The Plight of Pranks

 

The belligerent banging at our cabin door penetrated my deep sleep. It was an anxious, agitated, ugly sound. Instantly, there’s a sea-dread in the dead of the night. Muffled shouts erupted in the corridor, and then the distinct, “Wake up! Get up. Get out,” urgency of it assailed me. Outside the porthole, it was pitch black. I was on the top bunk. My wife was below. And no sooner had I tossed aside the bedding, and leapt down, than my ankles were in cold water! A certain panic arose. We both scrambled to the door, and as we yanked it open, gushes of deepening water swirled and sloshed and gurgled into our space, quickly rising to our knees. The corridor lights showed the water to be an ugly rusted brown, and it reeked. I waded back into the cabin to pluck at our already floating suitcases, since they had been packed and now waited only for our early arrival at Southampton docks, but a ship’s officer barked: “Leave that! We’ll retrieve your luggage. Go! Go! All passengers, go up to the lounge!”

The lounge? That might’ve been my first indication that things were not too drastic. After all, we were not being called to the lifeboats. Yet still, the ship was listing, astoundingly, and the water grew yet more voluminous as we struggled up our short corridor, of about four cabins’ worth of noisy people to either side, to join up with the jostling passengers, almost all in pajamas and night gowns, crowding at the T junction to the main C deck starboard passageway. At the closed-up corner cabin a purser kept vaingloriously banging on its door, and shouting alarms, but then we all sloshed on past, heading for the stairs. Still, some of us had to duck our heads down from the malodorous spray of the overhead sprinklers. Several of them, it was apparent, were spewing out this putrid smelling water as quickly as possible.

We straggled into the lounge, all of us looking dishevelled, and somewhat distraught. The ship’s personnel found us blankets, and pillows, and organized hot beverages. “Your luggage will be waiting for you,” they promised. And then it struck me. My artwork! Twenty years’ worth of sketches and water-colours and even an oil painting or two, all rolled together and left standing in the cabin closet, alongside my suitcase, with my brand new pair of shoes waiting on the floor. I had to get that roll of paintings!

“You! Where do you think you’re going?” A ship’s officer called out. I baulked. "Just got to rescue my artwork, Sir,” I tried. His finger shook. “Oh no you’re not. No one goes downstairs until we’ve found out exactly what the problem is, and that everything is secure. You stay here!”

Well, that’s how come, as I write, nearly 50 years later, I have so little of my formative work. But there were yet more dire consequences as a result of that sad evening aboard the last voyage of the Edinburgh Castle, on the 11th April, 1976. Indeed, we all might still go on learning from them.

As part of a Facebook group, called Union Castle Line Ex-Passengers, which I joined just last month, Pauline Hollis wrote: “I remember that well. The crew were throwing anything they could over the side. We saved a bag of the large Lego blocks. I seem to remember a stowaway and a breakdown somewhere between Cape Town and Southampton.”

Yes. In fact, back then Ian Pursch was the purser, and (his) Paula (not Ms. Hollis), was a junior purser too. They became friends of ours. We toured Scotland together. (My wife and I waited for them in London while they went on the last voyage, sans passengers, to the Edinburgh Castle’s sad grave.) But so too had someone else met her death on the last voyage of the Edinburgh. We learned that an old Scottish woman, the one in that corner cabin, hoping to make it back to her homeland after being in Africa all her life, had died of a heart attack. She never made it home. And as for the reason? Some partying prankster, on that final night of the long voyage, had held a match up to a sprinkler. And yes, when we docked at Southampton, the ship’s flag was at half-mast. One plays pranks, but there are consequences. And one sails, but all our journeys do come to their end.

van Niekerk's Veracity

 

“I just wanted you to know I’m OK. I’m here, just letting you know,” he said last night, etched clear as a Zoom projection onto my white board in the university classroom. The other students, in their ranks up the rake of the auditorium seats, wondered how I might respond. John’s image, as a full-grown teenager with his black hair and chiselled chin, his strong brown eyes, and his swimmer’s fit physique, clad in a white shirt tucked into jeans, stood in front of a background of bright green trees.  Was he at the nearby Magnolia Dell? He was bunking, and we both knew it, but now he was contacting me, just to let me know that all was well. An intrusion on my visceral lecture about Dynamic Integration, I but briefly paused while I took in the alert senses of my students as to whatever I might say.

