hopelesshappiness.com

There are worse things than spilled milk. Like boiled over turnips. My wife boils her turnips in water and milk. I hate turnips. She left the room Thanksgiving morning and I was left to deal with nasty, smelly, milky boiled over turnips. We laughed. Married now for 44 Thanksgivings and each year we know better what to do; how to act. Laugh at the spilled milk – laugh at the family shenanigans – laugh at each other and at ourselves – laugh at the big shots and the state of the union – crying just takes time away from working on the potential we can find in hope. To laugh is to reset; move on.

For a union to be strong it must be proximate. The greater the separation, the darker the lines, the higher the wall, the deeper the divide, the more entrenched the beliefs – then the weaker the union. Yet in this country, we keep widening the gaps. In a family, there can be periods of separation that weaken and sometimes sever bonds. In my marriage, 44 years has contributed to a strength that (I believe) is unbreakable. In this nation, we pretend to be together, proximate, close, and we successfully fool ourselves in that regard because today many entrenched beliefs, many lines and walls and divides are better hidden with less defined edges. And systemically, those in power have been allowed to move further and further away making it easier for them to work behind the scenes creating substantial hindrances to the survival, salvation and essential abundance of this once hopeful populace.

Us and them. The reality is 98% (Us) and 2% (Them). Today’s working practicality is 49% (Us) and 49% (Them). The numbers move short distances according to circumstance, but as long as the very small minority of big shots (from their perches on high) are allowed to define and dictate lines and walls and divides and our place, we will continue to be fooled. We could learn from a family where, in times of difficulty, protection and comfort can be offered, found, provided by us. We could learn from a marriage where, in times of difficulty, we know better what to do, we know better how to act, we know how to laugh. But in this nation, in these times of difficulty, instead of protection and comfort, instead of knowing better, rhetoric is spewed, edges are softened, machinations are more well-hidden, and the rich get richer.

On Thanksgiving afternoon I was left to deal with in-laws, and though perhaps not as nasty and smelly as the turnips, I had to laugh when a father and his adult son, in the same conversation lamented both the fact that an opposing team (in college football) had a very good chance of repeating as champions, and the fact that their team (in the NFL) had a reasonably good chance of NOT repeating. The illogic escaped them. And this is the danger of applying ‘Us and Them’ to any decision-making process; the outcome will reflect the illogic, the lack of reason, the total disregard for Justice. And as long as we continue to divide and subdivide and sever and separate Us from Us, and falsely accuse Us of being Them, and completely ignore Them, the 2% will repeat and the status quo will remain.

This week I am reading “Small Mercies” from Dennis LeHane. One-hundred-twenty-three pages in, on their first date, as Bobby is walking Carmen to her car…

“He glances sideways once, catches her glancing sideways right back at him with a secretive smile, and he considers the possibility that maybe the opposite of hate is not love. It’s hope. Because hate takes years to build, but hope can come sliding around the corner when you’re not even looking.”

Hope is born and often dies as a feeling, a desire for something more. To take hope from its dormancy to any degree of fruitfulness, requires consideration, care, attention, effort. Of course at this point it is no longer just hope. Layers have been added creating a substantiality that though sprung from hope becomes a seemingly separate entity. It is not. I believe hope is still there; perhaps forgotten but not gone. When I lose sight of the hope that guided my beginning, I am then driven by circumstance and substance and structure, and in this entanglement, my essence is lost. Substantial abundance alone is abundance detached from hope. Substantial abundance connected to hope is, well, hopeful. To come closer and closer to an essential abundance, (though in this lifetime never completely attainable), requires one be driven by hope that is renewed and nourished in every moment by beneficence.

I believe all hope, to an extent, is selfish hope; as dictated by one's Humanity. But the more consideration, nourishment, care, attention, beneficence, effort that is freely given to one's selfish hope, the more unselfish it will become. And the more unselfish the hope, the closer one comes to an essential abundance.

So,

1. We cannot lose touch with hope, even if and especially when one finds their self in a state of or approaching substantial abundance; and
2. We must nurture our hope and continue to let it drive, even though it will potentially hinder and limit substantial growth and abundance.

Some get around these limitations by believing that hope is having done well. Some believe that substance, (regardless of how it is acquired), equates to a job well done. And some uncap substantial growth by believing that congratulating yourself for a job well done lays a foundation for continued success, and because it is a foundation, they misidentify it, (this righteous, entitled pride), for hope. And though it is a desire for more, in this case the expressed hope is stillborn. And in this case the consideration, care, attention, and lack of effort unfeelingly smothers any hope for hope. And in this case, substantial growth is inversely proportional to essential uncertainty. “I remain steadfast in my conviction that the constancy of uncertainty, the struggle between Goodness and Malevolence, Compassion and Cruelty, Empathy and Indifference, a desire for Justice and a self-serving greed, is necessary for essentiality, which in turn is necessary for survival; and ultimately salvation.”

