#5 The Beatles, Abbey Road (1969)

Have you ever thought about the word “time”? I don’t mean the time of day, I mean the way we use the word to describe an era, a generation, a time in history. What about “all time”? The eternity of humans on earth.

I picture a river. I’m barefoot, on the bank of a mature and substantial river running from my left to my right. It’s mostly calm, greenish blue water with some faster moving spots too. And it makes that wonderful sound that rivers make. It burbles and splashes and ripples - sounds of currents I can’t see. It goes around lazy bends from time to time but it stretches as far as I can see in either direction. I walk in at the shallow river’s edge and it feels perfect. Refreshing but not cold. Warm enough, but not tepid.

Now imagine that the river represents all of humanity. To our left, all of our past. Every human who ever lived on the earth. All of the honorable and divine moments of human kindness, generosity, ingenuity, love. All of those humans whose names we will never know and who will not be remembered. Every single human who chose good over evil has shaped our world into what it is today and has helped get us here. Each one is admirable and I’m so grateful to them for the gift of this moment. Our moment.  

Deep below the surface of our river is the muck of nastiness. Humans who choose to kill or harm or steal. Or profit from the suffering of others. Humans who choose fear and hate. Humans who lie or who are unkind. We all know what we are capable of when we are at our worst. Our river is so strong that it can handle this relatively small bit of muck. Too much muck and it will threaten the health of the river and we will need a massive cleanup project to avoid losing it entirely, so we all keep a close eye on it. We understand that we don’t own it; rather, we are temporary custodians and we need to ensure that it is healthy and strong for those who come after us.

Where I stand in our river, my feet are in the muck. They aren’t submerged, and I am free to move around, but I can feel it. I feel the revulsion as its cold clamminess squishes between my toes. But I stand atop it, knowing the worst. I learn from their mistakes and I choose kindness.

Now let’s look to our right. Future generations of humanity spread out as far as we can see on our same winding waterway. Immediate futures that we can make educated guesses about. Distant futures that we cannot even imagine and that creative artists often frame for our consideration and enjoyment. What will they make of us? What art and news and policy will they look back at hundreds or thousands of years from now and admire? Or be embarrassed by? Are we doing everything we can to ensure our river is still as clean and beautiful for them as we can make it? Every act in our daily lives, no matter how small, affects the river. Every single one of us changes our current and future worlds with our every action. We are, for them, history. Let’s make sure we treasure the dignity and gravity with which we have been entrusted.

As I gaze in wonderment, I can feel that this sublime and majestic river is, by its nature, good. When we don’t choose kindness, every single one of us has to go out of our way to override that inner voice we all have - our conscience reminds us that we know right from wrong. Our default setting is goodness and it’s indisputable. Living our lives can be so hard and I find this fact so reassuring, overwhelming even. Especially during those times when I am filled with doubt or worry. And we cannot ignore the muck between our toes. It exists and we succumb to it from time to time. But we are wired for good. 

The major world religions use a lot of water-related imagery. Christians and Muslims believe God created man and all other creatures out of water. Both religions believe water symbolizes purity, like in baptism rituals. Muslims believe water is the source of life and a symbol of paradise. Hindus believe water holds purifying and cleansing powers. They value cleanliness of body and soul so they use water in many of their rituals as well.

I think about the river all the time. Sometimes I think it is God. After all, if you believe in God, you certainly know it’s not a white-haired dude hanging out ELSEWHERE. It’s right here, with us, in us, all the time. I never know exactly what I believe about God. But if you look at all of the wondrous things we humans are capable of, the astounding power that human love has to create and transform lives all along this eternal river… to me, that is God. Or our “source”, or the universe, or whatever you feel comfortable calling it. The Divine. Accessible to us at all times. Just dip your toe in. 