The thing is, the truth about one’s life gets tangled. We attempt to place happenstances precisely, but as we grow older the timelines overlap, and we can search for connections by which to slot in the particular events that demarcate our passage of time. Just when John had got up and left the classroom was not clear to me. (Is not clear to me.) Why I should be an old man, still lecturing, and he but a teenager, when he’d always been a constant friend in my own youth, was perhaps subconsciously understood, even while I was dreaming. Lucid dreaming, it is called. We know we’re dreaming. We can even direct our dreams. We can face into our fears. We can determine if we should give in to temptation. We can even be compassionate toward ourselves, and others, and we can awake with a sense of having washed away at our ‘dirty laundry’. There’s power in dreaming. We are not necessarily just ‘led by the nose’.

But the intrusion that John made into my classroom happened without my having beckoned it. Or did I not? Just yesterday I’d re-read the three-page story of John (on p. 303, of 50 Years On... Pretoria Boys High Class of 1970, Our Stories), and I felt sad that we had but one indistinct picture of him. Then too, I was reflecting on the great privilege of often being a guest at John’s parents’ house, in the prestigious neighbourhood of Waterkloof Ridge. Back in the late 60’s, a maid, a cook-boy (who was really a full-fledged man), and a chauffeur, as well as a constant gardener, complemented the house-hold staff. John appreciated them all. Laundry was always washed and ironed the same day. And the table was set for dinner guests, or luncheon guests, with crystal and... well, one gets the picture.

Thing is, almost 60 years later, just last night, I’d dreamed about John for the first time, (far as I can recall.) We never re-connected after High School. Conscription into the South African Army boiled my soul. I wanted nothing to do with my past. And whatever old school friends I had, I lost them all. But not in memory. My affection for friends stayed the same. It was just the detachment I threw around each of the people I’d befriended, so long ago, cordoning each off, like icons in the desktop of one’s computer screen, each with a program that goes unused, until one clicks it, (at times ineffectually,) open. (It’s a habit practiced, yet still too long.)

Well, John’s message has me deeply affected. It’s as if I’d been re-assured from another realm. Then again, quite aware of the synaptic gap that inhabits every one of our neuronal interactions, I’m much given to understanding the creative impulses inherent to the artistic, as well as the phenomenological bent, of those such as myself, who also are easily given toward making things ontological. ... Huh?

That’s part of the complexity of one’s thought processes, in dreaming. (Sometimes, even in daydreaming, complexity creeps in.) We make of our moments a kaleidoscope of meanings. And then we can conjure that which has some sort of sensibility to it all, for ourselves. Epistemology aside, we are, essentially, quite imaginative beings.

As for what my response was: “Thanks, John. Good of you to let us know you’re Ok. Communication is everything.”  And he disappeared. And then, John’s classmates smiled.

So, it goes. Such are dreams. And I wonder, shall we ever ‘meet’ again?

(cover designed by Justin Neway)

50 Years On... Pretoria Boys High Class of 1970: Our Stories : Pretoria Boys High, The Class of 1970 at: Amazon.ca: Books

Two To Tango

We, and them. Throughout history we’ve perpetuated it. The essential dichotomy is felt in the bones. Even when we overcome differences of race, of physiognomy, of language barriers, or even of social circles, it remains, however subtly, an 'us' versus 'them'. “We are not on the same page about this,” one person tells another. The implication is clear: my viewpoint is better than your viewpoint. We are not enmeshed in the necessary appreciation of the dual tensions it takes to do a tango. Too often, we hear entirely different music.

Life itself will do that to us, divide us, that is. From the earliest age we learn who is first, last, and somewhere in between. And as our sophistications grow into the apportionments of ourselves in the Venn diagrams of our circumstances, we become inured to the concept that we are right, they are wrong, and we go right, while they may take what’s left.

Politically, it becomes easier and easier to determine who is who. A great many of us more readily align with This, or with That. Religiously too. Even morally, we can become dis-ambiguous. And as for ethics? Well, the definitions of that concept fills volumes, so where is there a fine line to be drawn, over which one will not step? No, it is the traditions and the acculturations and the belief systems that we grow up into becoming, from child to adult, and seldom do we easily reach past the pastures of our forefathers. Seldom do we give up our identity. Seldom do we accept our sublimation into a greater whole. We are too much clung to our mortal coil, fearing we shall lose all identity if we no longer retain a ‘nationality.’ So it goes. On and on. Even much elongation of new generations will proudly say, “I’ve got the blood of a Zoroastrian in me;” especially if it be true.

