of literary critics waiting at my door to offer me laurel crowns. So when this opportunity came along to be officially declared a Poet by the City of Santa Barbara , I couldn't let it go by.

The truth is that I really have been writing all kinds of poetry all my life, even though in recent years it's been mostly the very brief kind which you see on my postcards and in the newspaper. So please let me take advantage of this occasion - and of your patience - to give you just one example of my more formal verse. It's a sonnet which I wrote about 20 years ago, and you can find it in my book of collected essays and verse called Be A Good Neighbor and Leave Me Alone. The title I gave it was "Going On," but actually it might just as well have been called "What Matters Most?"

I hear no call - no purpose seeks me out,
No light shines down on my appointed task,
No instinct overcomes all sense of doubt,
No answers quench the questions I must ask.
To do or not to do seems all the same -
Whatever's writ, by Time must be erased -
To build a home, an empire, or a name
Must equally in the long run be a waste.
And yet, and yet, some power drives me on,
Some dream from which I've not yet come awake
Persuades me that, before this dream is gone,
There is some part of it I have to make.

I'll never know for sure which way is right,
But there are many pathways through the night.

I hope you liked that poem, because to me one of the things that Matter Most is being appreciated. The Beatles sang that "All You Need Is Love," but according to the psychologists, all most of us really need is appreciation. However, speaking of the Beatles -- and especially since I'm being co-sponsored here today by the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum -- I've got to tell you about a newly discovered manuscript which seems to prove that at least one of the Beatles really did appreciate at least one piece of my work. This story goes back to 1970, but I didn't find out about it until just recently, when a book was published which some of you may have seen, called Postcards From the Boys. It's a collection of postcards sent to Ringo Starr by the other Beatles from various parts of the world, and it shows both sides of each card.

On December 8 1970, (according to the postmark) John Lennon sent Ringo Starr a postcard from New York city. I don't know where he got the card, but it happened to be one of my Pot-Shot postcards which I'd already been publishing for several years. It was Pot-Shot # 34, which has a picture of a man and a woman sitting at opposite ends of a bed, with the woman at her end looking off into the distance, and with the message: "LET'S LOVE ONE ANOTHER - AND GET IT OVER WITH." On the message side you can see where John wrote these words: "Dear Ringo…. This is the truth as we see it" -- and he must have been referring to my Pot-Shot message because he actually drew a squiggly arrow pointing over to the Pot-Shot on the other side of the card.

I hope you will pardon my pride when I point out that not many poets have written anything which John Lennon ever certified in his own hand as constituting "The Truth As We See It." That card is now, as far as I know, still in the possession of Ringo Starr - but I have high hopes that Mr. and Mrs. Karpeles may find some way of acquiring it for our local Manuscript Library.

At this point I must admit (if it hasn't already been obvious) that FAME and FORTUNE have always been among my goals. Those 2 "F" words go so nicely together that in my mind I've tended to follow them with several others: Fame, Fortune, Freedom, Friends --and one more which I will reveal before the end of this talk. Not having been a particularly happy child, and having no children of my own, I've had mixed feelings about putting "Family" in the "F" list too, even though it was such a strong value in the Jewish culture in which I was raised. But another that I can definitely add is "Feeling Useful." Maybe that shouldn't count, though, because it's two words. The best single word to express the idea of usefulness is "Utility" - but that's not an "F" word. Of course, we could make it an "F" word, but then it becomes FUTILITY-another feeling which, come to think of it, often dominates my thoughts, as you can see in Pot-Shots like these:

' Life may have no meaning, or, even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove.'
'The task I've been given seems absurd: to wait here on earth until I no longer exist.'
'Once I wanted total happiness - now I will settle for a little less pain.'
'Lord, help me to meet this self-imposed and totally unnecessary challenge.'
' We owe it to our past futile sacrifices to continue making further futile sacrifices.'

But this is not a day to talk about FUTILITY let's go back to FAME and FORTUNE. Fame is a wonderful game, if you don't take it too seriously. If you go on the Internet and look up Santa Barbara in the Wikipedia, you can find a list of what it calls "Celebrities" who at one time or another have lived here. And I was at first very pleased recently to discover my own name on this list. But then I saw that it also included a number of people whose celebrity was based entirely on their violent criminal activities, such as the Charles Manson gang.

