We move at our peril. Or do we? Peril denotes
danger. Yet not all movement is ‘bad’ for us. Still, to move from the known to
the unknown takes a certain curiosity, a desire to go yet further, and a
preparation to leave the already known. People may be left too. We more easily
move with our things than we do people. We package and haul and unpack and again
lay out our treasures. But people that we do not regularly see, especially, can
seem so very forgotten in the paradigm shift from a there, to a here. (You, yes
you, who knows me, do I seem to have forgotten you?)
Paradigm shifts denote a journey to the larger; they connote an awakening. Yes, one might move horizontally, and thereby grow larger in the knowing of the country, but do we necessarily change? Do we not unpack our belongings, make new friends, and tell our same old stories? Or might we realize new depths, soar to new heights, and examine more intuitively the awareness of the moment-by-moment? Are we not creatures given to making things yet more relevant?
Relevant relocations have us conscious of the amalgamation of our past, the accretion of our present, and the integration of our future. We may more and more realize that we move for ourselves, yes, but not so much with selfishness as, with insight, to be in service to the health of the whole. And though we might materially obtain more; get famous; be perceived as wealthy; is it not in the collective zeitgeist that each individual perhaps aims to give more toward others, to make contributions toward the health of the whole, and to put others at ease? No?
From childhood through youth through adulthood to second childishness, the stage upon which we walk and play is littered with our misspoken lines, our forgotten cues, our yearnings for the limelight, or even the desperation of stage fright. And accolades too! Thing is, those coloured memes of spiral dynamics prevail, endemic and integral to our being, like it or not. As such there are swaths of humanity predominantly persevering in the meme of survival, or familial, or competitive, or cultural-isms, or ambitious, or egalitarian proclivities. And to make the paradigm shift, sufficiently, from one meme to another takes more than curiosity. It takes the courage of one’s convictions. So too for becoming more and more integrative. So too for getting beyond the insecurities of self-doubt and allowing for the self to walk one’s talk. We integrate. We can make our relocations relevant, or we can merely move from one place, to another, and stay the same.
At which point does the fulcrum allow for the tipping point? When do we slide into the pool of the unknown and relax sufficient to float with the splash and waves of our own making, let alone ride the tides and weathers of the very nature of things around us? Integration will have us accepting our own (and others’) mistakes along with the outtakes and the retakes and the smooth delivery too. We are creatures connected to each other, and to everything. We are collections. We are individuals. We are common and special and unique. And the relevance we each give our lives, ultimately, must needs sustain us through the long years, the lean years, the growing years, and the forever learning years of our very being.
Indeed, some forget. Indeed, some slip into dotage. Indeed, some struggle to cling to the facts and the data and the truth and the history. Indeed, some no longer perform on the stage, but rather like Shakespeare’s slippered years, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans ears, and even sans taste, do but become the hollow men, the straw men, with but little relevance to intersections at the still point of their lives.* Can we avoid that much? Can we make sufficient choices to evade what to others appeared inevitable? Can we live fully and completely and as wholly as possible within the natural parameters of our aging? And can we make our relocations relevant, from paradigm shift to yet another paradigm shift, or must we but keep spinning our wheels?
I shall arise now, and go to Innisfree. And peace shall keep come winging on its way, slow, but sure. And no, throughout it all, I have not forgotten thee. I hold thine heart in mine, indelibly.
.............................................................................................................
*The
Hollow Men (by T.S Elliot)
Mistah Kurtz-he dead
A penny for the Old Guy
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
….[four more sections]
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
1. Mistah Kurtz: a character in Joseph Conrad's "Heart of
Darkness."
2. A...Old Guy: a cry of English children on the streets on Guy Fawkes Day,
November 5, when they carry straw effigies of Guy Fawkes and beg for money for
fireworks to celebrate the day. Fawkes was a traitor who attempted with
conspirators to blow up both houses of Parliament in 1605; the "gunpowder
plot" failed.
3. Those...Kingdom: Those who have represented something positive and direct
are blessed in Paradise. The reference is to Dante's "Paradiso".