And so Us versus Them continues. Thing is, it matters not at this time for particular distinctions. In our long history (even yet to be) we shall still call some, Romans, and some others, Greeks. So too do we readily call people by country, by school, by city, by family name, by ethnicity. We retain an identity. And we are 'us', while they are 'them'. So it goes.

Eventual integration is a myth. At best engendered in small groups, among individuals, it very much gets called into question (integration, that is) when the larger group sees itself more readily as an Us, versus a Them. (Anyone who has suffered marginalization knows the feeling.) 

So much is at stake when being ‘different.’

Thing is, how do you become entirely 'accepting'? That’s right, You. If not you, then who? We each are responsible for inculcating an ethos of integration that entirely absorbs the ideological differentiations extant amongst us, and allows us to inculcate instinctual compassion, sincere compassion, intuitive compassion, enlightened compassion, and persevering compassion, unconditionally. Really?

Yes, there is an appreciation of duality in the challenge. That is the point. Ideological egocentricities perpetuate the tensions in the historical making, present, future, or in our recent past too. We are each responsible for not only allowing it all ‘to be’, but also for nurturing it all ‘to become’. To become what, precisely? Well, it is certainly not the eradication of our statues, or even the changing of place names that shall alter us, each by each; it is the clarification of history's significance, such that we might learn from the mistakes of the past, truthfully, factually, considerately, and most especially, compassionately.

Are some things worth tearing down?

Indeed. “Tear down the wall” was a deeply symbolic event.

And so too does tearing down the wall between 'us' and 'them'. 

Trouble is, as just about everybody knows, it takes two to tango.

Comparative Considerations

 

‘Take nothing personally.’ At least, that’s what The Four Agreements invite. Also, ‘Do not compare yourself with others, for always there will be lesser and greater persons than yourself,’ says Desiderata; (which was at first purported to be a 14^th century inscription in a hidden church wall, until someone discovered that the poet, Max Ehrmann, had written it, sometime in the first half of the 1900’s.) And then there’s my own observation about comparisons, called:

The Ten Pears

 A man sees ten pears in a bin at the store. ‘This one looks the best,’ he determines, and buys it.

A woman sees nine pears in the same store. ‘This is the best one for me, she avers,’ and buys it.

Another woman comes along to the pears. ‘Of the eight, this is the best,’ she smiles, and buys it.

A girl is next, sent by her mother. ‘Out of the seven, Mom will like this one the most,’ she’s sure.

A man sees six pears in the bin, and he carefully concludes that the one he takes ‘is best, indeed.’

Another man arrives, carefully examines the five, and picks the very best one for himself too.

An older woman, knowing fruit, sees four pears left. ‘Hm, here’s the best one for me,’ she thinks.

Another old man, seeing the three pears, thinks, ‘Ah! Now here’s the very best of the three!’

A very busy young man sees just two pears. ‘Eeny, meeny, miny, ... nope! This is the better one!’

At last, the lone pear sits there, until someone, wanting a pear, sees it. ‘Lucky me. I found a pear!’

                                                                    .................................

Thing is, for each pear in the bin, someone found it to be the best, each time.

So... indeed, we compare by contrast, certainly, but at each stage of  our participation in evaluation we have only the ones before us by which to choose. As such, my having received the honour of being among ‘the world’s best oil-painters’ hardly really needs be taken personally. After all, yes, 72 countries participated, but only the artists who happened to send in their works to be evaluated were among those chosen. And then too, in all the categories (like fruit in a grocery store,) how many were ‘pairs.’ Well, enough entries for my ‘third place’ not even to be isolated, but paired, ‘tied’, with another artist, Eugene Kuperman, (whose ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ (shown below) strikes me as superbly profound, not only in its execution, but in its symbolism too.)

