A Song in the Night

by Bob Massie

  My conviction is clear. After having lived through all the events detailed in this book, I believe that our direction is determined by the blend of our aspirations and our desires. It matters what we choose to believe in.

  If I had listened to the conventional wisdom about my health, I would have resigned myself to an early death and never set foot outside the apparently small, sad domain of my life. If millions of people had listened to what was said about racism in the United States and South Africa, then we would not have worked tirelessly for racial equality. Nelson Mandela would have died in prison, and the people he brought together would have remained trapped in the division, misery, and hatred that seemed at one point to be their only destiny. There never would have been an African-American president of the United States. If we had given up on the ideal that we must preserve our planet, we would never have created the institutions and practices that are setting us on a common path toward sustainable prosperity.

  Our values guide our choices before we act. We design blueprints before we build. As it says in the New Testament, hope is faith in things not seen. Every course is set by pointing to a destination where we have yet to arrive.

  As a nation we have faced deeply discouraging moments before. Our union almost dissolved many times in its first hundred years. And even though we may not break into two physical nations, we are no longer “one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” The United States has become a nation divided by dollars. Many Americans are still reeling under the hammer blows of wild market forces and financial manipulation. The poor and the wealthy now live in such isolation from each other that they often forget they are citizens of the same country.

  We have been resilient because of our inner strength and our dynamic institutions. American achievements are so large and so astonishing that we actually forget to speak about them and thus learn their lessons. Consider what we have already done. In a few decades at the beginning of the nation, we established bustling ports and built factories that competed with the greatest empires of the day. We tied two oceans together through a web of railroad tracks and canals. We created thousands of extraordinary inventions, everything from the flat broom to the light bulb, from electric current to refrigeration, from the telephone to television. All came from a single country that did not have a population over 100 million until the 1920s. We invented the automobile and the airplane. Then came radar and radio, the transistor, the atomic bomb, the microchip, the computer, and the Internet. We walked on the moon. Earlier generations would have seen the abilities that we now take for granted as the powers of gods.

  How can anyone, faced with the most radical transformation in technology in the history of human civilization, argue that the world is not primarily driven by ideas? Who can say that something to which we might aspire today is automatically impossible? They cannot. The question is not can we do something, but what do we want to do?

  I often think about how much the nation we call “the United States” has evolved within a few generations of one family. My great-grandfather Robert Kinloch Massie was born in 1864 into a Virginia family of modest farmers and middle-level gentry whose livelihood depended on land they had already held for nearly two hundred years, most of which was worked by slaves. They were Christians and Americans, and they believed in the brotherhood of man and the ideals of the United States, yet their economic interest and cultural training blinded them from extending these principles to the women and the slaves in their midst. They were living a terrible contradiction, though to them it was not obvious—and indeed, the thought may never have occurred to them at all.

  Their lives were thrown into moral, political, and economic chaos during the Civil War. They watched their sons and cousins die on the battlefields, they abandoned their belief in slavery, they sold or lost their farms, and they moved into town to pursue various learned professions. My great-grandfather eventually became a minister and left the United States to become a missionary and schoolteacher in China. His son, my grandfather, was born far from the American South, in Shanghai, in 1891. The family eventually returned and settled in the United States again, first in Virginia and then permanently in Kentucky, which is where my father appeared, in 1929. During much of this same period the members of my mother’s family were going about their lives in the towns and mountain villages of Switzerland, with no thought that some of them would ever move to the new English-speaking empire rising thousands of miles away. Every person comes from such a succession of families filled with such twists and turns in their history.

  Consider the political changes that we eventually achieved in our country through argument and agreement. We implemented the principle of free and compulsory education for all children. We set aside millions of acres and billions of dollars for public schools and universities. We fought an agonizing civil war, full of waste, denial, brutality, and suffering, but it achieved the goal of ending slavery. The nation delayed its political promise to women for an unacceptable amount of time, but after a protracted struggle, America embraced women’s suffrage. We fought tyranny in two world wars. After long and shameful denial, we finally faced up to the obvious conclusions of our own principles and ended segregation. We installed a first line of defense against the poisoning of our water and air. And now, after asking Americans to look deeply into their hearts about the nature of love, we are moving toward the universal acceptance of gay marriage.

  None of this was easy. It all required vision, courage, and leadership. And it all happened, in historical terms, in the twinkling of an eye. Who says the eye cannot twinkle again?

  Together we now must create a new, more fair, more prosperous, and more just America. To do so, we must measure and manage the things that matter to us as a whole people. Economic growth is one piece of the puzzle. A new American economy would enable us to chart our course so that our communities are improving, our children are learning, our workers are finding meaningful work, our natural world is flourishing, our cities are becoming safer and more beautiful.

