Lawn decorations of skeletons and gravestones are starting to come down. Election campaign yard signs may soon follow suit, and with luck the deluge of political emails and texts will ease. Plants are dying; trees are shedding their leaves. It’s the spooky season, the time between harvest and winter when darkness is closing in. In a modern tweak on an ancient observance, the end of Daylight Savings Time drives the point home.

Early Christians venerated their martyrs in a variety of local observances on sundry dates. Over time they added non-martyred saints and eventually all the dead in heaven. In the 700s, Pope Gregory III fixed All Saints’ Day on Nov. 1 for all of Western Christendom, to coincide with the dedication of a chapel to “All the Saints” in Saint Peter’s in Rome.

With the day before (All Hallows’ Eve or Halloween) and the day after (All Souls’ Day, for the dead still in purgatory), this observance of the darkening time absorbed or inspired Samhain in Ireland and the Day of the Dead in Mexico. Whether in remembrance of the saints, celebration of the ancestors, or terror of ghosts, death at this season takes center stage.

It’s not entirely coincidence that Election Day falls so soon after Halloween. Using the authority given it by Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, Congress in 1845 set the date for federal elections as the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November. Most voters were farmers, who often lived a distance from their polling places. By early November the harvest was done, and the weather was still mild enough for travel. When Nov. l fell on a Tuesday, voting would take place a week later so as not to conflict with All Saints’ Day.

As for whether to approach Election Day with celebration or fingernail-biting fear, let alone metaphors of darkening and death, I leave it to you to decide.

Image: The Dance of Death (1493) by Michael Wolgemut, from the Nuremberg Chronicle of Hartmann Schedel.

​          A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
          Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
          Mother of Exiles. . . .
                   “. . . Give me your tired, your poor,
          Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free . . .”
                      - Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”

In the late 1960s I spent a year on a high plateau seven thousand feet above the Red Sea. For most of a century, goods shipped from Europe had passed from the Mediterranean into the Red Sea (and on to Asia) by way of the Suez Canal. Unfortunately for us, the canal had been closed in 1967 as a result of Egyptian/Israeli war and would not re-open until 1975. Our supplies came by the long route around the southern tip of Africa.

Had I visited the nonfunctioning Suez Canal—there was no reason to do so—one thing I would not have seen was a colossal figure of a draped woman holding a torch aloft. French sculptor Auguste Bartholi had intended it to stand at the northern entry to the canal, which opened in 1869. He showed his design, called “Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia,” to the Egyptian viceroy Ismail Pasha. However, already deep in debt on the canal project, Egypt rejected the plan for reasons of cost.

Seeking another buyer, Bartholi tweaked his design to appeal to Americans. The title changed to “Liberty Enlightening the World.” The flowing robes of an Egyptian peasant became the garb of a Roman goddess. After mixed reviews, private appeals raised enough donations in France for the statue and in the United States for the pedestal, which cost nearly as much. Emma Lazarus wrote “The New Colossus” as part of the fundraising effort. Best known as the Statue of Liberty, the ”mighty woman with a torch” was dedicated in New York Harbor on October 28, 1886. The opening of Ellis Island six years later to process arrivals from Europe made Lady Liberty a symbol of welcome to tired, poor immigrants for all time.

Images, cropped: (left) Bartholi’s design for “Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia; (right) the Statue of Liberty.

Once upon a time, a boy sat before a plate piled high with his favorite foods. Large bowls of the same foods and more were strewn across the table. He stuffed forkful after forkful into his mouth at first, relishing every bite. When his plate was half empty, his glee faded. At three quarters empty, he burst into tears.

Asked the problem, he replied, “My plate is almost empty, and my stomach is almost full. Soon it will all be gone. Even with serving dishes all around, I won’t be able to enjoy another bite.”

I first heard this tale on the last evening of a summer camp, when teens were fretting over having to leave the next day. They’d had a magical week, making new friends in a safe new setting where no one knew their baggage and they felt free to be themselves. The camp director reminded them the week was not over yet. If they could dry their tears for now, hours of delight still lay ahead.

It’s natural to grieve the pending death of a loved one after a terminal diagnosis. It’s natural to grieve the imminent loss of a house that’s been home for thirty years. But to become grumpy halfway through a vacation because the vacation will end is worse than useless. I don’t know where and how to draw the line. I do know that more joy is here for the taking than we sometimes remember to take.