We who write books, who make music, who paint paintings, who do theatrical shows, who make movies, who act and dance and teach and lead and serve, in whatever capacity, are doing what we can with every one of our products directed at being accepted by someone else. Yes, someone ‘other’ may find this product better than that (even among my own works I’d place rankings); but the thing is that each thing that we do is paired with our energy, our intuition, our instinct, our talent, our state of mind, our physical health, and our innate ability at a given time. And time itself, we know, can affect even the very best of pears; (ha!, ask any fruit fly.)

Take nothing personally. Do not compare. But certainly, it is appreciated that one likes my fruit.

Now then, anyone up for getting 'the perfect pair' of my novels? See them at:

https://www.amazon.com/author/richardpentelbury

And see ALL the art at:

 https://americanartawards.com/2023-winning-artists-american-art-awards/

Don and Death (YOU are in here)

“If you’re waiting for that famous last moment, before someone dies, to say the things you should be saying all your life, well, you better have great timing,” Morrie Swartz said to Mitch Albom, in  a line from the play, ‘Tuesdays with Morrie.’ It’s phrasing to sink into the soul. We find it so hard to say the things we feel, sometimes. We can sense the threshold of the maudlin, the sentimental, the gushing, and even the thread of interdependency in our words of love and care to someone else. It’s sometimes hard to let go. It’s sometimes hard not to let go. And so, with friends and family and acquaintances, we perpetuate the usual acculturations we’ve been taught. For a lot of us, less is more. For another lot of us, more and more creates a sense of it all meaning less. Words matter. Feelings matter. How best to convey ‘the right thing to say’ at the many moments of life, let alone at someone else’s ‘end’.

“Don just died this morning at 8:30. ...Very peaceful and so glad it’s over for all of us. ... our doctor was just here, and all is taken care of,” wrote his wife.

It is so sad a note to receive, and yet so real. Who among us has never received news of death? And who among us has not wished we might have said something to the person we loved, cared for, thought about? For some of us, we’ve had a chance. We were told about the possibility of imminent death. We were given opportunity to write, to visit, to speak. And at other times, with the sad news of someone’s death, we were taken by surprise. We did not know that the person was ill, was in trouble, was in a state of distress so dire that death would overtake them. And we had no chance to tell them how we felt. It would’ve been ‘nice’ to relay our feelings. It would’ve been ‘good’ to let them know about our appreciation, if only....

In the passage of our lives, at any age, there are the boxes we are given to ‘tick’. Have we been kind, considerate, thoughtful, compassionate? Have we been generous, given time, given friendship, given care? Have we shared our thoughts, our feelings, our hearts, our souls? Have we been honest, truthful, careful, and inclusive? Have we allowed them ‘to be’? And then again, is that tick list all about our self, or is it about another? Have they been those things to us? All of those things? And in the end, that ‘end’, which of those things in the tick list might we not apply? Surely the person hearing them might feel guilty for not exhibiting all those elements towards oneself. So too, might we not feel guilty for not demonstrating those same qualities toward them!

“Every day, have a little bird that sits on your shoulder, that asks, is today the day? Am I being the person I want to be?” advised Morrie. Well, in that ‘wanting’ lies much of awareness and insight and action.

My friend, Don, has a long history with me. His boxes are ticked. His life had great import. His love meant a great deal. Our communication, sporadic, intermittent, intense, and meaningful, was imbued with the essence of respect for the other, appreciation for the journey, and care for the other’s interests.

Another longtime friend, at the news of Don’s death, wrote succinctly: “You will miss your friend.”

Such is the truth of living.

Perfecting Peace

 

Happiness is so temporary. Dependent on external factors, one feels it in time-bites. We depend on the weather, on our looks, on our hair, on our relationships, on our abodes, on our gardens, on our phone calls, on our... we are happy when things are ‘right.’ Yet the state of ‘being happy’ is easily fragmented. In the long haul of life, we all know just how very many things have made us ‘unhappy’. We are not at peace with ‘this’, or with ‘that’. Indeed, as Yeats puts it, “...peace comes dropping slow.”

‘Peace,’ as a slogan can be a call to action. It can be a phrase intended to calm down the fight between children, between armies, between religions, between couples, between nations. The word can appear trite, temporary, and false. It can lose the essence of its meaning as one unhappily shakes hands, calls a truce, endures the draconian dictates of a family, a cult, a religion, a political system, a world order. One can be hard put to feel peace when one’s fundamentals are threatened, cauterized, curtailed, and jailed. In the long haul we are victims to the times. "Grant me the wisdom to know the difference," is so true.

