Primal Vision

"If you're free you'll never see the walls.
If your head is clear you'll never free fall.
If you're right you'll never fear the wrong.
If your head is high you'll never fear at all."

["Exploder", Audioslave]


 

Anyone who has read more than a few entries of my blog probably realizes I do more than my fair share of reflection, on who I am, who I was, and who I hope to become.  I think a fair bit about past experiences and how I think they may or may not have molded me into who I am today.  A fellow blogger once told me I was "the most self-aware person she'd ever known".  Am I more self-aware than most?  Maybe.  I'll give it some thought and get back to you.

Taoism teaches that to be fearless is to "conquer oneself"; it's not about conquering others.  For a time, years ago, I believed this meant living without fear.  Indeed, I thought a life with fear was no life at all, and only by living fearlessly could one be truly living.  But the duality of the Taijitu ("the yin-yang symbol") is meant to remind us of the relative nature of all things.  There is no "light" without "dark" and no "strong" without "weak".  There can be no "brave" without "afraid".  I understand that now.  If you have nothing no one in your life you're afraid of losing, you have nothing worthwhile.

When I was a young boy growing up, being "manly" was always a big thing.  Being macho.  Being brave.  You tried very hard not to cry no matter how much something hurt.  You were expected to talk tough, pushing the envelope as far as possible while sensibly trying to avoid catching a beating, or at least not a serious one.  Sometimes you'd gladly take a beating, rather than lose face by backing down.  I posed the question to some friends at work the other day, "How many different people have ever punched you in the face in your lifetime?"  At a guess, I'd say I weigh in somewhere between 10 and 20.  I see it as a mark of "growing up in da hood", but I probably shouldn't feel the pride in it that I seem to.  That number would likely be halved if I'd had the sense to swallow my pride and walk away more often.  But that wouldn't have been "manly".  Pride goeth.

One of the other parts of being "manly" back then - and perhaps even now - was that men like to theorize wildly about what they'd do if that ever happened, whatever that is.  "I'd kill them!"  "I'd rip their nuts off!"  "I'd..."  Whatever.

When it comes to primal fear, if there's one thing life has taught me, it's this:

You don't actually know what you'll do, not beforehand.  Theorize all you like, but in that moment - whatever that moment is - how you react will have a lot more to do with the core of who you are as a person than whatever brave persona you were trying to push when you talked big so long ago.  And you may surprise yourself, in ways that will bring you pride, or shame, or neither, or both.  And that scenario you envisioned is likely way more complicated in real-life than the simplistic version you spoke of, and with luck your far-less-primal reaction will hopefully be a much better one.

For instance: the last time I was punched in the face was when I was mugged in my early 20s.  I was walking alone at night in a bad neighborhood, just heading to the corner store from my apartment, when a guy walking in the other direction approached and punched me square in the face.  I took the hit and ... felt remarkably calm.  I could feel my blood start to race, sure, but I maintained my composure, surveyed my surroundings, and began to think tactically and weigh my options.  I didn't instinctively fight back.  I didn't panic.  He was slightly smaller than me.  For a clean sucker punch, it had no leather on it at all.  (It wouldn't even leave a mark.)  I pondered the possibility of fighting, and decided I could probably take him, but something in the back of my mind made me question if it was the right course of action.  I chose to outwit him instead.  He walked away with the $15 from my right pocket.  I walked away with the unnoticed wallet in my left, including the $200, credit card, bank card, ID, etc.  You might think paying someone $15 for punching me in the face should be chalked up to a loss, but when his two friends emerged from the bushes across the street moments later, I chalked it up to the right move.

I believe that in these primal moments, we receive unique opportunities to catch a glimpse, a little peek deep down into our own souls, to see all the way to the basement and know a little more about who we really are.  I learned that night that I'm probably smarter than I am brave, but if "manly" equals "stupid", I can live with being a little less brave than I'd like to claim.

Around the same time in my life, I was a part of a convoy of mini-vans that was travelling along a highway across Nova Scotia when it started to rain, and the one ahead of ours hydroplaned into the dividing ditch at 110kph.  No one suffered any serious injuries, but in the chaos that followed, while I was certainly not paralyzed with fear, I wasn't quite myself either.  I didn't do anything wrong, but afterwards I felt like I could have stepped up and done more right.  The other officers performed admirably, especially the one in charge, who was himself driving the vehicle that flipped.  I don't know if I've ever told him that; I probably should.  I wouldn't say I feel any shame about how I performed, just... disappointed.

Back four or five years ago, I had a moment of panic when faced with something as simple as a nosebleed that I (mistakenly) thought wouldn't stop. (Hard to explain here.)  But that moment, coming face-to-face with that fear, as ridiculous as it might seem in hindsight, gave me another glimpse down into my soul, and spawned a bout of self-reflection that made me realize I'd taken on the role of parent much more than I'd ever expected.  It was a very comforting realization.

