It is with considerable regret that I continue to come up against the best intentions of positively motivated individuals and the collective behavior of many in general who seek to build a better world as best they know how. Even my wife looks at me sadly when I say I may never vote again. It would be difficult to overestimate the extent of my alienation from the culture that surrounds me, however. This is also not an evil thing!
As I sit here barely two weeks past my 62nd birthday, I realize that I’ve been on this road all my life. I seriously doubt I’m alone, either. After decades of defining myself as anti-establishment (while yearning like hell for the benefits compliance can bring), I now see this as just another team to root for. I’ve understood this intellectually for some time — most intuitive progressives do, I think — but to experience it on a deeper level is both shattering and liberating.
The pain and guilt of childhood had a higher purpose, it would seem. Parents consumed with their own conflicts set me up for what most would consider “failure,” despite all my gifts and talent, and roughly 10 years ago the patches started coming apart. Moving to el Norte was a monumental undertaking, an act of outrageous courage shading into high foolery, yet absolutely necessary, unavoidable, and ultimately perfect! I died many times. (Apocalypse?) Jungian analysis opened the door to the engine room, and once I was there…
Awareness and thinking are not the same thing. We’ve been bamboozling ourselves for thousands of years. The pain, guilt, and self-destructiveness of our world is no different in origin from the dynamics of everyone’s individual and collective psyches. Substituting one thought for another is business as usual, conducted in darkness.
Come the real revolution, I won’t even exist, and neither will you.
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As always, your comments provoke thought and reaction. In a letter to the poet Anne Sexton, who had told him of how difficult she was finding life, Saul Bellow said something like, “In the end the choice is simple: Live or Die, but don’t screw everything up with unproductive misery.” Poor Anne titled her next volume of poems “Live or Die”, but she couldn’t manage to continue doing the former: she killed herself a year or two later.
Anyhow, I often think of Bellow’s words. He’s right. Doesn’t much matter what the specific content of one’s political views, whether one’s a saint or a sinner, an ascetic or hedonist. In the end you just gotta go for it like old Jack and Neal did on the road all those eons ago.
I remember well the mood of childhood you describe – when it doesn’t really require much of a choice in order to do this, when every day just effortlessly produces its drama and small heroisms. Adult life can’t ever be quite that unclouded, admittedly, but it compensates by being more real and, I would argue, giving the decision to live or die a meaning that no child can appreciate. Being damaged goods – well, that’s the human condition in a nutshell. It makes the effort to crawl back to Eden (as Jack might have put it) all the more heroic.
Thus Spake Zarathustra.
Mmm … I do like that Saul Bellow quote. It’s all too easy to focus on what is wrong (= what doesn’t fit in with our own view of how things should be), while overlooking what is good. As an example (and I may be merely digressing here) I’d like to tell you about the recent dying of my 68-yr-old sister. She spent her last couple of months lying in a hospice bed, staring ahead, aware of what was going on around her, but uninvolved. Family and friends were constantly at her side, but she said nothing to them other than the mundane.
I felt cheated. I wished we’d been able to share one of those beautiful dying journeys one hears about.
Then I thought of those parts of the world where brutal dying, death from starvation and so on is commonplace. And I felt ashamed of my anger at missing out on the luxury of a ‘Beautiful dying journey’.
My sister eventually died peacefully in her sleep, and I was grateful for that.
Meanwhile, the ‘beautiful’ experience was provided by Dorothy, who was in the room opposite my sister’s. Dorothy was 85 and had bowel cancer. Two beloved husbands had died of cancer (her eyes lit up when she spoke of them). Her youngest daughter has leukaemia. There were other hardships in her life, but I won’t go into those.
Whenever anyone caught Dorothy’s eye she gave them a joyful wave. If you waved back she said, “Hello sweetheart,” and did a little dance.
Dorothy has had a difficult life by western standards, with much sorrow. But it the joy and love and beauty that shine from this lovely lady’s eyes.
I think I’ll make her a role model. Wish me luck.
Good story, Carmel. Thank God we don’t have to be poets, thinkers or saints to live intense and happy lives. Actually, too much thinking can kind of get in the way.
Here’s Fred C’s Insight, Prof John:
Fred call aka bigbro says:
As for me, whenever I visit Barnstable, I go to the
church that was
introduced to me by a fine gentleman named Kurt.
I go to the
Church of the God of the Utterly Indifferent.
Essentially, the church
teaches the gospel that God has a lot more on mind
than to worry about
what I, or any other mortal, is egocentrically
thinking at the moment.
Expressing a crises of faith does not really alter
the balance of the
universe and chaos theory all that much. I suspect.
But, who cares?
It
really doesn’t matter, does it?
In a rather oblique way, that’s all true. I’d put it a little differently, but actually, though, I wouldn’t put it any way at all. THAT’s what I’m talking about.
As soon as you name it, it’s gone.
There is some Krishnamurti (“Freedom from the Known”) in there somewhere John..!! ??
and always such parallels that you are thinking/pondering the same shit I am- or vice versa….
Not any Krishnamurti in there by design, but the ideas are pretty universal. About as universal as you can get, actually.
Also not surprising about the parallels, Steve. If a thing is valid, it’s going to be felt by more than just a couple of nut cases! Seems to me that most of what we have going nowadays is built on bullshit, basically. Bible bullshit, traditional “wisdom” bullshit, political bullshit, marketing bullshit… domination of nature bullshit, sexual bullshit, geez, there’s no end to it. A person has to work very, very hard to be consciously present and independent.