Perfecting peace comes at the price of letting go. Attaining peace is not so much a sublimation, or a discarding of one’s wants and desires and interests, as it is about developing an appreciation for our circumstances, our things, our relationships, without being attached. ‘Attachment’ breeds dependency, whereas ‘appreciation’ frees one to love.

“I LOVE it!” is a ubiquitous phrase. Blurted at the banquet of things, feelings, sounds, sights, smells, and touch, “I love it,” is married with happiness. Yet one can become, if not ‘out of love’, then ‘used to,’ familiar with, or even ‘bored’ by the very thing that once created that sensation of love-happiness it evoked. We each have had so much in our lives, young or old as we may be. And it is not just Birthdays or Christmases that give us the presents we love. The surprise of a sunset, a harvest moon, a bird on the wire can bring about such feelings too. All these things are, however, impermanent. And so can be our ‘happiness.’ 

Yet ‘love,’ in the long-haul sense of the word, at ‘best’ is entirely a feeling one gives, always, a sense one has, always, a non-attachment to Everything, always. Appreciation is distinct from Attachment. As such, in the integrative, assimilative, absorptive, inclusive, and personal peacefulness of appreciation, as a verb, as a thing one does, it frees one to love deeply, profoundly, and as permanently in awareness of Everything Else, so long as one is ‘working at’ it. After all, one’s acculturation, habituations, lessons of the past, experiences along the way, and even the expectations within the groups one becomes involved with, creates these divisions of attachment between what was, is, and may yet be. To be attached is to depend. To appreciate, is to be free. Indeed, “...peace comes dropping slow.”

But what about the accidents of life? What about the pain and the suffering and the horror and the abuse and the torturous and the vile? What about the unfairness and the betrayal and the unexpected? What of the controls and the dictates and the censures? What of the bullies and the lions and tigers and bears? How do we accept them?

Acceptance comes at the price of compassion. And compassion arises from having ‘been there’, from recognizing in oneself, however minimally, the instincts to hate, hit, hurt, kill, and smash that which opposes our immediate sense of ‘happiness.’ Who among us has never killed an insect? Who among us has never felt anger, disappointment, vengeance, greed, or.... Well, those Seven Sins raise their heads. It is in discourse that we stand chance of nurturing evolution. And while we each ‘grow up,’ there is much of enlightenment to learn in the passage of our own passing through. Indeed, perfecting peace comes slowly. Yet in attaining it, however small the measures, one knows there is always yet more to be had. Such is love. Such is peace. And curiously, so may we include happiness too. “Peace be unto you,” is heartfelt. So too is ‘Rest In Peace’. But it is the now for now where peace is best realized. Now for now.

Devolving Democracies

 

We are in much fragmentation. Our world churns with ingredients, political, social, religious, and even spiritual. Much differentiation pervades. Much unhappiness persists. And like the old movie, ‘Network’, one may feel the need to thrust one’s head out of the window and shout out something like: “I’m fed up with the system and I won’t take it anymore!”

Democracy as an ideal holds to the simple rubric of majority rule. It works so long as one is comfortably not marginalized. It is an anathema to the spirit if one is outcast, vilified, traduced, or culminated. We wish to keep things simple. Let live and let live. Be who you are. Just don’t expect me to be the same as you. Be vegetarian. Be against blood transfusion. Be against (Covid) vaccinations. Be a Baptist or a Catholic or a Jew. Just don’t over-mandate me ‘to be’ too.

Majority rule can create a disabling sense of one’s worth. We don’t want ‘them’ over-taking us. We don’t wish for our current status quo to be threatened. And so, as a majority of blue smarties, say, we grow uncomfortable with more and more purple smarties entering our domain. They clothe themselves differently. They make for a distaste in our life. They break our codes of conduct. They clack together in a language we don’t understand. And now, as their numbers grow, we find ourselves too soon under threat of being overwhelmed by their voting powers, and we don’t like it!

Mandates have that effect on us. We lose our vote. Mandates demand. We lose our freedom. Yet safely enough, should the majority vote that everyone must wear a seat-belt, we can choose never to drive or be a passenger in a vehicle again. We can choose. We can stay home. We can walk. We can talk. We can write freely. … Or can we?

