Essays by Larry Barnett
For most of my adult life I avoided sadness. I didn’t cry much and tried to stay positive, and when trouble did arise, I’d adopt a stoic attitude and set my feelings aside. While I didn’t believe the purpose of life was to be happy, I turned away from sadness until it was irrevocably thrust upon me. In retrospect,… Read the rest
We think in linear terms, creating straight lines between cause and effect. Buddhists call it Karma. The universe, however, has no straight lines; everything in spacetime travels a curved path. Moreover, the curved paths intersect and influence each other, producing complex levels of uncertainty… Read the rest
How did you become who you are? We all start as a nameless soup of chemicals, some self-catalyzing. For all the characteristics we share as living beings, each of us are nonetheless individuals with our own quirks and characteristics. The better we get to know one another, and what we generally know about… Read the rest
In preparing to sell my home of thirty years, my real estate agent advised me to update it. More than just a touch up, it was more of a modest remodel that took considerable effort and expense. It was worth it; the house sold within one day of being listed, but this is not the remodel I’m writing about. It’s … Read the rest
America’s current strategy of dominance now explicitly includes removing leaders of other countries by force or outright killing them. Killing political leaders used to be called assassination, a widely condemned practice. We used to place such brutality in a low moral category, even when it felt… Read the rest
When you live with and love someone for 50 years, you get at all: the fullness of youth, the blossoming of middle age, the challenges of getting old, memories of tenderness, vitality, decline, joy and sorrow.
I am a paternal type, a combination of care and anxiety that began in my relationship with my little… Read the rest
It happens when you hit the tip of your index finger hard with a hammer. It hurts like hell immediately, of course, and you know you’re in for trouble. Then it turns red and begins pulsating. The nail quickly gets discolored as blood seeps under it. And it hurts for days.
Within a week or so the pain mostly … Read the rest
The role of government in a democracy has always been a matter of contention. Should government’s primary effort be the protection of individual liberty or the protection of the common good?
Proponents of the former believe the protection of individual liberty includes defending private property… Read the rest
The media is on fire about the Epstein files, and rightfully so. The files reveal the way an entire class of men – wealthy, celebrated, entitled – routinely connected with each other to share contacts, socialize and enjoy themselves, often at the expense of others. In Epstein’s world, the others were… Read the rest
The force of love is among the most powerful of human experiences. I’m specifically considering love between people, not love of country, ice cream, or the many other things we say or even feel we love. I’m talking about romantic love, in all its manifestations.
Romantic love is about caring, … Read the rest
“We’re doomed,” said my therapist.
It was a notable moment that has stayed with me over all these years. He was a Jungian – not a school of psychotherapy known for being pessimistic – and he made this announcement while we were discussing humanity.
I’ve thought about it often, and depending upon the flavor… Read the rest
We imagine ourselves as having had a beginning, although at precisely what point in time it happened is uncertain, and that like taxes our end will come. We think of most things this way because that’s the way they appear and it’s what we’re taught. Within our short lives of self-awareness, we witness … Read the rest
No matter how much order nor how many distinctions we make about the universe, in essence, it’s just a soup of subatomic waves and particles. Whether this represents some sort of primordial order or billions of years of entropy and chaos, is incidental.
As human beings, we gather information and give… Read the rest
There is a point of view that argues America’s crisis is inevitable, that authoritarian barbarity is baked into our system and it’s what we have regularly and violently inflicted upon targeted domestic and international populations. It’s not an easy argument to refute.
Our brutal exercise of power… Read the rest
We only have one word for love, yet love is vastly more than one feeling or experience, so we modify it to better express its nuances. Thus it is we say, “first love” and “young love” when we speak about love in adolescence, implying its fresh excitement and energy. We use “selfish love” to describe love’s… Read the rest
The story of America we were told in school painted a pretty picture. Unfortunately, it was not truthful, as current events make abundantly clear.
There were always contradictions within the story of America: Equality under the law accompanied by its opposite; the message of welcome on the Statue … Read the rest
There’s a reason that weaving was among humankind’s first technologies. Spacetime is constantly weaving The Eternal Now, the only time there really is. The fabric of events we tie together into a coherent narrative are the yarns we spin, and like the Ancient Greek mythology of the Fates, help us to find… Read the rest
When I was a child, my father, a Brooklyn boy with absolutely no mastery of German, would nonetheless say this to me in the morning, i.e.: “Did you have a good sleep?” “Ya, gut!” I would dutifully answer, and we would laugh.
Many people have difficulty sleeping; I’m not one of them. When I fluff my pillow … Read the rest
There’s no shortage of anger in the world. People go out of their way to punish or harm others with their words and opinions. Social media has become a hotbed of cruelty, falsehood and accusation, and people are numbed by an endless stream of insults and invective emanating from strangers, and even America’s… Read the rest
Common wisdom is that women live longer than men, but at a recent holiday party, I found myself in the company of two other widowers. Like most men, we conversed stoically about the loss of our wives in straightforward fashion; there were no tears shed as we spoke about feeling lonely and sad, although … Read the rest