Animals give unexpected insights by presenting ‘Circle of Life’ ideas

Monday, June 8, 1998

Animals give unexpected insights by presenting ‘Circle of Life’
ideas

MEANING: Disney movie rooted in quasi-Buddhist philosophy of
accepting love, family, loss

Two lions admit their love for each other and retake their
kingdom which had previously been overrun by hyenas. Sound like the
premise for a movie with the most important message ever put across
on the Big Screen? While, on a surface level, the plot is in true
Disney form – trite, sap and bunk – the "The Lion King" actually
has an under-riding theme that permeates it, most graphically at
the beginning and conclusion of the film with the song, "The Circle
of Life." Talking animals aside, this is truly the meaning of life.
There is a beginning and end. All we do in this life will
eventually come to a conclusion, happy or sad, tragic or glorious,
meaningful or pointless. If you believe in God, then great, your
story might not be over when you die. But it most certainly will
never be the same.

For those who are too cynical to comfortably believe in an
afterlife, then this is it. After we’re done here, there is nothing
more. Where are we to go for reassurance that what we’re doing
really matters?

Ah, I answer, get ye to a video store and rent my favorite movie
to learn about the aforementioned Circle of Life and get the
answers to all your questions. In the film, Jonathan Taylor Thomas,
eternally wishing he were as cute as Leonardo DiCaprio, lends his
voice to the young lion cub Simba, who, with his mysteriously Darth
Vader-sounding father, discusses the food chain in their kingdom.
Revealing that lions eat just about everything else, the father
explains how, after death, the lions become the basis for the plant
species which lie at the bottom of most food webs. So goes the
Circle, the Circle of Life (okay, I’m not Elton John, so sue
me).

Besides making for one hell of a movie, this concept is relevant
on a much grander scale. Even if Simba grew up to become an
alcoholic lion who leered at pornographic animal magazines,
eventually, in death, he would benefit something (the plants). But
since he faced his past (Hakuna Matada, as a little warthog told
me) and became an even greater Lion King than before, the lives he
touched and the hope he sparked, would go on to move and help
others and the plants would still benefit at the end of it.

And so it is applicable to our own lives, here in the real
world. Case in point: my family went through two separate traumatic
experiences early this year when my mother’s parents died within
two months of each other. First, my grandmother, Mary Rose Delregno
Calamari, gave up a lifelong battle with lupus when a mild heart
attack mercifully ended her long struggle. Born to the Midget Mafia
(there remain a few people on my mother’s side of the family who
have surpassed the five-foot-tall mark), she grew to adulthood,
substituting spaghetti for a less-than-perfect childhood (her
father moved across the street from the family he sired and cut all
relationship ties to them). Despite that, she gave her all in
raising four very wonderful and very short children, and taught
them the meaning of love, respect and God in a tough environment
that helped them immensely in raising their own families.

Sitting at her wake with my family and her body for 10 hours
during a weekend was excruciating. I was constantly reminding
myself that I was paying this woman more respect to her in death
than I ever had in life. I swore I wouldn’t make the same mistake
with her husband, the only grandfather I had left.

And then, exactly eight weeks (and no phone calls, letters or
e-mails from me) later, my grandfather simply stopped breathing,
after a tear-jerking emotional awakening, in which his family saw
him crying for the first time, over losing his life partner of 54
years. Maybe it was the emphysema or maybe it was because he wanted
to be near his loving wife, but for whatever reason, he was gone to
us forever, and, again, I felt more angst over his death than I had
ever celebrated his life. The guilt was worse this time around
because at my grandmother’s funeral I had sworn in front of my
entire family to make my grandfather a priority in my life, and I
never did. And the magic of a man who had been conceived in Italy
and born in America, who had been raised in an era of fierce
prejudice against Italian immigrants such as himself, who had
worked two jobs to support his family and was still able to keep
his quiet demeanor apparent for the bestowment of wisdom and love
onto his four children as they grew – this amazing man was lost to
me forever.