Democracy has it that we give in to the group’s wishes, or one may choose not to participate. Draconian measures have it that one must comply; or suffer direct censure. Our bank balances can be frozen. Our freedom of movement can be rigidly curtailed. Our social participation can be severely restricted. Our religious assembly can be cauterized. Our individualism becomes eradicated, and a social credit system can be imposed. As a person of the state one is subject to personal checks and balances. Yes, even the purchase of too much broccoli may also be affected.

In the ‘free world’ we did not think it would come to this. We did not expect to have our livelihoods threatened by the gods of health and pharmaceutical industries and complicit governments and puppet leaders of essentially non-scientific narratives. Like science itself, we expected instead to have our lives evolving on established truths, yet perpetually fluid to new information, new verifications, new admissions of the need to alter course. Such is the stream of life. Such is going with the flow. One has choices! But what if it is too late?

What is done cannot necessarily be undone. We can return most purchases we make for a full refund. We can unsubscribe. We can walk out of the urgent care clinic if the wait is too long for us, and we grow too impatient. We nowadays can even choose the right to die. But once having had the polio vaccine we cannot take it out of us; nor so for measles, the shingles, the smallpox, or the malaria vaccine. In the bloodstream, they do their thing. Still, we are mostly comfortable, if not even grateful, for their validation in us. They’re tested. We can feel secure.

Not so for Covid. There is far too much controversy surrounding ‘The Jab’. There are far too many news reports, articles, web sites, interviews, gainsayers, and medical experts warning one not to admit the vaccine into one’s bloodstream. As well, much research revealing the pro-phy-lac-tic in-efficacy of the vaccine hardly gives one a realistic boost of confidence. And so, it comes down to ‘The Mandate’. As proven, letting off steam by our shouting out of the window does not do much for all of us, effectively. Choice is a precious commodity. One cannot un-ring a bell. Yet in the bonny province of B.C., with Bill 36, the mandate remains clear: Get jabbed, or else! (Now then, heard of British Columbia's Bill 36? One loses all confidentiality with any Health Care Worker, at the Government's demand, or that Health Care worker loses their license, or worse*.)

*Bill 36 BC is a new law that replaces the Health Professions Act and changes how health professions are regulated12. It gives the Health Minister the authority to appoint College Boards, to mandate vaccines for health practitioners, and to punish them for challenging government policies345. Some critics say it violates the independence and rights of self-governing professions and the public interest345. It was approved by the legislature on November 24, 2022 and received Royal Assent the same day12. It will come into force by a Cabinet order2.

Ergo Ego

 

“Come to the edge of your limitation,” she urged, “and then leap; you shall feel free.”

 

“But I am afraid,” he responded.

 

“Ego,” she said. “Get past your fear.”

 

“But I am uncertain,” he reasoned.

 

“Ego,” she said. “Get past insecurity.”

 

“But I am not strong enough, healthy enough, settled, enlightened enough,” he averred.

 

“Ego,” she repeated. “These things will always be with you, but they contain you in your smallness of self-centredness; they capture you in your sense of imperfection; they garb you in clothes of vanity, however subliminal, as your ego demands that you be aware of your physical limitations, yes, but does not free your mind and spirit to be bigger than the moment.”

 

“Bigger than the moment?”

 

“Yes. Small ego is irritable, insecure, vain, anxious, uncertain, belligerent, obstinate, and whatever else does not allow for being ‘larger than the moment.’ Large ego is inclusive, absorptive, assimilative, understanding, compassionate, and holistic. Why fragment yourself in bits of enlightenment when you can come to the edge of your limitations, and in allowing for a paradigm shift, let go? Then shall you be at peace.”

 

“Be at peace? Sounds like R.I.P. (ha!) I’d rather be alive.”

 

“Yes. Yet peace while alive is about complete acceptance of the circumstances. Like the age old prayer: grant me strength to change the things I can, courage to let live the things I cannot, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

 

“That’s not how it goes.”