Image: Chinese banquet in a banquet hall (cropped).

It’s getting to be high season for fall conferences, meetings, and book launches. Pet peeve: events that start with an announcement of disappointment that so few people chose to attend. What a downer! The only people to hear it are those who did show up. Low attendance is hardly their fault. The message is that they don’t count, or at best they are insufficient.

​You don’t have to believe everything happens for a purpose in order to suggest that the number in the room or on screen is exactly the right number, with exactly the right people. Make it part of your quickly revised plan. Move the chairs closer. Adopt a more conversational style. Take advantage of  the intimacy instead of bemoaning it. Dinner with close friends can be as meaningful as a banquet. When attendees feel honored to get up close and enjoy individual attention for their questions or comments, they’re more likely to leave on a high.

Duty is not a word to fill me with joy and sunshine. Like work, it conjures up doing what’s obligatory rather than fun. Granted, I dislike some duties and enjoy others; the same holds for work. But as a guiding life principle, duty—or dharma—attracts me far less than love and compassion, or even curiosity.

I’ve been watching a lecture series on mythologies, including the Bhagavad Gita. In it, Krishna teaches a prince about dharma, the imperative to do one’s duty according to one’s place in society, without investment in the results. Our related “let it go” and “accept the things I cannot change” remind me how little my strivings can achieve. Dharma goes one step further: Do the right thing without striving toward any goal. Just do it.

My vote won’t swing the upcoming election, but voting is my dharma as a citizen. When my close friend pleads for advice I’m sure she won’t follow, my dharma as a friend is to treat her with love and respect. Instead of debating whether I’m bound by a promise to one now dead who won’t know, to stay bound is my dharma as part of a society that honors promises.

Of course, results do matter. I wouldn’t call doing laundry or dishes part of my dharma if they never come clean. And it will matter how the election comes out, and whether my friend finds comfort in her troubles. Stress hormones of caring can energize and motivate. But tight shoulders and knots in the stomach can also paralyze. I’m little use to anyone when I’m paralyzed by anticipating ends beyond my control. I wouldn’t choose dharma as a guiding life principle, but at the moment it’s a useful tool to have in my toolbox.

Image: Krishna and Arjun on the chariot, Mahabharata, 18th-19th century, India.

Last week we switched the thermostat from “cool” to “heat.” Not because the equinox is behind us, not because the calendar says it’s almost October, but because the house was cold.

In Chicago, landlords must ensure habitable spaces are at least 68 degrees warm from September 15 till June 1, or “heat season.” If you’re chilly Sept 12, tough luck. Last I knew, the U.S. Army required soldiers to change between summer and winter uniforms on specified dates, weather be damned.

Individuals and cultures have different preferences between rigidity/order and flexibility/chaos. Some parents tuck toddlers into bed at eight, others when they act overtired and cranky. But an additional factor shapes whether turn-of-the-year shifts depend more on calendar or weather.

How close is the person who reaps the benefit to the one who bears the cost or risk? If you swap out summer for winter wear in your closet, no one else cares. On the other hand, the landlord who pays the heating bill may never have met the shivering tenant. The same question fits non-seasonal issues too, but that’s for another day.

Who doesn’t crave life balance? Enough to do and not too much, productivity and leisure, human touch and peaceful solitude? Able to walk the tightrope without falling off to either side? The equal balance of night and day at the autumn equinox conjures up this dream we pursue but rarely quite achieve.

A younger woman once asked me, with reference to work and family and volunteerism and the rest, if it’s possible to have it all. My response: Yes, but not all at the same time.

The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote:
     The garden is growing dark.
     The stars are shining.
     Let us, then, bow our heads to the earth's rhythms
     And acknowledge the wisdom of change.

Perhaps the lesson of the equinox is not to stay upright on the tightrope but to find ease with falling off. The time of equal day and night is very brief. Most days are longer or shorter. Joy and grief are warp and woof of life’s tapestry. “Let us, then, bow our heads to the earth’s rhythms and acknowledge the wisdom of change.”

Image: Five dancing women, 1338-1410, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, reproduced under Creative Commons licence CC-BY-NC 4.0. 

