Happy Easter Everyone!

But, what is happiness in this vale of tears, anyway?

SOMEWHERE IN THE ETHER. Newsnotes reflects upon a seasonal column appearing in Easter Sunday’s New York Times by David French. It is well worth a read.

It is titled The Light That Changed My Life, wherein he discusses the blooming seed of his Christian faith, his growing sense about the nature of life, its ephemerality and the prospect of life’s permanence beyond the collapse of our physical bodies into the lifeless dust whence they originally emerged.

In his column, Mr. French asks about our earthly American existence, “Is this all there is? Is this really what it looks like to live in the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world?” Hm-m-m-m, these are good questions.

If we define “wealth” strictly in material terms then, yes, our collective national wealth and power seems unparalleled in global history. But if we add to this definition considerations of family, friends, associates and nature, our internal discourse becomes more complex. On measures of social comity, security, mobility, health, nutrition, education, tolerance and spirituality, we Americans lag behind many other economically advanced jurisdictions and even some poorer nations.

That lag is revealed in no small measure by the narrow limitations of our definition of what it means to be “rich.” No society is universally wealthy or happy, but there is a global happiness index worth serious consideration. The United States ranks on a rough par with Belize and the UK, and well below most of Western Europe. [i]

Perhaps GNP is not “all there is” to unravel the conundrum of the good life well lived.

Mr. French discusses the Christian notion “that God himself defeated death — that he entered into history, lived on this earth, was crucified and then returned to life.” This rings true to Newsnotes even though our staff of crack reporters is hardly religious.

If we accept that life as we mortals know it is limited simply by our corporal existence on Planet Earth, then the idea that the termination of our physical lives is succeeded beyond our sojourn in this “vale of tears” makes no sense at all.

But we can allow that our personal lives continue after death with the impact we have imbued into (or inflicted upon) our freshly-minted successors. This influence dissipates as the human generations cycle through time, but it never disappears totally. In this sense, there is life after death.

So let’s be careful with the comportment of our mortal beings because, for better or worse, our spirits live on despite and because of our earthly behavior. In the United States, the spirit of Abraham Lincoln animates us today just as the influence of Donald Trump may drive tomorrow’s planetary denizens, one hopes in relatively small numbers.

Although such choices are hardly binary, the influence of our precursors burdens succeeding generations with the steep challenge of choosing whose spirit they use as their North Stars. For those lucky enough to live in true democracies the consequences of their collective role-modeling choice will rest entirely on their shoulders just as our contemporary consequences have rested on ours.

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Let us now solemnly pause by moving from the sublime to the ridiculous. Hear a noted American satirist explain the true meaning of Easter as observed from his participation with an international cadre of classmates struggling to solve the combined mysteries of French conversation and Christian religiosity in a Parisian French language course.

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[i] “Happiness rankings are determined by analyzing comprehensive Gallup polling data from 149 countries in six particular categories: gross domestic product per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make your own life choices, generosity of the general population, and perceptions of internal and external corruption levels.”

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