If I renounce all worldly possessions and go live in the mountains with a goat, two chickens, and a two-year supply of canned adzuki beans and Jasmine rice, will my attitude become more moderate? Reasonable. Temperate. Abstemious. My days could be spent making tools from stones. I’d hike down into the valley and harvest ash for splints and sweetgrass for weaving baskets. I would not speak, unless it’s to answer the wind. All of my hermit wisdom would be channeled into the goat and chicken, who will then give milk and honey mixed, or lay golden eggs.
Ridiculous. Obviously. But there are moments when renunciation is tempting. It isn’t so lofty though, this ambition. I make it sound spiritual, but there’s another element here. It’s called running away from reality.
My friend once told me, in between shifting gears in his car, that I remind him of a kid on top of a slide. This, of course, has nothing to do with caves, or pounding ash splints, or braiding sweetgrass for basket weaving. This has nothing to do with enlightened chickens, or adzuki beans, the latter of which he has probably never heard. I picture him cradling the phone against his ear as he manipulates the gearshift (“Hold on, gotta shift,” he says), but then he tells me again, about the slide.
“You’re like the kid at the top of the slide
holding onto the rails, and everyone’s waiting
behind you, so go down
the fucking slide already.”
Go.
Let go.
“Wheeee!” he says. And the suggestion is that, this is life. Right this moment. That moment at the top, when you’re quivering in fear. The time spent going down, and all that results: Life—with and without its share of golden balls. No need to escape to a cave in order to have our enlightenment moment. No need to shun society and the everyday experience, which includes things like standing in line at the grocery store while the person in front of you unloads two carts worth of frozen pepperoni pizza and hot pockets, then pays in wrinkled one dollar bills. It includes cleaning out the cat litter box. And going to the post office, and being cut off by someone on the outer belt. It’s about that person who isn’t calling you, or the person who is calling you too much. Most importantly, it’s about not getting your way, failed expectations, disappointment. Everywhere. Disappointment.
Resistance is futile. These things have to be worked out one way or the other. And you can hide from them all you like, but somehow, they will follow you. Even to the cave…where possibly your goat will die, or your chicken will deny you eggs. (How dare they! you think. Everything is a personal affront.) Maybe the weather will be bad. And there’s a musty smell in the cave. And the floor is still hard and cold, even though you’ve laid down a thick blanket of pine needles, just like you saw on Survivorman. Eventually, reality comes calling. And it is not always carrying a welcome basket filled with wine and mustard cheese.
Some people might like to tell you that, if only you change your attitude, you can Make It So. (“Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.”) They are right. And they are wrong. Maybe the secret isn’t to suddenly believe that you can manifest anything and everything you can imagine, if only you think hard enough. It’s hard to keep up with all the qualifications—or does it work on best intentions? (“God, please let the Browns win tonight, since I bet my rent money on them.”) I don’t know about you, but I can’t possibly think of every computation and permutation the universe might have in mind to service me. Believe me. I’m good at qualifications, and I’ve never been able to place the perfect order.
Or have I?
Perhaps there is an attitude change that neatly solves this problem. We accept whatever comes, and work with it. (In Zen terms, it’s ALL the perfect order, but I’ll be pretty grouchy if you tell me this when I’m in the middle of whining about something.)
We get shit; we make it fertilizer for the roses. Yes, this is lemons from lemonades. We accept that sometimes, things suck, and then we try to use it. Things disappoint us. And we don’t try to run away from it. That’s all. We just stop trying to run all the time, to whatever it is that we think will make us feel better…which in the end, always fails to do so. And why? Because reality is waiting, on the other end of that high. On the other end of the perfect fucking taco and cheeseburger pizza. On the other end of your hundredth pair of shoes or the new electronic gadget you bought, which you will hook into all the other gadgets currently distracting you from yourself.
Is peeling down to the rotten core always a bad thing? Probably not! What a great way to encourage change. What better time to clean out our closets than when we’re overwhelmed by the stench of something tucked in away in one of those dark and cobwebbed corners!
So, right. Reality. I’m the girl at the top of the slide, who wishes she could be in a cave sometimes. The unknown is scary. But every curve in the road that took me to greater things started out as a shadowy, uncertain course.
Just a thought (I mean, in addition to the ones above):
Someone once told me that they tried not to have any expectations. (I suppose this is because if we expect nothing, then we won’t be disappointed when that’s what we get. It’s a classic defense mechanism. What we can’t control, we feel we must separate from or discard in order to protect ourselves.)
But what about this?
“Psychological health does not mean having no expectations; it means not being possessed by them. This makes room for lively expectancy. Such expectancy is followed by agreements that fulfill it or acceptance of disappointment as a legitimate condition of existence.” – David Richo
Could this be one of the things we’re running from? Disappointment? This very legitimate condition of existence? Maybe I will let go, and my trip down the slide will result in me overshooting the edge and dropping straight down, onto my ass.
Wouldn’t be the first time.
Whatever.
I’m going for it.
I think as one matures expectations tend to get more realistic (where’s my pony?), and disappointments tend to establish their place as a legitimate condition. Schiller wrote “Disappointments are to the soul what the thunder-storm is to the air.” But the slide metaphor…I dunno. It’s been a long time for me, but I seem to recall the breathless anticipation at the top better than the 5 second ride, which can be (long waterslides notwithstanding) anti-climactic. But it seems to me so much is better in anticipation than in reality.
January 3rd, 2010 at 7:03 pm
Loving what is …and when you drop on your ass, laugh……
January 2nd, 2010 at 5:32 am