 

“Yes. But the sense of it is the thing offered here. So accept that much. Needing perfection is for material things, like building bridges and designing cars and making aeroplanes fly. Accepting imperfection is for spiritual things, like faith, and hope, and insight, and enlightenment, and wisdom too. One makes paradigm shifts incrementally, independent necessarily of one’s age. And the grade levels of one’s insight are not a lockstep, like being in regular school. In our lives one may be in grade three in mathematics, but at university level in reading. Accepting that much differentiation for each of us, and most especially of the self, is the primary root of compassion. And compassion, like enlightenment, is not a product, but an ongoing journey. So… come to the edge of your limitations, one by one, and let them go.”

 

“Hmm. Tomorrow.”

 

“Tomorrow and tomorrow creeps on this petty pace, from day to day.”

 

“That’s from Macbeth.”

 

“Indeed. The operative word here is ‘petty’. A myriad of petty things inveigles the perceived needs of our egos. We are so very concerned about how we are perceived by others, even if we are in strange crowds. But to let go of all that and to be concerned for, interested in, and loving of others truly begins with loving the self sufficiently enough to let go of one’s limitations. So then, be larger than the moment. Go to the edge. And grow beyond.

Toy Trains And Tiny Troubles

 

Grandfather’s hands were scarred with age. As he placed the gift of my new toy trainset on the tracks I noticed them, as if for the first time. The backs of his hands were criss-crossed with enlarged blue veins, like railway tracks on the map of Rhodesia. The veins ran up the insides of his bare arms, and disappeared into his shirt sleeves. Somewhere in there, in his chest, in his heart, lay the origins of him, a son of Africa as he too was. But now his voice rumbled.

“See. It takes patience, care, and precision, old son. You’ll get it right. Just align the wheels very gently with the tracks as you put the engine and carriages down. And notice that their couplers will connect on the rails if you nudge the pieces together. If they do not, it’s because a wheel is not properly on the rails.”

At least, in what was my five-year-old memory, that’s what Grandfather said. Then too, perhaps my observation of his physique, at the time, was not so acute. Thing is, one makes up stories as one goes along the train tracks of life, and alights at stations, and visits here and there, and feels the years go by as perseverate as is the click-clack-clack sound of time, sliding away from oneself, connected by month after month in the journey of one’s life.

Sixty-five years later, I still have that trainset. And even now, as my own hands and forearms bear the veins of a journey across the continents, the essence of Grandfather’s lessons remain. One need be cautious, caring, considerate, thoughtful, aware, and precise if one is to have a trainset working properly. As a metaphor for life, the slightest disconnect makes for a train-wreck, over and over. The tracks need to be stable. The carriages, like the chapters in a book, need to be coupled. The wheels, like sentences, need to align with each other so as to carry the entire conveyance forward, and around and around. And therein the metaphor breaks down. One can get bored with around and around. Maintenance of the parts, of the essence of the thing, of one’s life, in fact, is utterly necessary to keep it going, yes, but around and around? Where be the progress, the excitement, the new vistas in that?

Yes, one adds to the set of one’s life. We acquire new carriages, different engines, add adjoining rails, and replace the accoutrements of scenes around the circumstances of our lives. And the journey swells. It goes round and round. But essentially, it is flat, horizontal, and even predictable. Until there is a crash.

We speak of the stations in our lives, the tracks we’ve taken, the engine that drives us, the carriages of convenience, and the strangers we meet and befriend along the way. We speak of connections. We speak of timetables and tunnels and watersheds and bridges and being transported. And through it all, around and around we go; humanity, that is. Despite aeroplanes, and even rocket ships, we seldom consciously aspire toward higher degrees of enlightenment. As a people, our veneer of civilization is a thin covering over the savagery of our malcontents. As soon as something goes wrong, we are stopped up by the train wreck of our disappointment, anger, frustration, angst, and disfavour. What now?

“It takes patience, care, and precision, old son. You’ll get it right,” is not so much about the mechanics of living as it is about the essence of perception. To accept, to yield, to include, incorporate, assimilate, and integrate becomes a pathway of itself. And unlike the tiny troubles of the disconnects in the railways, (those that stop up the entire progress of one’s trainset, one’s mindset, one’s evolution,) we can o’erleap the gaps that would halt our progress, whether by accident or design, by getting to the heart of the matter; one has the gift of grace within oneself. And gratitude for everything, even the smallest of lessons, is yet one more way to be at peace with it all.

Such was the smile in my grandfather’s eyes. So it would be, were he to see my trainset, still going,

 today.