I woke in the middle of the night from one of those rare, profound dreams that answers a question that’s been pestering for weeks. Eager to save the solution, I found a pencil on the bedside table and scribbled key words on the back of a nearby Kleenex box.

“Aha!” moments of insight arrive seemingly out of the blue. A recent article in Communications Psychology defines such a moment as “a special type of problem-solving process where a problem-solver achieves a sudden and complete mental restructuring of a problem, accompanied by a distinct rush of satisfaction, surprise, and confidence.” Such epiphanies have changed the lives of religious mystics. According to legend, the ancient Greek thinker Archimedes got so excited by his realization about floating bodies that he jumped out of his bath and ran naked down the street, shouting “Eureka!” (“I have found it!”)

The morning after the dream, I forgot my eureka moment and went on about my day.

Psychologists suggest “Aha!” moments, if not supernatural, arise from subconscious brainwork based on previous experience, beliefs, and sensory input. They feel significant and true. To the extent they can be measured objectively, they are usually accurate or lead to positive results.

​Usually, but not always. Throwing away the empty Kleenex box months after the dream, I noticed my handwriting in pencil on the back. It said, “One apple is worth six bananas.”

Image: Anonymous 16th-century woodcut of Archimedes' eureka moment.

You may know this is the Year of the Dragon. Not attentive to the Chinese zodiac, I wasn’t aware of it until a couple of weeks ago. Now old memories surface. Savoring dragon imagery in North American Chinatowns. Playing Dungeons and Dragons with old-fashioned graph paper and pencil. Watching dragonflies hover above the pond, and dragon kites soar into the sky. Singing “Puff, the Magic Dragon” by the campfire. Reading tales of King Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon.

In general, a dragon (from Greek drakon and Latin draco, “large serpent”) is a giant, mythical reptile with long sharp claws and fangs, four legs, a long tail, often with wings and horns and fiery breath. Comprising all the traits of great predators built onto an enormous serpent, it was powerful enough to give protection (as in China and Wales), threaten enemies (as on the bow of Viking ships), or devastate the countryside until slain by Saint George or some other valiant hero.

The puzzle about dragons, to me, is why such similar scaled beasts took shape in so many disconnected parts of the globe—including places that don’t have crocodiles, iguanas, or traces of Tyrannosaurus Rex. There are theories but no consensus. One that intrigues me lies in the human genome. Although people of many lands faced more danger from bears than snakes, the opposite was true in Africa where their early ancestors evolved. Fear of snakes (and spiders, and heights) promoted survival. Like monkeys, humans are born with an instinctive fear of snakes. Small wonder such fear became the basis for fantastical super-predators around the world.

​Images (all cropped): (left) Aztec era stone sculpture of feathered serpent, National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City; (middle) Drawing from original gypsum bas-relief, from beside door in Babylonian temple, now in British Museum; (right) Carving on choir stalls in Chester Cathedral, England, 1380.

Age-old tradition treats reason and emotion as opposites. Whether in balance or in tension, they get paired with other dualisms: masculine and feminine, sun and moon, yang and yin, sophisticated and primitive, left brain and right brain. René Descartes famously wrote, “I think, therefore I am.” But if you only think, without also feeling, decisions are impossible. Logic may explain how to pursue a goal, but it can’t discern which goal to pursue. Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio says, “It is emotion that allows you to mark things as good, bad, or indifferent.”

Damasio calls emotions an integrated set of rapid bodily changes that evolved for survival in response to danger or opportunity. In front of a charging tiger or truck, our bodies prepare to fight or flee. Our muscles tense, our pulse and blood pressure rise, our pupils dilate, our breath becomes rapid, all before our brains can formulate that we’re afraid. Later, as time allows, we can reason whether the danger is real or whether a reward is worth the risk.

“Life is not a series of calculus problems. Life is about movement,” New York Times columnist David Brooks writes. “Emotions guide the navigation system.” To teach children the alphabet but ignore story characters’ motives misses the boat. To estimate potential based on test scores alone is to overlook emotional judgment. To build a machine that processes data a zillion times faster than humans doesn’t mean it will replace us. To pit reason against feeling is self-defeating. We need both, working in tandem.

​Images: Symbols of reason and emotion.