Paradox#2

"...you can't have something without nothing."
— Alan Watts

This line spoke to me, embedded within a longer Wattsian spiel on nothingness. Talk about nothingness is, to my mind, extremely volatile (in the chemical sense) — it tend to evaporate into prattle. This condition of instability seems inevitable with regard to any riff on matters of a philosophical/religious/psychological/spiritual nature*.

Expressions of such matters in terms other than those of a question, an aphorism, a koan or a parable tends to be asking for trouble. Woe unto he or she whom fools** believe has actually explained something.

"You can't have something without nothing" works as an aphorism and a koan. It speaks volumes beyond the boundaries of language.


*At first I felt inclined to list these as a series, separated by commas. Then I realized that writing them that way would imply an arbitrary compartmentalization that does not exist in actual human experience.
**Fools: people looking for and satisfied with easy and/or finite explanations.

What do you see?

Normally, we do not so much look at things as overlook them.
— Alan Watts

Am I My Brother's Keeper?

My English teacher in my senior year of high school was a rather insistent Southern Baptist. In that keeping one’s nose firmly ensconced in other people’s business seems to be part and parcel to the ways of many insistent Southern Baptists, she constantly exhorted me to act as my brother’s keeper—literally.

One of my two younger brothers was, at the time, suffering a troubling bout of middle child syndrome. He seemed to be feeling like an outsider to the family, full of rage and defiance. He was, in fact, behaving like an outsider to civil society in some ways, which gave all proper, churchy people pause for considerable concern, horror and handwringing (my parents and me included).

My brother’s wayward path was, of course, my responsibility to remedy. I was the eldest of our brood. I was the utterly socialized shining example of All A High School Student Should Be—a virtual lap dummy medium through which Upstanding Adults of Our Community could voice their sacred values and ways like ventriloquists.

I did not realize that I was being used. I felt fully invested in their program at the time. I was all about pursuing Success In Life. I was in the National Honor Society. I was listed in Who’s Who Among America’s High School Students. I listened to Good Role Model adults as if they were oracles. I listened to Earl Nightingale tapes. I read Dale Carnegie and Napoleon Hill. I was a representative of The Good Youth — I was one who was asked to lead prayers and speak at church; to speak to the Rotary and the Lions Clubs. As such, it was incumbent upon me to help my brother See The Light.

With this intent I called my brother into the game room, away from the rest of the family. I sat him down and launched at him my best Inspirational Spiel — “You’re free to pursue your dreams…You can be anything you want to be; you can accomplish anything you want to accomplish…”

He appeared to be captured in a bit of reverie. After a point he uttered aloud what he made of what I was saying: “I can do anything I want to do…I can goddamn well do whatever I want to do!”

He stood up and sternly commanded: “Move your car. You’re parked behind me.” With that, he arose from the couch and moved decisively to the garage.

Reflexively I followed, still a bit intoxicated by the magic spell I’d cast on myself with my Success Spiel, not yet comprehending the nature of magic that my words had worked on my brother.

He got into his hot-rodded Mustang and gunned the engine. The camshaft clattered. The dual exhaust glass packs aggressively roared and crackled. He slammed his four-on-the-floor Hurst shifter into reverse and hit the accelerator. Tires screamed as they spun in place, filling the air with the acrid scent of burnt rubber, then they dug into the pavement like talons of a dragon. The Mustang lurched within inches of my front bumper.

“Move your goddamn car or I’ll move it for you!” he hissed, breathing the fire of his youthful discontent through the open car window.

At that moment my dad swooped into the garage, descending on the open window through which he attempted to pull my brother from the car. I stood agog, thinking, “This cannot be happening.” Before that thought was finished the door of the Mustang sprung wide open, sending my dad reeling backward, tumbling into the trash bags.

My brother escaped on foot, running into the night.

What's the difference?

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

--George Bernard Shaw

Through the Looking Glass#1

One thing I like about cryptic literature (material that's rich in allegory, symbolism, metaphor, etc.) is that it requires me to supply the meaning. It's typical for most people to express one of three responses to such writing:

1) to be summarily dismissive,
2) to be frustrated or even angry, or
3) to "enjoy" it, mistaking it for a romp of imaginative entertainment.

I used to feel disappointed when others  neglected the opportunity for deep reflection that enigmatic writing invites. Actually "disappointed" is too mild a description of those feelings. I actually felt very frustrated. Angry. Scared.

Why would I feel frustrated, angry or scared about such a thing? Because, in recognizing their responses to this literary genre in particular — and ambiguity in general — I could see how alone I was. I didn't like to feel so freakin' alone. I longed to share the reverie this type of literature inspires. Also, from a practical livelihood-earning standpoint, I realized that I most likely would never have a "dream job" following my "bliss," as Joseph Campbell might term it. As a writer and a creative person, there's just not much market for the kinds of output that flows from my heart-of-hearts. What's more, it seems clear to me that such responses to ambiguity and mystery are dangerous to the ultimate welfare of humankind.

But...hey, that's the way "it" is. That's the way people are. There's no grand influence or power I can exercise to align the world to my preferences or point of view. I won't find many who share these aspects of myself. So be it. I've created my own sense of peace. Like every other human being, I design and define the mental/emotional/spiritual space in which I live. All is well with my soul.

Paradox#1

People tend to be ironic; paradoxical — usually the more insistently opinionated, the more so.

