Enjoy the view

Saturday: a bench on the pier at Port Dover


At the head of Port Dover pier stands a bronze memorial to all fishermen who have perished on the Great Lakes. The pier itself is lined with humbler, personal monuments: benches inscribed with names of the lost.

Couples. A mother and father remembered by their daughter. Entire families of men lost by their women. Two sons drowned in separate incidents. There must have been 40 or 50 benches.

One said: “Enjoy the view.” Overlooking peaceful Lake Erie on a breathless afternoon.

I grew up on the same shoreline, two hours west. We never knew anyone who drowned, but Harrow was a farming community. My cousin happened to miss a small plane flight that crashed on Pelee Island.

Another image of the weekend is seered in memory: driving home past fields rolling and simmering under the sun. There is a peculiar deciduous lushness about the sliver of Ontario south of the 44th Parallel: patches of Carolinian forest receding into sweat blue distance. I kept shifting my sunglasses off and on, squinting at polarities. A great roadside maple was freshly arrayed, afire. The vibrant land, passing in squares and coiled riverbeds, offered coded messages about life, but I didn’t hold the key.

Definition of cynicism?

Recently, on LJ I believe, I saw a quoted definition of cynicism, something like this: "The belief that everyone is naturally motivated by selfishness." The LJer (or his quotation) went on to elaborate that this is not necessarily a bad thing, that it allows us to have more reasonable expectations of others, and that genuine altruism may be treated with highest regard.

I might have seen this on a friend's or friend-of-friend's info page or website. I only gave it passing notice, but the thought has stuck with me since last week. I want to find the source for the sake of reference. If you recognize it and can suggest where I saw it, that might be an act of altruism.