Editor's Clarification: Okay, because of a post made a few weeks back, some may have drawn wrong conclusions about my mostly imaginary relationship with a certain obscure talk show host/icon. For all records, I like Oprah. I really do. She's compassionate, enthusiastic and purpose-driven. I merely, for sake of my own amusement (It's funny...to me.), pointed out some peeves I have with the show. (And yes, I do have a lotta peeves about a lotta things. Nahhhh. *sticking my tongue out*) The point of the post was to ridicule The Secret. Mission accomplished. I'm going to go take off my Navy flight suit now. Uh....strategery. Yeah. On to the topic of the hour.
Alrighty. Eventualism. I stole the term from a Soderbergh movie called Schizopolis. It's used as a parody of "religions" like Scientology. Well, with all apologies to Steven, I'm totally stealing the term for a definition (redefinition?) that better suits me. (Hey, it is my blog so it can be ALL about me. Heh heh.)
There is a movement afoot in America. It involves purple bracelets (purple?!) and a solemn vow to not complain for like eternity. I found out about this on you-know-whose talk show. It was started by a preacher and kinda took off. Now one quote stuck with me from this show that set alarms off in my head and unloosed a frantic robot in my brain shouting "DANGER WILL HANKINSON! DANGER!" Okay, it didn't actually say that but you get the picture. The preacher said that "complaining is a bad habit that stems from people wanting things to be different." This is paraphrased but the meaning is intact. For us simple country folk, what he is saying is that we should accept things just like they are and not "complain" in hope of eliciting change. Complacency anyone?
Simple truth: change happens all the time. From weather, to our bodies, to places, to all things great and small. I'm asserting a viewpoint that now is a culmination of all thens and the future is a hope pulling us forward, ultimately fulfilled when we accept change and react to it ethically in the successive series of nows. Eventualism. Now, I may have just caused aneurysms in some people and I believe I'm suffering one myself having just written this. Basically change is the natural state of existence, we must accept that and attempt to be ethical beings regardless because it's the only path to a worthwhile future for ourselves and humanity in general. Eventualism. There, I tried it again.
Now that we all have regained consciousness from our blown-brain moment, I can explain the difficulty with living eventualistically. Simply put, in some cases, change hurts. Badly. Our bodies and minds break with illness, people we love live and die and emerge and vanish, the stability we've created in our lives can be erased at the whim of natural occurence. It's life. Some attempt to run from change and the associated pain. Blaise Pascal says in his Pensées that if we didn't move, chance, risk or act, we could avoid the pain of life. So, if we become turnips life would be ducky. Not practical. We cannot refuse to move because there might be pain. We also cannot run from existential pain because it will hunt us down and try to break us. I know of what I speak. I've been prey before. As hard as it is (but hey, it sounds easy), we must walk through. Accept the pain as the natural price for living a full, glorious life. For the Runners who read this, you cause yourself more pain than any person should bear. At some point of wisdom, you will realize this and truth will reveal itself in all clarity. For all who read this, I send peace, empathy but mostly hope. Never give in, never fade away. All things pass and everything is eventual.
Showing posts with label meaning of life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label meaning of life. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Yesterday, Tomorrow and the Time In Between
On a sunny day years ago, I talked to a dying man. He was tall and lean and spoke with a slow Texas drawl. Though his hair was faint and bone white, there was a clarity in his misty blue eyes. It was a clarity age could never touch.
I had failed. That's why I met him. Like a young, nested bird I tried to fly too high too soon. I ran out of College in Missoula. I ran back home confused, sick and furious. I ran back to Superior. It was time for my transfiguration.
We walked the road slowly passing houses and the high school until we reached the edge of the woods by the river. He picked an old pine stump half-torn from the ground and leaned against it. We talked about destiny and futures decided and incomplete pasts. I told him how lost and dead and cold I felt. I failed and I hated myself for it. Hated. I couldn't even look in a mirror for sheer desire to scratch the eyes out of the failure looking back at me.
It's strange how casually some of the most important lessons are passed from one person to another. Just conversing. In a coffee shop or a street corner or the edge of the woods in Superior. I needed to find a way to forgive myself but I also needed a direction to follow through the winds of uncertainty swirling around me. I needed something to make it okay for me to leave on that future day when I could stay no more. So, although I didn't ask, he told me a story.
He was a G.I. in the Korean Conflict. In the tent that he and another soldier stayed, he collapsed to the floor. Things got blurry and faded and mixed up. Then, like the picture on an old television, everything narrowed to a point of light, then, darkness. The awareness he said he had was impossible to rationally explain. It wasn't the same as the awareness he had while telling me this but there were no real parallels either. He said that the dark began to lighten and he felt warmth like when he slept in the sun. There was a cacophony of strange sounds like a group of people talking in an underwater echo chamber. Fear wasn't exactly what he felt. It was more resignation. Whatever was whatever. Then he felt a single strong whisper inside. It didn't say much. It just asked him one question: What have you given? Over and over it echoed. What have you given? In a kind of mouthless paralysis, there was no answer he could give. Then the darkness returned and swallowed him whole.