And much more recently, I learned something that made me once again fearful, once again it was for my child.  And in that moment, as my mind raced with a million thoughts of all the possible terrible outcomes, borne of fear and cynicism, as that torrent of anxiety swelled up inside me and thrust the question "What will I do?" into my mind, it was near-instantly quelled by a better, simpler question:

"What wouldn't I do?" 

In that moment I felt a fighting instinct rise up within me that I didn't feel that night in the darkened street, or out on the slick highway.  "What wouldn't I do?" I asked myself.  "What am I not prepared to lose?  House?  Job?  Friends?  Family??  What am I not prepared to sacrifice?"

Nothing.

Burn it all down.  Take everything I have.  Because I have found within me something more valuable than everything else I've amassed in my 44 years.  I've found a tiny seed of parental instinct I never thought I had.  I found a flower my mother planted there before she died 23 years ago.  I felt it blossum with the ferocity of an erupting volcano.  Life dared to ask me if I understood what "unconditional" meant.  I told it to pound sand.

And whatever the future brings, I won't give up any of those things easily, either.  And perhaps I'm being naïve, but I'd like to think I won't need to.  I'm certainly not about to sacrifice anything I value without a struggle. 

Whether by will or by wits, they only get the $15.  I'm keeping the damn wallet.

Intimate

"And even when you've paid enough,

been put upon or been held up
 with every single memory

of the good or bad faces of luck
don't lose any sleep tonight
I'm sure everything will end up alright

You may win or lose,

but to be yourself is all that you can do"

["Be Yourself", Audioslave]

 

I learned a new word the other day.  In a comment on a David Bowie video on YouTube, someone suggested he was very successful for an intimist.  It gave me a little pause for thought.  When I first started blogging (before it was actually called "blogging", back when it was "online journaling" as if that somehow made it more elegant or less narcissistic), a large part of my motivation was about self-discovery and self-forgiveness.  It's not that I wasn't writing it for an audience, but I certainly never intended nor envisioned a sizeable one.  (And I've not been disappointed! :P)  I was writing for me.  I wrote because I needed to, more so than wanted to.  It was therapeutic.  It was cathartic.  It was maturation.

Likewise, even with this, my most recent blog (The Tao of Patrick), when I (rarely) write, I'd never shared it on Facebook before my most recent post (though Liza-Ann often shares my posts on her timeline).  I've seldom given much consideration for what audience I do, don't, could, or couldn't have because I've always thought that would impact the writing itself if it was in the back of my mind when I wrote, and would therefore 'pollute the purity' of the writing - if there really is such a thing.  I struggle with the temporal nature of truth, seeing something I wrote long ago and which I now feel differently about.  I struggle with the elegance or lack thereof in my writing, seeing something I wrote long ago and thinking now how poorly constructed it was.  I never wanted to allow any additional 'impurities' I could avoid. 

But then, "Fish can't live in pure water." ("Tao Te Ching", Lao Tzu.)

Am I an intimist then?  Perhaps?

Nowadays when I write, while it may still be to sort confused ideas in an anxious head, more often than not it's just because I've reflected on something and come to a conclusion I feel worth sharing.  I have some little nugget of "food for thought".  It's my way of flexing my teaching muscle after so many years away from the classroom.  When it comes to "teachable moments", there aren't many moments I don't considerable "teachable".  I like to think it's one of my simultaneously charming-yet-annoying qualities.

But this intimist thing needs to change, I think, for reasons I won't get into here (yet).  I need to take a little more air into my lungs, and speak a little louder and clearer.  An emergence from an already thin shell, if you will.

I make no promises - never have when it comes to my writing - except in my policy regarding "whose secrets they are to tell" (i.e. I only tell my own).  But I do hope that I am soon to usher in a new era with regards to my own self-expression.  I'll be keeping this blog, not restarting again, as I've done twice before.

The winds of change are blowing.

March 2nd approaches.  I'll be writing.  I already know at least some of what I have to say.

Strangers in Strange Lands

"Therefore the truly great man dwells on what is real
and not what is on the surface,
On the fruit and not the flower,
Therefore accept the one and reject the other."

["Tao Te Ching", Lao Tzu]

As I was lying in bed awake at 6am this morning, as I am about that time just about every morning, I was thinking about a lot of things:  love, Valentine's day, nine dots, the nature of happiness, binary, Anne Braden, Catholicism, my inability to properly explain the infinitely important concept of 'paradox' to an 11-year old, and my bladder.  All of these thoughts are connected in a roundabout way, I assure you, except the business about my bladder.  Though I suppose it's probably more an assurance of the peculiarities of the bizarre inner workings of my head than of any notion of brilliance.  But allow me to explain.

Every morning, about this time, I am awake, but usually only with two thoughts in my head:  1. 'Goddamnit, brain, why won't you go back to sleep?  Stop braining!' and 2. 'Stupid bladder.  If only you could hold out one more hour I wouldn't have to endure the cold bathroom floor every day and this ridiculous struggle to fall back asleep.'

