I knew when I started that my purpose was to figure out if life is worth living. If I phrased it now, I’d ask, “What is a way of seeing that continually feeds a sense of life?” For a while, I thought I was working on the basic difference between excitation/arousal and rest, or awareness and attention, but that seems a little too physiological, a limited vision. So vitality or a basic life energy is important, but that’s not everything. In working on the idea of leadership as a function as opposed to being a role, something else was added, but I needed to figure out where or how it connected. The idea and experience of self-as-process didn’t quite fit the bill, as interesting and right as flow can be.
I’ve been working with a lot of things, concepts, and people, but the relationships between Kahlil Gibran and Mary Haskell and that between Shams and Rumi seemed to really stand out, to demand a wider perspective and a deeper understanding. Of course, the studying was motivated by a sense of personal need, a vast longing. The studying, then, was a re-presentation of that human drive towards some thing. That drive has always been foremost in my consciousness, a fire and a harsh master, but honest–kind of like Shams. There is an amazing distillation that occurs not only from moments of peak intensity in awareness of this burning but also from the absolute inescapability that some people feel, the experience that this has always been what it is and that it will never be avoided. I guess in that sense, it can be karma, it can be hell.
In the Bible, God tells some of his prophets that they must learn to feel this pain, to stick with it, in order to speak His words. It’s a test like architects testing a design to destruction. If you can handle the pressure, you’re given an inhuman amount of responsibility. If you can’t handle the pressure, you break...again, and again, and again. For those that could not live with infinite pain, they could not genuinely speak this god’s infinite love. With Kahlil and Mary, with Shams and Rumi, with Biblical prophets and their god, this separation that comes of such intimacy results in devastation. Or, the devastation, separation, and intimacy all fit together–if one is there, the others are as well. If you find the intimacy, enjoy it. Genuineness costs, fire burns, so Jesus recommended living “like the lilies”. In the Koran, Muhammed reports that you cannot take one part and leave another, but he also says that you can study basically forever and not get the whole of the teaching. That says it pretty well. I appreciate the deistic presentations because they keep bringing me back to how impossibly personal and huge it all is.
In contrast to “how it is” and this strong desire to love and be loved, there’s this sense of ingenuineness that our politicians and other commercial-makers seem to exemplify so well. And although there are stand-outs in this field, we’re all dilettantes of inauthenticity at some moments in our lives. At times, that crookedness or superficiality moves me towards the purity of overwhelming pain. It seems that the pain is not so much the point, but the clarity or totality found there might be.
For me, Buddhism raised the question, “If this is how it is (phrased as an ‘if’ because Buddhism seems to bring that openness, not because it may be some other way), then what needs to be said?” Because the pressure, the responsibility, seems to be to communicate or create this recognition more broadly, to create a sense of “the people” based on authentically responding to the call. The implied or promised reward is that we can stop fighting about “how it is” or should be. We can feel this in religious or personal contexts as prophets and/or as lovers, even as wannabe prophets and lovers.
When the question was raised, it created this space and a sense of alliance to space, like maybe silence was the answer. But I think silence as an answer only fits if the question is kept relevant–and the question is not always relevant. At some point, the need slips out while the saying may remain. At other times, no one is asking questions anyway. I remember some of those moments with fondness.
While these moments of totality and of silence are foundational, the desire for connection and peace still comes around. Sometimes people are willing to settle for only rest or exhaustion, joy or distraction, or silence, but I haven’t knowingly met anyone who is always satisfied with any one of these. We’re brilliantly complex even if we are basically simple. We tend to be dissatisfied when comparing our simplicity to someone else’s complexity or brilliance, and vice versa.
In trying to figure out what emotions “really are”, I was struck by how this feeling of intimacy–of emotions being true and mine–is pretty universal. That universality seems to rest well with one of the functions of emotions being communication. If we distort or repress our emotions, it’s bad for our bodies, stressful, and it communicates distrust or rigidity. Eventually, repressing emotions distances us from our emotions or leaves us habitually repeating “canned responses”. So expressing emotions is a basic form of honesty, and it appears that we are “made” for honesty–regardless of whether that maker is someone like God or something like the culmination of physical processes we call biology and evolution. Because honesty has to do with sincerity, and communications has to do with some sort of connecting, it seems that emotions, openness, and sincerity all go together. Deceit and repression take constant work while honesty allows us to feel what we feel and let it go.