Yet today we are all about substance and certainty. And today we ignore survival and salvation. And this perspective, this way of life, if it could speak, would argue. It would ask, “why would anyone want to aspire to uncertainty? And how can uncertainty be our savior? Our salvation?” It would declare, “we are more likely to find answers with pride and entitlement, might and right, power and wealth, certainty and oppression. Uncertainty! My God! That would mean asking questions, and talking to people, strangers, who are not us, to seek a consensus. That would mean listening, and working to understand, and compassion, and empathy. That would mean consideration and nourishment and care and attention and beneficence and effort. And what good is all that when the answers are all right here tangled up in our circumstance and substance and structure. My God, man, what are you thinking?”

According to Bobby, “hate takes years to build,” as does the entanglement, the configuration, the justification that supports substantial abundance for the few. According to Bobby, “hope can come sliding around the corner when you’re not even looking.” And hope begets hope. And hope reminds us that maybe we don't know everything; maybe we could make things better. And when hope is detached and forgotten for too long, it is replaced by pride and entitlement and might and right and power and wealth and certainty and oppression; and then ultimately, hate.

Perhaps, at least for practical purposes, hope really is the opposite of hate.

I am thankful for hope.

This week I am reading “All the Pretty Horses” from Cormac McCarthy. A short ways in Rawlins asks John Grady, “How the hell do they expect a man to ride a horse in this country?” John Grady replies, “They don't.” This was after the war in the 1940's when it was becoming more and more difficult to ride cross country on a horse. Some pages later the following exchange takes place:

“You ever get ill at ease? said Rawlins.

About what?

I don’t know. About anything. Just ill at ease.

Sometimes. If you’re someplace you ain’t supposed to be I guess you’d be ill at ease. Should be anyways.

Well suppose you were ill at ease and didn’t know why. Would that mean that you might be someplace you wasn’t supposed to be and didn’t know it?”

This discomfort, this feeling out of place, has only gotten more and more so in the decades since. I don't believe we were meant to be fenced in or out by so many property lines. That said, if we could be freed from the yoke of bureaucracy, I also don't believe we were meant to have the dominion we are inclined to, and that we often claim as a right and enforce upon those with less power. And if you're going to start quoting the Bible, don't forget the parts about replenishing the earth and breaking the yoke. Within my limited knowledge, I interpret dominion as a challenge for us to be responsible stewards. Today, we are not only irresponsible, but due to the obstacles constantly being placed and flung and stacked before us, at us, and on us as individuals, not a one of us can find our own way. I believe I am meant to be on my own path, but the powers that be, (both human and systemic), do a very good job of convincing me that clearing their path is my path. So, I am constantly ill at ease and most of the time I don't know why. And worse, I can’t explain it. And because of this lack on my part, because I refuse the scythe (when I can), for practical purposes I am merely seen as mean and surly; a curmudgeon to be largely ignored.

It is sad that our collective imagination is not allowed to extend beyond the entangled web of property lines, boundaries, borders, parameters, that has evolved from a spiritual connection of shared rights on a peopled land, to the commodification of land as dictated by power and wealth, to today's systemic political favoritism / oppression dynamic that is a (not so subtly) biased byproduct of capital-driven property rights. Though it is argued that virtue is not attainable without property, am I naïve to suggest a flexibility, a relaxation, perhaps even an erasure of some of the more entrenched, unjust, disheartening lines? I do not believe all of these lines are indelible and I do believe collective virtue is more and more possible with each passing day. Now if we could somehow bolster our collective imagination; soon...

I lay there dead, mangled, parts crushed, some strewn about in a mish-mash of gristle, blood, and fat now defined by an unbeating heart, an unthinking mind, an undone spirit. So, of course it is no longer of consequence to me. In fact I find it is a weight lifted. I am no longer mired in my conscious entanglements of arbitrary pedestrian fear.

I am speaking with presumption before the fact and metaphorically of course. The dismantling that I imagine as a horrible accident began decades ago when I first recognized that first difference between instinctive, affective, interpretive and contemplative, and it will end with my death. At that point, and not a moment before, I will know, or not. Whether I die quietly alone, or to much unfounded fanfare, (whether that fanfare be the nature and circumstance of my death and/or the histrionics that follow), I will die quietly alone; mangled; strewn about; gristly; unnecessary.