This morning, instead, I struggled to choose between going back to sleep or getting up to excitedly rush to the basement and fetch the Valentine's day gift I made Liza-Ann so I could place it carefully on her dresser for her to find when she gets up.  Which will be about three hours from now.  So really there was no rush but clearly at 6am I wasn't thinking that far ahead.  And while many of you realize I produce enough origami flowers to warrant a volumetrics study, what I made her wasn't a flower.  Which also fits perfectly with this story.  Press on.

So that's how I arrived here, writing, this morning, while the rest of the house (except those noisy f%$#ing guinea pigs!) sleeps peacefully.

For perhaps twenty years now, every once in a while whenever I find myself walking past a perfectly clean white board, I draw the solution to the Nine Dots Puzzle and just leave it there.  OCD compels me to clean white boards; Taoism compels me to never leave one perfectly clean.  (I'll save that explanation for another day.)  In any case, the Nine Dots Puzzle was something I saw in my teens or early 20s, used when I was teaching back in the day, and have always considered an important philosophical lesson.  If you want to be a good problem-solver, you need to always be willing to think outside the box.  If nothing else, I am a consummate problem-solver.  It is irrepressibly in my blood, as any of my annoyed ex-girlfriends will tell you.  (You want me to just... listen?!?...)

But I was thinking this morning that the Nine Dots Puzzle is not just the solution to many problem-solving dilemmas, but an important part of the key to happiness.  I consider being happy a skill and last night when I went to bed I started re-reading The Art of Happiness, a book I started years ago with a borrowed copy from a friend, but then returned unfinished, and have been meaning to get back to for years.  That book had taught me some very important lessons that have helped me immensely, and was what really started me on my whole 'happiness is a skill' path.  The Nine Dots Puzzle is an important part of being happy because a great deal of unhappiness stems from the confines of false dilemma thinking.  Happiness is seldom to be found in the extremes of a binary system.  In fact, love, sexuality, and even gender, we are coming to learn nowadays, are seldom as binary as society would have us believe.  And while I embrace simplicity as one of the three great treasures of Taoism (Compassion and humility.  I saved you a Google search.), I accept that the world is a complicated place, and love a many-splendor thing.

We live in a complicated world, but the solutions are often simple.  Just not always binary.

At the end of a Flobots song, Anne Braden, she is quoted saying "You do have a choice.  You don't have to be a part of the world of the lynchers.  You can join the other America."  She's talking about racism at the time, which seems about as far away philosophically from Valentine's Day as one can get, but the way in which she says 'You do have a choice.' has always stuck with me since hearing the song.  Also, I was listening to The Flobots yesterday but didn't listen to Anne Braden, which almost never happens for me, because it's a fabulous song and any trip to the music library to visit Flobots seldom concludes without hearing Anne Braden at least once.

'You do have a choice.'  

Valentine's Day is a time of year when the world tends to divide in a very binary way into two camps:  the couples who woo each other with flowers and chocolates because they either genuinely believe that this single day out of 365 (+1/4) is the mathematically correct position in Earth's orbit around the sun for expressing their affection or are at least willing to cave to public pressure by those who do, and the singles who bitterly lament that it's the most oversold, overwrought, commercialized bullshit of all possible yearly celebrations.  I don't believe either of those paths truly leads to happiness, and think there's actually a lot to be learned from kids in this regard: schools tend to have it as simply "Love Day" or some similar thing, wherein it's a time of year to express your respect and affection for all of your friends, and not just your partner, if any.  We include our child in our celebration and always have; it's not simply a binary thing.  (I fetched two crafted presents from the basement, not one.)

... and with a complete lack of segue...

As kitschy as the little Serenity Prayer plaques from Ye Olde Catholic Paraphenalia shops usually are, and while it's been over a quarter of a century since I abandoned Catholicism, I do still respect that there is something worthwhile in those words.  Because of "...the fruit and not the flower...." (see above), I accept good advice, whatever the source.  While personally, my religious leanings teach me that said serenity, courage, and wisdom have to come from within and not from without, there's value in it, but it does, once again, put forth the sort of binary "do something/do nothing" reductionist thinking that produces few good results and runs contrary to decent risk management.  Perhaps a secular version might be something like:

I hope I find within myself

the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

the courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know that real solutions will no doubt involve some combination of both factors, and even said combination may evolve over time as new opportunities or ideas present themselves, though one should also be careful to avoid unnecessary cognitive dissonance after a satisfactory solution has been implemented.

This is why I could never be a priest.

Bottom line:  Love is simultaneously complicated and simple.  The world is simultaneously complicated and simple.  Life has been very interesting for us of late, taking some strange twists and turns.  There loom many large and unanswered questions.  But the answers... the answers have consistently been simple.  As my sister Nancy says, "just love".

You do have a choice.  Choose simple.  Choose love.

And then figure out how to explain the vital concept of paradox of an 11-year-old or you'll never have another Taoist in your house.