Richard W. shared a stream on January 10, 2023

My Helper Gene!

Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 2 seconds

Embracing Tomorrow with Jan

Walking Together for the Mental Health Association in NJ

A neighbor who owns Ambelis, a local restaurant, always introduces me as the “nicest gentleman he has ever met.”

I counter and say the same thing to him.

The truth for me is that my DNA includes a helper gene.

My assistance to others includes everything from reminding people not to pay for parking when it is not in effect to paying it forward when someone might be unable to pay for an order.

If I do not help, maybe no one else will.

Helping others is part of being a mensch-in-training.

My helping gene also helps me manage my grief.

Love never dies as long as we share our passion and help each other.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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Jan and Rich

Helping Others Helps Me!

No one reads my words, and few, if any, comment on my bookshelf.

But I find myself asked to facilitate more groups and thanked for only doing what any of us would do to help each other manage our grief.

Yet, I hear more people say they listen to my words because I speak with clarity and transparency. Is there any other way that any of us should talk?

Richard W. Brown January 12, 2022

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My random thoughts on love, grief, life and all things considered.

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Man's Search for Meaning

Read: January 2022

Man’s Search for Meaning

by Viktor E. Frankl

I recall reading portions of Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl at various times, but I never completed the book. However, recently, eight and a half months after Jan’s passing, my wife and I were discussing in one of my groups. Frankl’s theory of logotherapy, which derives from the Greek word for “meaning,” centers around the idea that the primary human drive is not pleasure, as Freud believed, but rather the search for what gives life meaning. I now have a framework for my life without Jan.

For those like me who are widows, Frankl understands suffering,

In some ways, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.

Jan and I lived meaningful lives. My challenge now is to continue to find meaning in my life without Jan.

As Frankl writes,

Those who have a ‘why’ to live can bear with almost any ‘how.

The love Jan and I shared was one of my primary sources of meaning. In addition, I stopped working full-time at the end of 2018 and struggled to replace the purpose I had gained from repairing the world. After Jan died, I suffered the “provisional existence of an unknown limit, ” which Frankl experienced when he was in the concentration camps.

I have replaced the loss of meaning and purpose with a series of activities:

Planning to celebrate Jan Day on her birthday this year.
Writing my random thoughts on Jan, love, grief, life, and all things considered;
Reading more than ever, including my Goodreads 2022 Reading Challenge; and
Walking more than I probably should.

I am also beginning to serve on the board of a few non-profits. It is time to transition from hands-on work to providing leadership in a different way.

Will this be enough to give my life meaning?

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life, and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life, he can only respond by being responsible.

I must continue to focus on my search for meaning, as life will inevitably change over time.

My grief journey has taught me that love never dies,

For the first time in my life, I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry, thought, and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.

My path forward is to keep Jan’s love alive and continue to share it with others.

I recommend this book without reservation.

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Anxious People

Read: June 2022

Anxious People

by Fredrik Backman

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman, a poignant comedy about a crime that never occurred. A would-be bank robber disappears into thin air, and eight highly anxious strangers find they have more in common than they ever imagined. Anxious People is a novel that Jan and I would have both enjoyed reading. It jumped off the e-book shelf while looking for a new book to read.

Although Anxious People is a humorous comedy, it is really about the enduring power of friendship, forgiveness and hope, which are the key to our survival as individuals, couples and communities. It is the core of what made the love that Jan and I shared special and unique, but it is also what I gain from my participation in my various grief groups as well as Friday night Shabbat services.

I highly recommend this book.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview.

Viewing an apartment usually doesn’t turn into a life-or-death situation. Still, this particular open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes everyone in the apartment hostage. As the pressure mounts, the eight strangers slowly open up to one another and reveal long-hidden truths.

First is Zara, a wealthy bank director who has been too busy to care about anyone else until tragedy changed her life. Now, she’s obsessed with visiting open houses to see how ordinary people live—perhaps, setting an old wrong to the right. Then there’s Roger and Anna-Lena, an Ikea-addicted retired couple who are on a never-ending hunt for fixer-uppers to hide the fact that they don’t know how to fix their failing marriage. Julia and Ro are a young lesbian couple and soon-to-be parents who are nervous about their chances for a successful life together since they can’t agree on anything. And there’s Estelle, an eighty-year-old woman who has lived long enough to be unimpressed by a masked bank robber waving a gun. And despite the story she tells them all, Estelle hasn’t come to the apartment to view it for her daughter, and her husband isn’t outside parking the car.

As police surround the premises and television channels broadcast the hostage situation live, the tension mounts, and even deeper secrets are slowly revealed. Before long, the robber must decide which is the terrifying prospect: going out to face the police or staying in the apartment with this group of impossible people.

Rich with Fredrik Backman’s “pitch-perfect dialogue and an unparalleled understanding of human nature” (Shelf Awareness), Anxious People’s whimsical plot serves up unforgettable insights into the human condition and a gentle reminder to be compassionate to all the anxious people we encounter every day.

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Transcription

Read: May 2026

Transcription: A Novel

by Ben Lerner

“Transcription” by Ben Lerner has been named one of The New York Times’ Best Books of the Year (So Far). Hailed as “the most talented writer of his generation” by The New York Times Magazine, Lerner presents a gripping emotional drama that also serves as a brilliant exploration of the digital and literary devices we use to store or erase our memories.

The narrator of Ben Lerner‘s new novel has traveled to Providence, Rhode Island, to conduct what will be the final published interview with Thomas, his ninety-year-old mentor and the father of his college friend Max. Thomas is a giant in the arts who seems to hail from the future and the past simultaneously and who reenchants the air when he speaks. But the narrator drops his smartphone in the hotel sink. He arrives at Thomas’s house without a recording device, a fact he is mysteriously unable to admit.

What unfolds from this dreamlike circumstance is the unforgettable story of the triangle formed by Thomas, Max, and the narrator, as well as an exploration of fathers and sons, male friendship and rivalry, and the challenges of parenting in a burning world. One of the first great novels about the early days of COVID, it is also a brilliant meditation on those technologies that enrich or impoverish our connection to one another, that store or obliterate memory. Full of startling insight, but summoning the intensity of a séance, Lerner’s writing shows us how the air is full of messages, full of ghosts. Ultimately, Transcription demonstrates what only a work of fiction can record.

Ben Lerner is the author of several poetry and prose books, as well as collaborative works with visual artists. He has received fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundations. Lerner has been a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, along with many other honors. He is a Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College.

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