Robert Fulghum said:

Lawyer friend made his annual summer visit last week, up from California. Traveling with two eighteen-year-old girls and a small boa constrictor. In an anemic VW van with PEACE, LOVE, LIGHT written on the side. The inside of the bus was decorated like the set for Alice in Wonderland. He’s forty-seven. Wife, four kids, house in Berkley Hills, job in the city with a big firm...the whole catastrophe.



I keep up with him because he’s always a little ahead of the times. He’s taken all the trips – and I do mean ALL the trips. A walking sociological experiment of the sixties ad seventies in American culture. Civil rights, Vietnam, Hip, TA, TM, vegetarian, Zen, massage, LSD, palmistry, ten brands of yoga, macramé, psychoanalysis, backpacking, hot tubs, nudism, crystals, more religious movements than you can name, and vitamins. He’s got all the equipment – blenders and pipes and grinders and bikes and jogging outfits and oils and unguents and grow lights – the works.



This year he’s into simple ignorance. “It’s all crap,” says he. “All lies. Your senses lie to you, the president lies to you, the more you search the less you find, the more you try the worse it gets. Ignorance is bliss. Just BE, man. Don’t think or do – just BE. The WORLD is coming to an END!”



The day before he left, he jumped off a lakeside dock with his clothes on to help a kid who appeared to be in danger of drowning in the deep water. And he confessed to being in town for the National Lawyers Guild convention, since he’s a member of its social justice committee.



“So, if it’s all lies and crap – and ignorance is the ultimate trip – than how come...?” I say.



“Well,” says he, “I might be wrong.”



Pieces of sanity are found washed ashore on all kinds of beaches these days. And skepticism and realism are not the same as cynicism and pessimism. I mention it because it seems like a good bumper sticker for the eighties: “I may be wrong.”