The greatest bamboozle in human history is the creation and constant re-creation of the belief that honesty is difficult. In order to continue this bamboozle, humility is a necessary propaganda weapon (not just a tool). When people are encouraged to strive for humility because their desire for personal happiness is supposedly evil, they are caught in a double bind since we cannot honestly pretend that we do not want personal happiness and pride.
Instead of binding ourselves for the express purpose of avoiding impulsive immaturity, we could be open about the role status plays in emotions, communications, and pride. If modesty is a genuine emotion that comes up when we realize our limitations, how closely are humility and status tied together? I think they are inseparable. We encourage others to be humble if it supports our own desire to look good in some way, and we can enforce that “humility” if we have the persuasive power. In exercising that power, we show status. So status has very little to do with modesty but everything to do with humility. Humility is the show of modesty, and humility is not far from humiliation. Modesty, as a genuine emotion, is healthy for people of any status, but enforcing humility is an act of domination, an expression of false moral authority–whether we humble ourselves or someone else. Besides, humility contests are boring for contestants and spectators alike.
With humility out of the way, what stops impulsivity and pride? I’d say that pride and accountability mitigate but do not stop or squash impulsivity. Impulsivity, in a psychological sense used to be battled with “delayed gratification” as if it were something to be squeezed out of our psyches. But delaying gratification works in two ways. First, if the person gratification is delayed for is not agreeable to delay, they learn power and submission along with a measure of helplessness, resignation, and resentment. Secondly, we can force ourselves to wait–often resulting in a measure of helplessness, resignation, and resentment. While this may be a necessary step in personal development, framing it as delayed gratification makes the resignation an important part of what is valued. I’m not much of a hater, but I hate that. Resignation is the slow demise of spirit. It may be a by-product of maturation, but it is not part of maturity.
On the other side of enforced delay is the justification for enforcement–attention deficit disorder and other such euphemisms. While it is ridiculous to argue that there is not a fairly cohesive group of people who attend differently and it also seems ridiculous to ignore that they have difficulty retaining concentration on uninteresting topics for extended periods of time, I find it incredibly difficult to accept as a “disorder” any way of being that is a rejection of spending a great deal of one’s childhood in a square room with a flat ceiling, paper, and pencils. Would it be unfair to say that our society–whether parents choose this or not–is, in relation to our children, “attention deficit”? I want to share the accountability and limit the blaming.
If I reject the pairing of “delayed gratification” and resignation as integral to education, if I reject the onset of a slow spiritual demise, what would I offer in turn? This is simple, and it may seem like I go in circles because the logic seems blatantly obvious to me. “Gratification” is a Victorian denigration of the vitality that kids, and even some adults, express. People hold onto this Victorian thinking at a cost to their sense of spontaneity and connection to vitality. We ought to be teaching our children how to employ their attention as development of will rather than indoctrinating them into delaying gratification. It seems crazy to set up child’s values around “gratification” anyway. What is a way of seeing that continually feeds a sense of life? Neither gratification nor delay of gratification.
It is natural for young kids to learn fastest when they are playing–play is their language, and we never actually lose that language even if our vocabularies diminish. As they develop, learning to concentrate their mental and physical abilities is a natural development, and being in a group of kids fuels this desire to improve. Noticeably increasing these abilities is inherently motivating. If we’re willing to think like humans instead of like “adults”, it’s not hard to explain the use of concentration in ways that makes sense to kids–but we have to be part of their world, it’s our world too. The difficulty for adults is that increasing kids’ abilities rather than limiting their creativity and vitality pushes adults to stay creative too. Does that sound so bad?
If we understand that most people do not like simply concentrating their attention and holding on until something better comes along, we might be motivated to teach relaxation (if we’re capable) and then mindfulness (if we’re capable) as a creative method of paying attention in a way that one feels responsible and able in deploying attention, capable of finding interest in nearly any situation. In such a case, mindful patience is different than suffering in silence. Not many Americans still believe that suffering is a virtue even if patience remains one.
Now, if we respond to impulsivity with creativity and maturity rather than with brute moral or institutional force, what about the pride that will grow from our increasing abilities? It is only low self-esteem and comparative status-seeking that can even raise such a worthless question, if that question is raised in consternation rather than hope. If we have no purpose to education and no sense of direction with our culture, then it may be better to frustrate our citizens at a sixth grade level of creativity than at a sixteenth grade level of creativity–since the sixth graders will be creative, but maybe not as creative, in their rebellion. In other words, it will be easier to enforce their resignation, easier to squash their spirits than it would otherwise be after they have learned the ability to relax along with mindful appreciation.
