[Sent 6 November 2022 to my wife and our three daughters]
Good morning. I learned yesterday that one of my two closest friends during the years we lived in Nashville is very near his life’s end. His deterioration from Alzheimer’s Disease has accelerated in the last few months. My friend – now 78 years old (seven years my senior) -- was a lawyer. And law was for him truly a profession. He devoted his career to challenging the inequities and the disrespect experienced by public school teachers across the state of Tennessee. His illness forced him into premature retirement from the courtroom, from the field, from the conflict. We spent many hours together after his retirement – often sharing a bottle of his favorite wine, Twomey Merlot (a varietal sibling of Silver Oak Cabernet Sauvignon) – facing the harsh reality that so much of what he and his colleagues had worked for was being disdainfully dismantled by Tennessee local and state politicians who were intentionally remaking Tennessee into one of the most reactionary (i.e., ‘red’ or ‘far right’) and fundamentalist (intellectually, socially, and religiously) states in the United States. My friend concretely and specifically watched his efforts over decades trashed. We commiserated over the projection of the seismic shift of the Republican Party in Tennessee onto the national stage with the 2016 elections. Our vocabulary and discourse were in time exhausted by the unfolding consequences we saw in any direction we looked. We often sat in silence . . . and dismay. We were disappointed . . . disillusioned.
Thinking about my friend brought to mind the section in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s December 1942 After Ten Years essay titled ‘Optimism’ (inserted below). This section of what I consider to be a strikingly poignant and still relevant essay aligns with where my thoughts are and where my friend’s thoughts would be as the 2022 mid-term elections are underway.
Doug/Dad
[Note -- I was privileged to have the assistance of Renate Bethge – Eberhard Bethge’s wife and Dietrich’s favored niece by his older sister Ursula -- as I revised and finalized my translation of Dietrich’s December 1942 After Ten Years essay several years ago. The words and phrases I have placed in parentheses offer additional nuances, add implied ideas, or indicate alternative meanings.]
Optimism
From Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s December 1942 After Ten Years Essay
It is wiser to be pessimistic. Disappointments (disillusionments) are forgotten. One does not stand before others embarrassed (disgraced, foolish). So optimism is forbidden (prohibited) by the wise. Optimism is in its essence not a notion (view) about the present situation, but it is a source of vitality (a power) by which to live and hope where others surrender (resign), to hold high one’s head when all appears to have failed, to endure setbacks, and yet to at no time abandon the future to the adversary but to claim the future for himself. Granted there is a foolish, cowardly optimism that must be forbidden (prohibited). But optimism as will for the future should never be disdained (scorned), even if it is mistaken a hundred times. It is the health of life. The sick should not beat (it) down (set fire, catch). There are individuals who hold that it is not serious – e.g., Christians who hold that it is impious(!) -- to hope and prepare one’s self for a better earthly future. They regard chaos, disorder, and catastrophe as the essence of present events. In resignation or pious flight from the world, they give up responsibility for the recovery of life, for the new construction, for the coming generation. It may be that judgment day dawns in the morning. Then we will gladly cease work for a better future. But not before.
Douglas Brown, PhD
Surgical Ethics Specialist
Center for Humanism and Ethics in Surgical Specialties
Department of Surgery
Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine
St. Louis, MO
