Tom McBride

King Theseus had a great ship, but over time all the wood and sails were replaced. Is it still King Theseus' ship? The college where I taught no longer has any of my old colleagues on the faculty. Is it still the same college? All 125 of us are gone. Mary Martin in THE SOUND OF MUSIC thrilled the von Trapp kids with a cheery song called "My Favorite Things." John Coltrane took the lyrics away and turned it into a brooding, melancholy sax solo: Is it still the same song?

Sigmund Freud thought "ordinary unhappiness" was the human lot. He went on to write that what makes us even more miserable is a neurotic scheme to rescue ourselves from what can't be helped. Take Shakespeare's Macbeth. He was ordinarily unhappy; he had divided loyalties between his wife and his king. Well, we all have those -- it's part of our usual sadness in life.

Sometimes kids are described as imaginative. I think the word should be "grateful." When I was a kid, I loved TV and film Westerns: cowboys on horseback, who shot at bad guys and sang songs. I wanted a horse of my own. One day I got one: a stick horse. It was a horse's head sticking out of a broomstick. I rode it all over the neighborhood; I don't recall once being ungrateful that I didn't have a real horse. I also wanted to be Superman. I got a short red kerchief and a blue shirt.