Consider truly gifted artists such as The Beatles or Bob Dylan or F. Scott Fitzgerald. Something in their art spoke to so many of us that we lifted them up en masse so we could spread their message and so we could speak to each other about their work. They tapped deeply into our river - our shared humanity that tethers us together. They practiced and honed their craft and found a way to see into our souls and reflect our *selves* back to us. They speak to what our moment in the river FEELS like. We, the humans of this place and time, broadly agree that these are the messages we want to send to our future. To our beloved future humans, this is what it was like for us during our moment on this earth. These messages represent our fears and joys and trials and observations. Our calls for improvement and progress. Our heartbreak when we suffer. This is us. Isn’t that just so freaking cool?

Anyway, Abbey Road is great. Apparently I saw God or something so, you know, you should listen to it.

#2 The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Number two on the list of the best novels of all time is The Great Gatsby. Like many of us, I read this years ago in high school or college. I remember it as a story about love, a tragedy of a lost love. Goodness no. This time around, I was struck by everything in this novel being the opposite of love.

What is the opposite of love? The thesaurus says the answer is hate. Then there’s the famous quote, “the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference”, which we can easily identify with.  The truth is that the opposite of love is actually fear.

Fear of failure. Fear of what people will think of me. Fear that I will look stupid. Fear of the unknown. Fear of revealing myself, of exposing my true self. Fear of rejection. Fear that I am not worthy. Every human on the planet feels these fears from time to time. But when fear kicks into overdrive, it blocks you from all kinds of love.

Let’s take a look at some of the characters.

Nick Carraway: Nick, our earnest narrator, is afraid of being too judgmental and prides himself on being tolerant, honest, and objective. Nick is not at all honest in the book. Afraid of being an outcast, Nick gets sucked into Gatsby’s world, accepts drinks when he doesn’t feel like it, hangs out with people he doesn’t like, dates a woman with opposite values, and hides truths from everyone. Nick’s fears lead him to leave the east coast for the Midwest at the end of the novel. I understand that Fitzgerald’s goal is for us to see the east coast as “American excess” and the Midwest as “getting back to our morals and values”, but we all know our poor choices and our struggles are not reliant on our zip code.

“I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.”

Daisy Buchanan: We are meant to perceive Daisy as having charm, wealth, and sophistication. As you can imagine, these are all the things a poverty-stricken Gatsby could want from life. However, Daisy is by far the weakest and most pathetic character in the novel. It is not clear whether she is capable of loving Gatsby, her husband, or her child. She told Gatsby she would wait for him until after the war, then married Tom instead. She had an affair with Gatsby while married to Tom. She drove drunk, killed a woman, and let Gatsby take the blame. She used her money to run and hide afterwards. Daisy’s crippling fear is caring for others in any way that will hold her accountable.

“If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him.”

Tom Buchanan: Tom is afraid of Gatsby’s “new wealth” because it is a threat to his worldview. His worldview is that people with money have it because they deserve it and should be permanent members of an American aristocracy. (Fuck off, Tom.)

“You see I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me.”

Jay Gatsby: Gatsby’s biggest fear is being trapped in the poverty and tedious insignificance of his youth.  When he first meets Daisy, he hides his past from her because he’s afraid she won’t love him if she knows the truth. He’s so desperate to avoid destitution that he chooses a life of crime to win the love of someone who never even truly knew him; indeed, Gatsby never truly sees Daisy for who she is either. Daisy does nothing to deserve anyone’s love and admiration. His fear prevents him from seeing her fully. Gatsby may have loved Daisy at some point, but by the time of the novel's setting, she has become just another thing he needs to acquire to fulfill the image of his reinvented, illusory self.

“It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself.”

Because of all the fear, there is no love anywhere. I think this is what makes this book such a classic, what makes it speak to us time and again. It is a dystopian tale so terrible, so bereft of any meaningful, honorable lives, that we can’t look away. We want to learn from this, we want to do everything in our power not to live these lives, not to make these terrible choices. And all the while, this grim dystopia is laid out for us in the most beautiful prose ever written, perfectly capturing so many of the other human emotions we all experience. The incongruity is too exquisite, too satisfying to abandon. Fitzgerald sees us. I believe he wants us to be afraid of becoming these characters. Make good choices. Love with all your might.

“The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other’s names.

The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word.”