But what's even more bizarre is that apparently anybody can edit this list any way they want to. I had heard about this aspect of the Wikipedia, but until I tried it, I never realized it was so easy to do. If my name hadn't been there, I could have added it myself. What does this say about Fame?

Actually just to try it out, I did add somebody's name. I noticed that ERNEST THAYER wasn't on the list, so I put him on, though I know he would have protested vigorously. Ernest Thayer was the man who wrote "Casey At The Bat," that mock-epic about a mythical baseball game which ends tragically when the local hero strikes out - a piece always high on any list of America's best-loved poems. Thayer did live in Santa Barbara for many years, and he died here - but what fascinates me about him is that he hated his fame. That one poem is the only thing he was ever famous for. But, rather than being proud of it, and perhaps milking it for all it was worth, he refused to even talk about it with anybody who wanted to interview him. So in terms of hitting the fame ball that life pitched at him, it wasn't mighty Casey, but the man who created him, who struck out.

OK, so much for Fame. But what about FORTUNE? Probably very few of us believe that Money is the one thing that matters most. But it certainly matters to me, if only as a very handy way of keeping score. And it matters enough for me to have written some 150 Pot-Shots about it. Here are a few examples:

0398 All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
1333 I've got the pot of gold, but what I wanted was the rainbow.
2420 To the tax office: all is over between us. Please don't attempt to communicate with me again.
4664 I'd gladly participate in any experiment to test the effects on me of sudden great wealth.
5391 Nothing is more sincere than cash in advance.
9803 It costs money to make money -- but it's not supposed to cost more money than you make.

Well, I may have written a lot about it, but so far the FORTUNE part of FAME and FORTUNE has proven very elusive. This problem however may be on its way to being solved. In what seems to me like a piece of fantasy fulfillment a young man named Seth Streeter has come along who has a company here in Santa Barbara called Mission Wealth Management, and is organizing a new website featuring my work. When I first met Seth Streeter, I told him that, apart from my 10,000 Pot-Shots, I didn't have any wealth for him to manage. Apparently he took this as a challenge, so now he is going to try to do what I myself have never succeeded in doing with my work: producing some Fortune to go with my Fame. Seth has recruited a whole team of talented people for this project, and I hope you will visit their new website, which is at www.Brilliant-Thoughts.com.

And what about the next F -- How much does FREEDOM matter? Here are a few thoughts on that subject:

0542 The price of freedom keeps going up, but the quality keeps deteriorating.
3311 Beware! Freedom of speech also includes the freedom to be misunderstood.
4878 No country is truly free, where the children are compelled to go to school.
5514 You have a right to express your opinion, but often it's wiser to keep it to yourself.
6761 An artist must be free to reject society - and society must be free to reject his art.
6825 Don't call it freedom, unless it includes the freedom to be absolutely disgusting.

The next "F," FRIENDSHIP, certainly matters a lot to me, and probably to most other people. E.M.Forster said, "If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friends, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country." I myself, while trying to avoid betraying anybody, have published at least 305 Pot-Shots on this subject, such as:

0450 If I didn't have most of my friends, I wouldn't have most of my problems.
0809 You can always be unfriendly to me - that's what friends are for.
1051 Please don't put a strain on our friendship by asking me to do something for you.
1464 You can't just suddenly be my friend: you have to go through a training period.
2124 If only there were some quick way I could acquire a new group of old friends.

Alright, that's four F's - Fame, Fortune, Freedom, and Friends - but before I come to the final F which I think really does matter most, I want to pay tribute to another poet who once tackled this same assignment that I'm wrestling with here today, and I think he did a splendid job. His name was Rudyard Kipling, and he wrote a poem called IF, which is a sort of short catalog of What Matters Most, in terms of living a good life and being a decent person. I'm tempted to quote the whole poem - but let me just tell you the lines which I personally think of most often, because they seem so relevant to my own life.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you. . .

For some reason, I seem to be constantly getting into situations where the people about me are losing their heads and blaming it on me. If you want details, you can ask my wife. She may tell you that she doesn't like Kipling. But (if you'll pardon a family joke) there is some doubt as to whether she has ever actually kippled.