The weekend wake was repeated, though there was a subsequent
burial this time with my grandmother’s ashes put into his coffin –
they truly will be together forever. If it’s possible, it was even
worse the second time around, but making you sit in a room for 10
horrifying hours with the body of the deceased is how I’m told they
do it in the Catholic religion.

John Calamari died not knowing how much I loved him (or did I?),
and I never did a damn thing about it. As I write this, I’m heading
off to Vegas to meet the newest member of my family, one Marcus
Gary Garcia, born to Gina and Berto, from my father’s (and yes, my
Jewish) side of the family, two of the most entertaining people
you’ll ever meet.

Unfortunately, they’re also two of the most overwhelmed people
you’ll ever meet. While both have an incredible amount of love and
guidance that they’re eager to impart to their child, since both
hold down full-time jobs and plan to be full-time students for the
remaining year-and-a-half until they secure their education degrees
from UNLV, they may be biting off more than they can chew. And
unfortunately (or rather fortunately, since this is a newborn
child), this is one fish they cannot throw back. I have to wonder
whether the newly christened mother or father realize that by
rushing to do everything (school, work, etc.) as quickly as
possible to get to a point where they can slow down and comfortably
appreciate this child, their son might miss a world of nurturing
and attention that he so desperately needs at such a young age.
Babies don’t come with an on-off switch that can be adjusted around
school, work and other commitments; they whine, spit, shit, cry,
scream, yell and spit up 24 hours a day, seven days a week,
sometimes, like in my case, for the first 17 to 18 years of their
life.

Something’s going to have to give, and Gina and Berto will soon
realize it will not be their child. This isn’t to say that Marcus
won’t grow up to be a success, or that his mom and dad won’t do a
remarkable job of parenting. Adversity can cause the ordinary to
achieve the extraordinary, and believe me, Gina is by no means
ordinary. If you’ll permit me the use of anecdotal evidence, my own
parents were in horrible shape when they got married, my mother
having just joined the circus and my father owing gambling debts to
the Yakuza (or something like that). But still, they survived and
look how well I turned out … Er, maybe that’s not such a great
example. But hey, they had a daughter – one who’s older, wiser and
more accomplished than I am, having graduated with an architecture
degree from Berkeley and, after a four-year-long summer vacation,
heading back to her alma mater for her master’s degree. Sure, I got
the looks but my sister can’t have everything, right? So maybe my
concerns are for naught and Marcus will grow up in his father’s
musician footsteps to become the next George Michael, or go even
further and buy stock in Vaseline.

The point to all this reminiscing? There are several points
actually, as there are many lessons to be learned. On a side note,
love your family. Treat them right, show them respect and tell them
you love them. If they get hit by a bus tomorrow, at least they’ll
know they were loved and you’ll have one less regret. But more to
the point, I hope I’ve demonstrated what three lives have meant to
me, in the short span of five-and-a-half months, and that all of
us, whether we find strength in faith or believe it to be a
hopeless emotion, affect those that love us and care about us and
want only what’s best for us. If there’s any meaning to what we’re
doing here, it is that we touch those who are so important to us,
and that they will carry on with our small legacy, intermixed with
so many others of course, to be better people. A cyclical pattern
is apparent here, a (dare I say it?) Circle of Life, in that we
live and we die, but not before showing others the way; they then
go on to live and to die, and help so many others in between.

On a deeper, more philosophical note, if I were to affiliate my
own beliefs with any prescribed religion, all ethnicity aside, I
would align myself closest with Buddhism. There is something
special about the notion that we are born from the whole, live with
the whole and die into the whole. That we never know exactly from
where we came but always knowing exactly where we are heading to –
into the everlasting cosmos (sensing another circle?) – seems
pretty logical and right-on to me. On a personal level then, it
helps tremendously to acknowledge that though my grandparents may
have left their physical bodies behind, they still exist all around
me, in the trees, in the sky, in the stars, and in the people,
including, even if just in minute bits, in my new cousin, Marcus.
The Circle of Life. Respect it, remember it and sing about it when
you go to the zoo.

After all, it’s the track we’ll always be racing on.Eric
Jacks