The biggest question for many is, in that moment after death, will I be looking down upon my mangled parts with some sort of greater Wisdom? Or will my truth merely be strewn about for others to forget, ignore, walk around, or scrape from the bottom of their shoe? The biggest question for me is, over the next few years, maybe decade or two, can I pull or keep myself together enough to be recognizable as a consistently coherent contribution?

Sure, the thought of an unworldly weightlessness, existential or not, does have a certain appeal. But the thought of me mangled and strewn about, (as we all to some extent are), keeps me focused on the task at hand.

Perhaps we are pedestrian because it helps us to deny that we are afraid, anxious, discouraged, apprehensive, nervous, suspicious, timid, abashed, cowardly, trembling, daunted, disturbed, intimidated, perplexed, rattled, disheartened, timorous, upset, worried, distressed. We work so hard to not be these things, we work so hard to prove to others that we are not these things, and in this hard-working waywardness we allow those with more to lose, those who are more afraid, to bluster and fear monger and overpower and we throw up our hands with a little cry of helplessness and continue to pretend and go along. And yet, despite how hard we all work, in the end we are exactly all these things.

If one is looking for assurances, certainty, control there are good reasons to be afraid. And being human, to some extent, each and every one of us would like to be reassured. I believe we find this comfort by trusting in someone or something. I believe our trust is far too often, misplaced. In theory trust works best when mutually reciprocated, and this give and take is most likely found with a someone in a personal relationship. Yet we more often than not tend to dilute and taint our personal relationships with a context. And on these larger scales (such as cultural, regional, national, spiritual identities, systems and beliefs), we find it much easier (often together) to trust prepackaged bureaucracy, convention, certainty, division than to experience the discomfort of unproven, untried change; it is much easier to trust something you (think you) know than it is to trust someone you do not know. Yet, looking closely, trusting someone we don’t know is exactly what we are doing in every occasion in which we overtly or otherwise support the status quo. Looking closely, and from a distance, it is more than obvious that the something is not at all trustworthy. The status quo is not working. The status quo has never worked as one can clearly see by looking back and documenting change throughout our history, yet we still fight to maintain it, and for each day, (today more than ever), that it remains the status quo, we should become more and more afraid.

Perhaps in my role as an alarmist, this also makes me a fearmonger. But if we must fear something, (which we must, admittedly or not), I would rather we fear our current trajectory’s inevitability than to fear the change necessary for our survival.

I believe by choosing the bureaucracy, convention and certainty of division, (of fearing one another), over the Beauty, Truth and Wisdom of Justice, (of fearing the unknown), one is not choosing conservative thought over progressive thought, nor is one choosing one individual representative over another. I believe this choice is made because it helps us to deny our ignorance and loneliness. We are more afraid of what we should fear less because it helps us to be more comfortable; forgetful; blissful.

And as with arbitrary and pedestrian, if one is to move beyond aware into active, if one is to be truthful about one’s fear and/or other failings, one must disengage their ego. I understand and acknowledge that awareness is a necessary step toward change, but it is not change. We congratulate ourselves on our knowledge, put it in a shiny glass trophy case, and pull it out only to dust it off and reposition it so the different angle looks like progress. This week at work a topic reared its ugly head and we all gravely shook our heads and maintained we were working on it, researching, mulling it over, adding it to agendas, creating to-do lists, asking a committee to form a sub-committee. We’ve been saying these same things for the four years I’ve been aware. Awareness is not change and at work I have relatively little power. As an individual though, I have more power to actively find advantage in my fear and to use that to move me to action. I did that recently by taking a pay cut to move into a position where after a certain amount of vigorous head-shaking agreement, perhaps I can make a bigger difference. Or, perhaps not. I am, to a greater extent than I want to be, at the mercy of circumstance, and perhaps the action(s) I take will be of little or no or (even) negative consequence. But progress will not come until one moves from awareness to active awareness to focused peace, purpose, reason and passion in the effort to gain ground on Justice. Lofty aspirations. Unrealistic? Perhaps yes, on larger scales, but I don’t believe so much so for an individual.

Still difficult though because I am arbitrary, I am pedestrian, I am afraid.

If I am arbitrary to help me deny that I am pedestrian, and if I am pedestrian to help me deny that I am afraid, then it is reasonable that I am afraid because I am arbitrary.

This is a good bit of awareness. I am working to move it to action.