Joseph L. Kagle, Jr. Peace Essays

Knowledge and Wisdom are the Backbone of Living

Knowledge comes upon you in the strangest of place. Of course, wisdom arrives with a rush after a pyramid of information through years of contact. To have personal peace, we need both knowledge and wisdom. If the experience does not come by itself, you may have to search the imagination to create it. My imaginary friend Bubba Jay III was always there to help me gain both knowledge and wisdom that could be used in the real world. See, even as mature adults, we sometimes need play to learn important lessons.

Chopping Logs the Texas Summer Heat

There is a wall of quivering water rising as the car drives down the last mile of what was once called Dripping Springs Road. Bubba is in the front yard dressed in shorts, no shirt and shiny with rivers of perspiration rolling from his bare chest and face. He is chopping wood in the brutal, Texas, summer heat.

"What are you doing?" I ask, "Have you lost your wits?"

"No," he says calmly, "I was sitting there just wanting "to be" but I knew that being took effort. The most effort that I could think of was chopping wood. There is a kind of peace to the repetition of dividing logs into two. The sweat is my homage to those who work in this kind of heat. It's homage to those who know how to enjoy being when work is over."

"I still think you're crazy," I say. "Just being does not take work. You can pretend that you are an orange in a blue bowl, sitting waiting for someone to notice the contrast. Shakespeare does not have to pose the question every time you want to sit in the shade."

"True! But let me ask you this," he poses, "how can I miss you if you never go away? How do I know what just "being" is if I do not get up and work every so often?"

"I don't know," I respond; sipping on a tall, cool drink that Bubba's wife miraculously produces into my hand. "Couldn't you do something less strenuous than chopping wood in the Texas heat to prove that you understand "being"?"

"Sure," he blurts out, delivering another downward stroke, splitting the log into two equal shapes, "but how can I enjoy just being, just sitting in the shade and letting the breeze disturb my dreamy repose, if I do not go away from it sometime?" With that last statement, he abruptly stops, pulls up a chair and a footstool, collapses into it and smiles his contentment at my confusion. Another cool drink appears into his hand. His wife shakes her head, agrees that he is slightly, loveably mad and goes back into the air-conditioned house. "To be or not to be", he continues, "and answering it may seem crazy to those who are afraid just "to be". Hamlet understood that but circumstances forced him into a situation of being that was not of his making. Chopping wood in the summer is my conscious decision. It is sort of like choosing to march to a different drummer".

"Do you enjoy "being" more than me right now since I did not chop wood?" I asked. "Do you feel like a brighter orange sitting in a shinier blue bowl?"

"I don't know," Bubba answered truthfully, "all I know is that as I grow older I must do strange things to just be. Some people feel that having things is important to show that they are successful. At this stage of my living, I find doing some things that I feel are significant is what makes being important. I have lived in Texas so long that I forgot what it feels like to chop wood. I needed to relearn that act of muscle and accuracy to sit and just be. Now, I've cut enough so that when you work hard this winter I will sit in the warmth of my living room and just be."

It was curious realizations that watching my friend work toward rivers of perspiration made me feel like a yellow banana in a purple bowl. I understand that I do not have to chop logs now. Bubba knew I was coming to visit and he did this crazy act for me, just as others had done in my life. It is his and their gift to my enjoyment of a lazy day, sitting in the shade, sipping something cool and just being in the summer in Texas.

To find some peace within oneself, you need information, knowledge and a hint of wisdom. One may know someone in a business capacity and yet never know him or her. Their children can shed light upon that side of an individual that has lain hidden. Sometimes, you find information is a place where you least expect it; such as, at a commemorative service for someone who has just passed away.

Immortality Is Possible:  Children

When Shakespeare wrote the idea that the good lives after us, he meant more than our children but that is all that most of us have of immortality.

The other day I called my daughter and mentioned that I was teaching fourth and fifth grade students at Hillcrest PDS how to shake hands. It was a simple lesson on the proper pressure to show firmness without pressing too hard. My daughter reminded me of our lessons on handshakes when she was competing at Waco High School for the national business award (which she won). She told me that she remembers it in her daily work with others at American Airlines. She said, "It is a lesson in civility in a world that sometimes forgets that we are human".

A few weeks ago I attended the funeral service of Waymon Spence at the First Baptist Church. Friends and associates told all about his business success, his passion for work and fitness, his creative mind and inventions (children of the imagination), his medical knowledge and his love of family. Eventually, it was seeing Dr. Spence through his children's eyes that rested gently in a corner of my memory. It is the legacy of children where we are seen in our best and true self.  The two greatest decisions that any person makes is how to bring up your children and your selection of a spouse. Of course, the second comes first. The best gift to children is a loving marriage.

Donna, his partner for over forty years, was the greatest and most important decision of Spence's life. The Japanese see the universe as two characters: "he who has more" and "she who has less". Only when these two basic elements are joined is the universe complete. Some of us have that and we daily wonder at our luck.

I knew Dr. Spence in the art business. He was always coming up with ideas: a medical art gallery in Tulsa where I was called in as a consultant, a museum gallery in Estes Park, Colorado and Waco where I was an advisor on the side. My knowledge of Waymon Spence was at parties where the four of us talked about art and the community. How many people only know us through our social and business contacts? How many think they truly see us because of that limited contact?

At the funeral service, I saw an expanded portrait, illuminated by the light of Spence's children. He would have enjoyed my revelation since he had a strange but rich sense of humor. His youngest son, David, spoke about how the pieces were in place to make grief not easier but possible. David told of his good fortune to have a close family where divorce was not considered an option and individuals in that family had been touched by the love of his father. He told a story about the time when his father was his coach: "I remember the time when I was most proud of my father. It was when I was very young and we had a basketball team. We did not have a coach so my father consented to be ours- although he knew little or nothing about basketball. Most of us were not able to get the ball up to the basket. In fact, there was only one boy who could and we looked at him as a star. We played a team which eventually won the national championship for our age level. Their coach was an ex-NBA player. Everyone played. In fact, sometimes there were more than five of us on the floor at one time. We lost 55-2 in a fifteen minute game. When it was over and all of us had played, the coach of the other team criticized my father saying, "How could you let those kids lose like that?" But we all played. Recently, my father lost to cancer 55-2. He left no one on the bench. And he did not criticize the referee. I am still proud of my father." The good does live after us in our children. Somewhere, Waymon Spence is laughing, viewing an interesting portrait which he would be proud to have displayed.