Then there are those other lines in the same poem which I find equally inspiring:

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster,
And treat those two impostors just the same;

I love that idea of Triumph and Disaster both being imposters, and that the really smart person doesn't take either of them too seriously. I told you about that Poet Laureate fiasco, which was really a disaster for me, because I tried so hard and pinned such high hopes on it. Now currently I have a triumph which I'm also trying not to take too seriously. I have just licensed a European fashion company called ZARA, which is actually part of one of the world's largest retail empires, to put my Pot-Shots on ladies' T-Shirts and sell them all over the world. It's not quite the Nobel Prize for Literature, which of course is my ultimate Fame and Fortune goal- but I beg you to let me consider it a step in that direction. And in any case, I have to admit that I find something very appealing about being quoted on people's bosoms.

Before I get to the final, and in my opinion most important, F word, I must acknowledge that there is an S word which many people feel really matters most, and a certain part of me agrees with them. That word is SCIENCE, in which I suppose we can include knowledge, learning, and exploration of the Universe. It's science which has given us computers and the Internet, which may very well be the closest thing I personally have to a religion. Not long ago I was visiting some friends who live in 29 Palms out in the California desert, and on a Sunday morning they took me to their church. There was a visitors' book in the lobby, and there was a space in which you were supposed to put your "Home Church." I had never been asked about my Home Church before, and had to think for a moment. Finally I wrote "GOOGLE." I felt that was the most honest answer I could give.

And what about the "A" word -- the ARTS? Shouldn't they be just as important in anybody's life as Science? Didn't somebody once define Culture as "Everything that makes life worth living"? Never mind that someone else - I think it was Herman Goering -- said "When I hear the word Culture I reach for my revolver." I myself am not what you might call a vulture for culture. But I do read a lot of books, and Dorothy and I often read to each other. (And let me here state for the record that to me my wife's smile is unquestionably one of the things that matter most.) This reading aloud is a tradition going back to her childhood, so I am usually the one who does most of the reading, and the challenge is for me to time it so that I stop just before she falls asleep. (Smiles are one thing. Snores are definitely something else).

Yes, Science and Culture are important, but there's something else which is even more important to me, and that is CLIMATE. I don't know if you remember, but a long time ago, there was an advertising slogan for some kind of hair-dye which said, "If I only have one life to live, let me live it as a blonde." Well, my feeling has always been, "If I only have one life to live, let me live it in a good climate." For me, one of the biggest pleasures of living in Santa Barbara is watching news reports of blizzards, heat waves, and hurricanes in other places.

Tied up with this love of a comfortable climate is a strong dislike of insect pests, which makes me really appreciate a place like this, where we have so few of them. There are parts of Australia which would be very attractive to me if it weren't for the FLIES which you never seem to be able to get away from out of doors. Next time you see any kind of outdoor interview filmed in Australia, watch carefully, and I can almost guarantee that, before long, someone will start to make swatting movements with their arms. It's so common there, they call it the Australian salute. That's the reason why my favorite insect is the Dung-Beetle (also known as the Scarab, and sacred to the ancient Egyptians) whose mission on Earth seems to be to help keep down the flies by eating the dung in which they breed.

But wait a minute - In this business of What Matters Most, aren't I forgetting some of the basics? Isn't it really SURVIVAL that matters most - just staying alive and in good health for as long as possible? Anyone familiar with my work will know that longevity and immortality have been the subject of scores of Pot-Shots, such as these:

0805 If I can survive death, I can probably survive anything.
1523 I want eternal life, or something just as good.
4288 I'm glad not everybody wants to be immortal; it leaves more room for the rest of us.
6665 Don't ask me what happens after death. I'm not even sure what happens after dinner
7807 My plan is not to die -- if that doesn't work, I'll have to try something else.
8909 It's possible that, in some way, we're all immortal -- but I wouldn't bet my life on it.

Some smart-aleck might also say that what matters most is MATTER itself, which certainly ties in with my idea of submitting to the laws of Physics. But you may be interested to know that that word "Matter" is related to the Latin word MATER meaning "Mother." I mention this because Mothers Day is just a week from today, and there's no question that Mothers do matter, although I've always felt that they shouldn't matter any more next week than they do today. As I said on Pot-Shot #455 "Any Day is a Good Day to Have a Mother."