Regarding religious "faith", I think this Alan Watts quote sums it up nicely:

"...a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all."  

--  Alan Watts

Wisdom in Pop Songs#3

Maybe it's true what they say about it
Maybe we can't make the ends meet
Maybe we'll all have to do without
Maybe this world's just incomplete

Still we all look for the truth in our lives
Searching from different sides
So hard living in a desperate world
But we all do the best that we can

Some people see a change
Some will remain the same
Everyone lives their life under the gun
Some see the road as clear
Some say the end is here
They say it's a hopeless fight
Well I say I gotta try

Maybe there's too much to think about
Maybe there ain't nothin' left to say
But if our time's really running out
Then this is no time to run away

'cause we're destined to look for the truth in this life
Blinded by tearful eyes
If it's no use tryin' in a desperate world
Then tell me why was I born?

Some people see a change
Some will remain the same
But all of them live their lives under the gun
Some see the road as clear
Some say the end is here
They say it's a hopeless fight
But I say I gotta try

— Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins

Wisdom in Pop Songs#2

Some folks think that the weight of the world's problems
Are enough to make the ball fall from space
And there's no use continuing
with all that's going on

But I just want to go down saying
that I'm glad to be here —
here with all the same pain and lies
everybody knows

Some men think they're born to be kings —
and maybe that's true
But I think passing love along
is all we were born to do

— Michael McDonald

Wisdom in Pop Songs#1

What a fool believes he sees
No wise man has the power to reason away.

— Michael McDonald

The Art of Being Wise #1

The Art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.

—William James

Delicious Serenity #3

Recognize and relish the absurdity, irony and paradox made manifest in everyday human affairs — first your own, then that of others. Notice how these qualities bloom in the fertile soil of self-importance.

Some Pills are Bitter, But the Medicine Is Good

Of all the steps along The Eightfold Path (eight precepts that Siddhartha Gautama Buddha specified as disciplines conducive to enlightenment), Right Livelihood (precept #5) has posed conundrums that have consistently confounded me. Right Livelihood involves choosing a source of work-based income that helps one in the pursuit of spiritual development. Every problem I have created for myself in my adult life stems from poisonous roots tangled deep in my world of work — which means essentially that they are rooted in my core beliefs that extend into that netherworld.

Those who know that I worked for thirty years in advertising/marketing communications (and regard such work with smug disdain) might immediately quip “Well, fool, wouldn’t you kind expect to feel dissatisfied with that?” In my experience, remarks like that come from li’l kiddies splashing and calling names at one another in the shallow end of life. They’re going to have to take off their water wings and accompany me in a dive to the drain of human existence in order to understand where my disappointments originate. Experience has also taught me that few, if any, will accompany me in the not-entirely-uplifting adventure. There are just too many precious notions to be found on the murky bottom disarrayed in wreckage, in shards — at best overturned.

The practical, real-world truth is, for any promise of success I may have shown, for any smarts I may otherwise possess, I have unwittingly played the role of Village Idiot in every professional situation I tried to settle into. I willfully and tenaciously denied the One Undeniable Fact Of Life In Business: no matter what one does for a living, the part of it that actually ensures PAYMENT for services rendered or goods delivered requires, above all, cunning participation in “THE GAME” of manipulating other people's perceptions to serve one's personal interests.

In hindsight it seems a matter of common sense to wonder what I was thinking and why I was thinking it — to wonder how I could ever have thought that I might be special enough to defy the Immutable Laws of the Commercial Universe. Those laws are, like the natural laws by which the Biological Universe operates, essentially Darwinian*. With world-weary eyes of understanding I now recognize that my denial owed to childish, stubborn belief in a groundless idealism regarding human nature. I assumed that everyone cherished and aspired to uphold the same notions of good and wisdom that I did. Even as this virtuous notion has been cuckolded by the reality of pretty much my experience with other human beings, I have clung to it with colossal stupidity**. 

A psychologist I once knew, liked and enjoyed very much once remarked, “Chazz, you give people WAY too much credit!” 

The pursuit of transcendent wisdom is not on the average person's priority list. For most of my adult life, it has been at the top of mine. But in pursuing it, I rendered myself virtually incapable of playing the games necessary to thrive (perhaps even to survive long-term) in any work place. Only people of independent wealth — or people who genuinely don’t care what happens to them, materially — can afford my chosen philosophical and spiritual disposition. In real-world terms, I literally cannot afford to be the way I am; the way I have created myself to be. 

As best I can tell, there is no market to support a Right Livelihood I could fully embrace —  encouraging people to evolve toward ever-deeper understanding of themselves and the nature of the worlds they create for themselves; and that we all ultimately create together in terms of shared experience. Whatever I do for a living (to earn money) is highly unlikely to be something fully aligned with "who I am" or to provide me with a sense of ultimate purpose and fulfillment.

Right Livelihood: apparently it's not for everyone. This particular aspect of my personal reality has been a bitter pill to swallow. But now that I've finally ingested it, I find the medicine is very good for me.



*Don’t read too much into my use of the term “Darwinian.” Like everything else in life, the actual principles of Darwinism are much more subtle than the popularized concepts.

**This is not self-condemnation. It’s just recognizing the fact that my clinging to the notion was unreasonable and suboptimal in terms of my material well-being.