But if we have a clear purpose for our education and a clear direction for our culture, then it may not be necessary to enforce resignation at any level of development. Of course, if we trade out resignation as a culture, we may have to begin to deal wholeheartedly in inspiration instead of consumerist distraction. Amazingly, what we diagnose as divided attention in children is what we pursue as adults. At least, this is what our culture seems to communicate in national social spaces (national media). Well, that distraction and diffusion helps us ignore exploitation of privilege and the rape of our natural environment. Kind of. We can pretend to ignore it, but reality seeps in at least around the edges. We literally have to submit to, bow to, limit ourselves to being little in spirit to find our current cultural direction acceptable. And some people fear pride. I have contempt for narcissistic entitlements and an insistence on small-mindedness, but I do not fear pride. Bob Marley sang that if you know who you are, then you don’t need to ask who the hell he thinks he is. I’m with Bob on this one. I have not resigned my spirit; I have no interest in damping this fire.
If emotions are ours and they are communication, if sharing them in a creative, prideful manner occurs, what then? Emotional openness and connection is the answer to what people fear about false pride. Power corrupts, and when a group of people idolize one among them, the function of emotions gets distorted. The idol gets separated by belief in status. And separation corrupts.
If we have a strong sense of vision, we will not idolize, separate, and admire the leaders we might otherwise love. We will hold onto our pride and look for inspiration.
When people fear a loss of pride, they may try to soothe a feared lack with status. But I hold pride and openness over status any day of the week. I believe widespread inspiration can replace widespread exploitation, that concentration and engagement can replace resignation, that relaxation can replace consumerism, that harmony can replace distraction and diffusion.
In dominance pyramids, the social structure most favored by conquerors, decision-making power is concentrated at the top. These tribes or empires have had the tendency of grabbing as much surplus as possible. This requires victims. When victimization becomes second nature, it stops being questioned directly. As our society became more affluent, and quickly considering the pace of empires, we challenged the idea of imperialism as applied directly to those of us thought of as “us”. Essentially, then, we’ve reshaped victimization. The new highest class may be the first generation on the planet that is now knowingly and undeniably stealing from the future of their children. Although stripping the environment has been part of humans’ tendency for a long time, we’ve reached a new level of exploitation.
Just as laws and the military strength to enforce them were an answer to monarchy, humane custom is the answer to this new level (same pyramidal form) of exploitation. What is good for the goose is good for the gander. Mindful appreciation is part of what allows people to live with fewer things than what exploitation allows. Mindful connection with our social and environmental contexts reduces the loneliness found at the exploitative top or at a dissociated middle or at a hard-used base. Openness removes the sadomasochism involved with false pride in separated exploiters, the pretension to status in their middle-men and -women, and the unnecessary degradation of the rest. Inspiration is the challenge to anyone calling themselves leaders. Leaders inspire, exploiters take. I’ll hold pride and openness over status and separation any day of this life.
We feel incapable as individuals and project that incapability on our group (humanity) when we feel cut off, when we are not working with others towards improvement. Growing up Christian taught me that God does not accept excuses. In Chinese Buddhism, one master said simply, “Death will not accept your verbal excuses.” The fairy tales seemed unrealistic when I was young, and the stories I learned in church seemed too big to be real. But I accepted them anyway, I accepted whatever might be genuine in them. Now, we may or may not face a second coming of some messiah–whether he is Jewish or Christian or grows up in Ohio–but we certainly face the polluted death of our planet. We have a fascination recognized to be as perverse as Clint Eastwood’s character’s obsession with killing an elephant in White Hunter, Black Heart. (The African guide, rather than the Hollywood hunter, takes one for the team.) As we continue to pour nitrogen into the Mississippi River and watch it run down to the Gulf of Mexico where it kills every fish within reach, the massive reality in myth that we find to be so compelling doesn’t really seem unrealistically big, although it is still overwhelming. What we do is that big, and the myths may guide us, but we live in a world where the global populations of fish–fish!–are diminishing.
I am only one man. Whether or not I am able to affect the amount of nitrogen in the Gulf of Mexico, the number of fish in the sea, or the majesty of elephants in Africa or anywhere else, the fire in me tells me I have nowhere to run away to. Nowhere to run. And the love just won’t quit no matter how many murders and models they put on my TV screen, no matter how many political “leaders” tell us we are not secure. We are poisoning our world out of fish. I am not interested in justification for delay or consumerist gratification. Teach a brother to fish.
Copyright Todd Mertz