  All of this comes back to the concept of sustainability, which governs discussion throughout the world but is still barely mentioned in the United States. Sustainability is a point of dynamic equilibrium where all the forces for good—our creative gifts, our economic genius, our skillful use of resources, our desire for freedom and happiness, our longing for comfort and convenience, our reverence for the dignity of every human life—come together. It recognizes the diversity of goals among the seven billion people who live on the planet and balances them effectively with all the other biological forces at work in the world to create a system that not only works for us but will last for generations.

  Sustainability is an improved and logical progression within capitalism. It expands the definition of capitalism to acknowledge what we already know: that there are different forms of capital, such as financial capital, natural capital, human capital, and intellectual capital. The goal of an economy should not be to deplete one form of capital in favor of another—for example, mowing down life-giving rain forests or stripping the vitality of workers in order to obtain short-term financial returns—but to create systems that allow every capital stock to increase.

  The good news is that this is already happening. The conversations and actions are already taking place in hundreds of groups and communities around the United States. One can find new names for new ideas and thus bring them into sight. And powerful institutions are moving to put the pieces in place. To give one example, the largest accounting societies and firms in the world are now working with the Global Reporting Initiative, under the overall sponsorship of the Prince of Wales and the United Nations, to merge sustainability and financial accounting into a single tool for measuring corporate performance. If they succeed, the way corporations are financed, rewarded, managed, and structured will be transformed.

  An effort to change the entire world economy might seem like folly, an enterprise too large to imagine, let alone to achieve.
Yet if one can imagine a different world, that new world already starts to shimmer into view. Most human practice is the result of social convention. We have learned from America’s struggles with race, gender, disability, and sexual orientation, that as ideas about social convention change, so do practices and laws.

  Consider how far we could go if we regarded our current challenges through the very simple lenses of innovation and investment. Innovation and investment both focus on the future. They involve the creation or exchange of something today in order to generate a larger benefit tomorrow. They testify that everything is interrelated.

  In the field of energy, we know that innovation means moving away from our excessive reliance on fossil fuel by expanding renewable energy, improving efficiency, and creating new energy sources. These are the right things to do economically and the right things to do morally and scientifically, given the large-scale climate crisis bearing down on the planet.

  In education we also have tremendous opportunities. The nineteenth-century model of pouring children into a classroom for part of the day to listen to one adult is not a complete model. Through the Internet it will be possible within our lifetimes to provide education for everyone everywhere for free.

  We can go through every major problem facing America and show how a commitment to innovation and investment would chart a course for progress. In foreign and military policy, we need to create new networks and relationships with other countries so that we strengthen the web of interconnections and the power of American ideals within the global system. In medicine, we are constantly innovating, but we are not making the results—from which I have personally benefited—evenly available. And in dealing with our democracy, we must continue to create new ways to bring our citizens—particularly our young people—more into the political process. As we do so, we must put an end to the tsunami of secret money flooding into our elections to corrupt our elected officials.

  The creation of a sustainable economy built on innovation and investment, leading to justice and prosperity, is a large goal, but no more challenging, and no less worthy than many that the United States has already achieved.

  To make these changes, we are going to need to let go of some of the labels we employ to classify each other. They harm our judgment and taint our souls. And we are always bigger and deeper than the names others apply to us.

  For my whole life I have been a Christian, because on balance I have believed that this term captures my belief in God and many other strong and worthy ideas about how people should be guided in their decisions and relations to each other. Yet I recognize that some people who call themselves Christians have done hateful things that I reject, and that I bear the risk of being tarnished by that name because of the poor judgment and bad behavior of others.

  I have devoted thousands of hours to leadership as an environmentalist, yet I would dearly like to find another name for that movement, since it seems to me that anything with the term mentalist in it automatically sounds somewhat loopy.

  Though I have long been a Democrat, I understand the passion of the members of the Tea Party to discover and bring to the surface the original motivations of our revolutionary founders, though having made my own study of these leaders, I believe that many are drawing the wrong conclusions. The authors of the American Revolution never believed in moving backward in time, as the Tea Party seems to insist on doing—they believed in balancing political stability and invention, sometimes in enormously creative and risky ways. The true legacy of the American Revolution is that we must continue to refine and improve our democracy until a more perfect union, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, has been fully achieved.

  Let us choose a new way of talking to each other that honors each other’s dignity even as we disagree, perhaps profoundly, with each other’s views. Even though I have fought passionately for the ideas that I believe are right for this country and this world, I want everyone to be reminded of the mysterious nobility of life itself. We need terms that offer dignity, honor, and respect to our souls.

  We need a term for those who are profoundly in love with the privilege of being alive.

