This article ran in Newsday, February 15, 2004, with the title, "Confucius Speaks."

By Sam Crane

Though most Americans think of him
as a source of bad jokes – “Confucius say…” – the ancient Chinese philosopher,
Confucius, actually offers us an important counterweight to the
self-centeredness of contemporary life. I came to appreciate him in a new light one day while I was washing my
son.

A little background: my son, Aidan,
is profoundly disabled. He is twelve
now, but cannot see or talk or stand or walk. His mental capacity is that of an
infant. He has an intractable seizure
disorder, a stomach tube and a tracheostomy in his neck. His birth and
subsequent medical travails have, over the years, forced my wife and I to
re-evaluate much of what we thought was important and normal and happy. We have
found new sources of joy and pride. A simple smile or laugh from Aidan may, in
itself, be enough to make a day good, regardless of whatever else is happening
at work or in the world.

To care for Aidan, I have had to
readjust my priorities. However much in the past I enjoyed international
travel, that is now less possible, maybe even impossible, since there is no
easy way to provide for him without putting an undue burden on the rest of the
family. There are some things that I just cannot do these days. Spontaneity is
constrained by the ever-present question of what any given action might mean
for Aidan.

Sometimes I resent it. I feel deprived by his limitations, deprived
of a typical father-son relationship, deprived of certain options in my own
life.

And that is where Confucius comes
in. I had some notion of what he stood
for through my professional life as a college professor of Chinese
politics. I knew he was criticized by
many twentieth century Chinese intellectuals as a central cause of their
country’s inability to modernize before the Communist revolution. He was a champion of age over youth,
tradition over innovation and men over women, all of which have rendered him
hopelessly uncool by contemporary standards in China and America. But I also knew that he believed that our
search for accomplishment and meaning in life should begin with our
relationships to those closest to us, our family and friends. Faced with my own family challenges, I went
back and read him again.

He does reflect the cultural milieu
of his times, one that devalued women and youth and progress. We have happily left many of those outmoded
notions behind. Yet the thought of
Confucius is capacious enough to allow for a more generous interpretation, one
that can include under his prime category of “Humanity” those who were ignored
in the past.

Confucius
believes and teaches that
ritual action is the glue that holds civilized society together. By
“ritual” he means not only the grand commemorations of life’s defining
moments –
marriages, births, deaths – but also the meaningful symbolic gestures
of
everyday life. It is in the heartfelt
fulfillment of our daily obligations to others that we fill ourselves
with
kindness and integrity. We need not
search far and wide for happiness; it is to be found in our routinely
respectful
treatment of the people around us. That is Confucian ritual. While
so much of our popular culture screams at us to satisfy our personal
appetites
in a deafening chorus of “me, me, me,” Confucius says that his
“greatest
ambition” is: "to comfort the old, to trust my friends, and to cherish
the
young."

In this way, Confucius bolsters me
as I stand next to Aidan’s bed. My
morning washing of him is our ritual, a daily performance of our connection as
father and son. I do the same thing
every time: lay out the wash basin and soap; disconnect the tube that
humidifies his tracheostomy through the night; take off his shirt; press the
wash cloth to his face and onward down his body. I do it the same way, with
deliberate and ingrained movement. It
is not a grand ceremony, but a regular and concrete realization of our meaning
and significance in the world.

I am not a perfect father, far from
it. But one benefit of ritual, according to Confucius, is that it forces us to
look into ourselves, to confront our faults and weaknesses, and find the best
way to move through our daily tasks. As I wash Aidan, I examine myself and the
words of the ancient philosopher are never far away: "As for Humanity: if
you want to make a stand, help others make a stand, and if you want to reach
your goal, help others reach their goal. Consider yourself and treat others
accordingly: this is the method of Humanity."

In pondering this sentiment, I can
see that resentment toward Aidan’s condition is rooted in a selfishness,
encouraged by the hyper-individualism and self-indulgence of our times, that
turns me away from a more satisfying humanity. It is not about me, or him, individually, but about both of us together,
recreating every day a vital and nourishing bond.

So, next time you hear that bad
joke, think of us, Aidan and me, and our morning ablutions and what Confucius
really says.