There are any number of other things which to my mind would make good candidates for a whole lecture on "What Matters Most." What about FAITH? What about LOVE? What about PEACE, WORK, COURAGE, KINDNESS, JUSTICE? And what about PERSISTENCE? Yes, remember what Calvin Coolidge said about persistence: (It was one of the best things he, or for that matter, anybody, ever said):

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."

OK Mr. Coolidge, but wasn't your campaign slogan "Keep Cool With Coolidge"? What about just RELAXING, just LETTING GO? I have a friend who believes so much in relaxation that he has had the word "RELAX" painted in big letters on the back of his car. But he tells me that sometimes just seeing that word there makes other drivers angry. So be careful, people - we have enough road rage out there already without provoking the uptight idiots behind us by telling them to keep cool.

All these things matter. And I could bombard you with scores of Pot-Shots on all of them. But the time has come for me to wind up these ramblings and tell you WHAT REALLY MATTERS MOST. It is the last of my five F's: You remember the first four: Fame, Fortune, Freedom, and Friends. Well the final F is: FUN. Yes - Fun, Pleasure, whatever makes you feel good - preferably without later making you feel bad. And you mustn't ask me WHY fun is most important. This is one of those self-evident truths which Thomas Jefferson wrote into the Declaration of Independence. He called it "The Pursuit of Happiness," but he might just as well have said "Life, Liberty and Fun." And of course Fun is the one that matters most, because otherwise what's the point of having Life and Liberty?

Fun of course can mean many different things. One of my two sponsors here today is the City College Omega Program, and they chose that name, no doubt in a spirit of fun, because Omega is the last letter of the Greek alphabet, and their programs are supposed to be the last word in education for people who are in the last years of their lives.

So in the same spirit of educational fun for the ancient, I thought I might mention that there is now a fun new use for at least one of the things you can get at your local party supply store. I mean those canisters of helium which people rent to blow up balloons. Helium is not only pleasantly light, abundant, and cheap, but if you breathe it in, is also supposed to be very pleasantly and effectively lethal. I hope you never need this information, but I do think one thing that can matter most in life is how it ends or how you end it.

OK, that's today's contribution to your education. You now want to know, I'm sure, just what I personally do for fun. It's a fair question, and I'm going to give you an honest answer. I'm 73 years old, and at this point in my life, my two most dependable sources of fun are: CHOCOLATE and CAT-RUBBING. The chocolates I prefer to eat are called "UFO's Chocolate Mint Wafers," and you can get them at Trader Joe's. The cat I prefer to rub is called Chummy, and you can't get him anywhere - you'll have to find one for yourself.

The most sustained period of fun I ever had in my life was about 40 years ago, when I was a teacher on board a floating university sailing around the world. That was closely followed by my brief career as a sort of mock hippie guru in San Francisco. This year will be the 40th anniversary of that famous Summer of Love, when I published my celebrated Haight Ashbury Songbook and first performed those songs in Golden Gate Park. So I'd like to conclude today with one of them, which I feel best expresses my own feelings then, and even now, about What Matters Most.

As you know, that was a time when masses of young people were coming to San Francisco from all over the country, dropping out of society to sit quietly in Golden Gate Park, take drugs, and be part of the Hippie scene. But at the same time there were other young people who were going in the opposite direction. They felt socially committed, and many of them were leaving the hippie scene to protest against the Vietnam war, or going to the South to get involved in the Civil Rights movement. My song was about these diverging senses of mission and of submission. I made it the last song in the book, and I called it "The Haight-Ashbury Farewell." I'm sure you'll know the tune - "Red River Valley" -- so feel free to join in the chorus:

From this City they say you are going
I am sorry you feel you must flee
But remember your friends who were hippies
And stayed in the Haight-Ashbury.

Chorus: So come sit in the park one more hour
It was here you first opened your mind
And in friendship I'll give you a flower
To remind you of love left behind.

Oh I hear you've been talking of Justice
Of improving the world and all men,
But I tell you, that road is a circle
Leading back to yourself once again.

If you love this old world and wish truly
To improve it before you are dead
You don't have to press others unduly -
Better start with the world in your head. ##