  We need a term for those who stand in awe of the beauty of the whole world—from gardeners and hunters and astronauts to nurses, from mountain climbers and sunbathers and skiers to pilots, from explorers and fishermen to farmers, from scientists and painters and poets to dancers, from old people breathing their last breath to children putting their first toe into the water.

  We need a term for anyone who straightens up from a tractor, glances out the window of an office, strolls through a park, hikes through a forest, or turns a face upward to meet a summer rain and feel a moment of release.

  We need a term for those who desire to work without causing harm, and to eat and to drink with gratitude, for those who long to sing and to laugh and to see the sun rise again to signal the dawn of a new day.

  We need a term for the huge majority of us who want to use our time and talents to create new chances for beauty, who want to dwell in peace and reverence for the gifts that have been given to us for millions of years for free.

  And, truthfully, we already know what that term is.

  It is human being.

  What does one do with a second chance in life? That is a question not only for me but for every person, and for our world as a whole.

  Personally, I am going to take on the struggle, with all my passion and with all my flaws, and with as many allies as I can assemble, to find the path to prosperity and sustainability, from whatever side, and in whatever place, so that humans may be seen for what they often are and what they always can become: honorable, strong, responsible, and beautiful. Others have given to me, and within whatever time is still mine I want to give back.

  I want to share the secret that was lying in plain sight for my whole life but that only became clear to me when I awoke from my brush with eternity. And that truth is that every person and every community, as a function of our free will, can always find a second chance. Every instant offers the gift of renewal. The choice for each of us and all of us is whether we choose to see and embrace that moment.

  The world may have its structures and consequences, but it is also full of grace that confers healing and freedom. That is the blessing of our residence on this lovely planet, which, no matter what we dream or do, will continue to spin gently into the future across an infinite ocean of stars.

  Acknowledgments

  Most of what I have been able to do in life has been the result of the generosity and assistance of others, so it is daunting to try to thank people in a short statement. To everyone mentioned in the book, and the many more friends and family members who are not, I offer my gratitude for your many years of love and support. Your compassion and affection have made my life not only possible but wonderful.

  I owe a special thanks to those who helped bring this book into being and who assisted us during the difficult years described in the last part.

  Over the years people have encouraged me to write a memoir as a sequel to my parents’ book Journey. In that book, first published in 1975 and reissued with a new epilogue in 1984, my parents described my childhood with hemophilia. I started on a much longer autobiographical work during the years I was ill, but then I realized that my life might outrun my pages and that I should speed up the process.

  In 2011 I had the opportunity to deliver a Grand Rounds lecture at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and I concentrated on telling five particular anecdotes from different moments in my life. The reaction proved so strong and positive that I decided to expand those stories into this memoir. I also spent much of 2011 as a candidate for the United States Senate in Massachusetts, and I wanted to offer the public an accounting of the origins and nature of my thinking. Though the campaign came to a premature close in late 2011 because of changing political circumstances, it was a wonderful experience. I thank the members of my campaign team, including Ali Den
osky-Smart, Eleanor Fort, Dave Kartunen, Sam Levor, Pat Tomaino, Lynda Wik, and Matt Wilson, as well as my great interns and volunteers. They all worked hard to move the campaign forward every day, even as their candidate set aside the early morning hours to write. I salute you and thank you for believing in the democratic process.

  I had many conversations at key moments that infused me with the necessary spirit to tackle this project. Chuck Collins got me fired up over lunch. Allen White offered his usual wise counsel even as he was meeting new challenges of his own. I want to single out the exceptional contribution of Owen Andrews, who met with me frequently to talk about themes; sifted through old speeches, diaries, and articles to find stories; and offered excellent editorial counsel throughout the process. With his help, I was able to focus the chapters and get them written much more swiftly than would otherwise have been possible.

  The enthusiasm and professional wisdom offered by Melanie Jackson, my friend and literary agent, proved invaluable. I am deeply honored to have had the chance to work again with my editor and publisher, Nan A. Talese, who not only believed in the idea of the book but repeatedly added her elegant handwriting to the manuscript with an unerring eye as to how to make it better. With insight, diplomacy, and skill, she coaxes the very best from all of her writers, and I am fortunate to be one of them.

  I want to offer special appreciation to some of the physicians who are not mentioned or are mentioned only briefly in this book, but to whom I turned for many years for assistance, including Dennis Burke, Stephen Chanock, Raymond Chung, Kathleen Corey, Winston Hewitt, Christopher Hughes, Stuart Knechtle, James Markmann, Sameer Mazhar, Sandra Nelson, Eric Rosenberg, R. Malcolm Smith, Owen Surmann, and Bruce Walker. They offered their professional skill and their personal friendship without hesitation or limit. I also thank Jean Pearce Handler and her lovely family, without whom this story would have turned out very differently.