Sitting in the shade of the pines looking at the mountains reflect in the river, he let me interpret what he said in silence. All I did was let the question bounce around my skull. What have I given? What could I give? What was the right answer? I flashed through a thousand trite answers that you'd find written in the "Spirituality" section of Barnes and Noble. I got lucky, however, because he spoke before I was going to. He said that he woke up in a Japanese hospital. He spent 25 years in a Bourbon bottle trying to forget what happened on the battlefield. He ran too. When faced with something as overwhelming as yourself in the unchangable past, you run. It's what people do. But when the Bourbon wore off, the question was always there waiting. Finally, it occurred to him to maybe look for an answer. Travelling the country, getting married, having children...all the while trying to answer this riddle from his past. Then he said that an answer came one day and he didn't even remember when, where or how. He just had an answer that he was willing to bet it all on. What can you give that would ever be enough? Yourself. He left it at that for me to interpret. He at the point had spent years as a case manager for mentally ill children. I thought I understood and here's what it means to me: For my life to be acceptable to me at all, I had to give myself over to the purpose of allowing others to embrace life in this world of small miracles. I had to let the fire of empathy consume me. I could dedicate my time here to nothing less. I'd found the beginning of my path.
Now, I still fail, mind you, but I always try. I need to try at least, then failure can be an acceptable consequence. It is my path and on that day, my last day here, if I've tried and left this world even slightly better than if I'd never existed, I say let the wind erase me. And maybe I'll see you somewhere on the path in the future.
I had failed. That's why I met him. Like a young, nested bird I tried to fly too high too soon. I ran out of College in Missoula. I ran back home confused, sick and furious. I ran back to Superior. It was time for my transfiguration.
We walked the road slowly passing houses and the high school until we reached the edge of the woods by the river. He picked an old pine stump half-torn from the ground and leaned against it. We talked about destiny and futures decided and incomplete pasts. I told him how lost and dead and cold I felt. I failed and I hated myself for it. Hated. I couldn't even look in a mirror for sheer desire to scratch the eyes out of the failure looking back at me.
It's strange how casually some of the most important lessons are passed from one person to another. Just conversing. In a coffee shop or a street corner or the edge of the woods in Superior. I needed to find a way to forgive myself but I also needed a direction to follow through the winds of uncertainty swirling around me. I needed something to make it okay for me to leave on that future day when I could stay no more. So, although I didn't ask, he told me a story.
He was a G.I. in the Korean Conflict. In the tent that he and another soldier stayed, he collapsed to the floor. Things got blurry and faded and mixed up. Then, like the picture on an old television, everything narrowed to a point of light, then, darkness. The awareness he said he had was impossible to rationally explain. It wasn't the same as the awareness he had while telling me this but there were no real parallels either. He said that the dark began to lighten and he felt warmth like when he slept in the sun. There was a cacophony of strange sounds like a group of people talking in an underwater echo chamber. Fear wasn't exactly what he felt. It was more resignation. Whatever was whatever. Then he felt a single strong whisper inside. It didn't say much. It just asked him one question: What have you given? Over and over it echoed. What have you given? In a kind of mouthless paralysis, there was no answer he could give. Then the darkness returned and swallowed him whole.
Sitting in the shade of the pines looking at the mountains reflect in the river, he let me interpret what he said in silence. All I did was let the question bounce around my skull. What have I given? What could I give? What was the right answer? I flashed through a thousand trite answers that you'd find written in the "Spirituality" section of Barnes and Noble. I got lucky, however, because he spoke before I was going to. He said that he woke up in a Japanese hospital. He spent 25 years in a Bourbon bottle trying to forget what happened on the battlefield. He ran too. When faced with something as overwhelming as yourself in the unchangable past, you run. It's what people do. But when the Bourbon wore off, the question was always there waiting. Finally, it occurred to him to maybe look for an answer. Travelling the country, getting married, having children...all the while trying to answer this riddle from his past. Then he said that an answer came one day and he didn't even remember when, where or how. He just had an answer that he was willing to bet it all on. What can you give that would ever be enough? Yourself. He left it at that for me to interpret. He at the point had spent years as a case manager for mentally ill children. I thought I understood and here's what it means to me: For my life to be acceptable to me at all, I had to give myself over to the purpose of allowing others to embrace life in this world of small miracles. I had to let the fire of empathy consume me. I could dedicate my time here to nothing less. I'd found the beginning of my path.
Now, I still fail, mind you, but I always try. I need to try at least, then failure can be an acceptable consequence. It is my path and on that day, my last day here, if I've tried and left this world even slightly better than if I'd never existed, I say let the wind erase me. And maybe I'll see you somewhere on the path in the future.
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