C'mon Sense (at 17:00hrs, on this Election USA Day!)

You'd think we'd know better. But we persist. Common sense is not what it's urged to be. The rallying cry, "C'mon man!" does not necessarily provoke sufficient hesitation; sufficient checking of facts; sufficient gathering of details. We tend, generally, to leap as though we were angels from cloud to cloud. And very many clouds have no substance. Very many clouds are but wispy and waspish and full of cotton-floss; we best examine carefully their silver-linings. Yes, common sense is not a thing to be taken for granted. After all, sensibility itself is often predicated on the groundwork laid down by one's forbearers. They determined that the snake, all snakes, are to be feared. They determined that the spider (that-sat-down-beside-her) would get in her curds and way. And not all of us have been taught (or have been made aware of) the distinction 'twixt whey, weigh, or way. We learn from our past. So, “C'mon man; you outghtta know more-better!”

What mistakes we continue to perpetrate! Lots of hurt and vengeance and destruction attends our emotional reactions. We hardly have time for response. Response is too cerebral, too calculating. It's not instinctual, nor even necessarily intuitive. We indeed cry, "C'mon man!" And we tend to have a gut reaction. Yes, we go from there. And so we easily accept phrases like "battle-ground", "war-room", and "enemy." But c'mon man, surely we can take pause to choose!

As I type the USA (all that North American territory under the 49th parallel,) is slowly filling up, choice by choice. Two houses stand divided. And the Red and the Blue pours in, blue ink drop by red ink drop, to see who first shall reach that magic 270 number, and break the tension in the withholding meniscus. Interesting word: men-is-cus. (No, it's not locker-talk.) It's the delicate skin that holds back the bulk of liquid potential from spilling over and pouring down the sides of a given containment. The combined States of the USA contain a total of 538 electors. When a single person votes, that ballot goes to their respective group of electors. These electors depend on the number of people in the state. Rep by pop! Each state gets only one elector per representative in the House, plus 2 for each senator. Who spills over first? California has the most electors, at 55. Important to win California. (And according to the pundits, North Carolina will make or break a candidate.) For the populace of the USA, that 270 number is the determinate margin by which so and so will be president, (or is that such and such?) And like ants, the shuffling lines to the polling stations grow and grow. Confusing enough, eh? But, c'mon man, get out there and vote!!

Thing is, history depends. A ferry captain today, reflecting on a dramatic accident, said over my car-radio: "There's a different point of view for each person who was there that day." Yes. Our sensibilities are not quite so common. Yet we'd expect honesty and decency and integrity and consideration and compassion and care and thoughtfulness and even self-control from our leaders. We would think that anyone dedicating so much of their time to the people would be altruistic, operating from the highest of principles. But then, like the proverbial Camelot of Cards, the whole shebang falls down. We do not always follow protocol. We do not always avoid graft and corruption and deceit and selfishness. We do not always trust. No, history, our own history, has taught us to be altogether more common-sensical than simply to submit to blind trust.

If the ship of state is about to set sail with a new captain at its helm, surely common sense would have it that we all (since much of the world is dependent on the mercies of this particular ship of state)... that we all be on board without undermining the captain? That we rally behind that head and do what we can to help keep the whole ship, well, ship-shape! Ha! But this is no laughing matter. It is clear that the starboard side and the port side of ‘our’ USA would have the vessel split in twain.  And the flags from the masts do not fly high and proud, no matter what the result may be; for dissension, like a serpent discovering itself shedding its skin, lashes at the very winds of progress, simmering in anything else but common sense. Really? C'mon man! 

Impatient Immediacy

There is a tanker clogging up my bay. It’s a great monstrous thing dominating the horizon, parked parallel to the beach-line, about half-a-mile off. Been there five or more weeks now. (And yes, I am taking ownership of the bay. That’s how I feel about the swans and the herons and the gulls in the nearby lagoon; I feel a sense of ownership. When people walk their dogs along the shoreline of the lagoon, instead of taking them on the other side of the mile-long causeway, along the beach, it bugs me. Why not go where birds will not be disturbed?  Swans waste so much energy by dashing off and away from dogs; even though the brutes be leashed. Sometimes it’s children. Parents would be better to leash them too! At least with words that would have offspring be considerate and gentle and cautious, if not with actual tethers of constraint.) But that is just how that tanker remains so stationary amidst the glide and flow of shipping traffic, or against the bashing of the white-caps; it is tethered by constraints. Leastwise, it does not disturb the birds.

We find ourselves often wanting things to be different. Acceptance is hard come by. There are so very many things that can offend. We grit our jaws at graffiti. We snarl at the driver who cuts us off. We growl at the fact that we missed checking the milk-carton before we went shopping. We dislike the big clog of anything cluttering up our hallway. We rush about and clean and tidy the reality of our daily living just in order to treat a guest to an environment so pristine they may actually sit upright and stiff with discomfort, afraid to disturb anything. It is our way. We have inner-scapes that are determined by idiosyncratic proclivities. (To hear Lightning Hopkins over early morning coffee can really only be appreciated if you too were once in Cape Town, nearly fifty (!) years ago.) But already I have introduced foreign elements into my narrative, like letting loose the dogs to bark among the birds. (And it’s not always big things that arrest us!)

Herons are particularly patient. They seem virtual statues of intense staring through the water’s surface, as if mesmerizing the little fish to come up and see. And then, with an ecstatic suddenness, they strike so swiftly that from stasis to action takes all by surprise. Perhaps that’s what will happen one morning. I shall wake up and the tanker won’t be there. It’ll have slipped its knots and slid away. But in the meantime, like a great monster at repose, hibernating in the grays and the rains and the winds of this winter weather, it sleeps and broods, still there!

Not all things move. Some people have lived in one place for years and years! Only their interiors change, and even then, not much. Some new picture on the wall may make for subtle changes of perspective, but essentially things remain the same. “Mitch, just look at this room!” (Morrie says in ‘Tuesdays with Morrie.’) “Everything in here has been the same for the past, oh, thirty years. The newest things in this room are You and my wheelchair. But now [‘since my disease,’] everything has changed. This room has filled up with warmth and honesty and tears. This is a wealthy home!” Indeed. It is our inner perspective that matters most. And big as the obstacles may be that prevent flow and grace and usefulness and care and considerations, and even compassion for others, so we may well remain clogged up and victims of our own recalcitrance.

Yes, trapped in body though one may be, we need not necessarily always tug at the tethers, yearning to be free. We can still feel vital and wealthy. Unless truly immobile, and not changing, we may but brood, endlessly. Ha! Now therein may the bulk of a disturbed and disturbing pair-a-dox be! 

Walled Within

As organisms we are easily identifiable. Contained by the very skin in which we find ourselves, we hardly change. Yes, we grow older. Yes, we learn. Yes, we become more mature. We adapt and integrate and assimilate and make of our inner world a more complex organism, while perhaps simultaneously coordinating with our outer worlds as a simple order of constructions. We go to work. Cook. Sleep. And make do. Yet few, like caterpillars, are entirely metamorphic.

Trumpean pronouncements of "building a wall," and the Brexit isolationism are symptomatic of the fears that wall us within. We hardly can expand into other realities. Like maggots, or fruit flies, bees or wasps or flowers, we find ourselves identified by our species. Like rats or bats or dogs or cats; like horses or dolphins or whales, we are self-contained within the very molecules that go toward making our identity. Evolution is very slow. It takes several millions of years to make a man from a monkey. It took many millions of years for an elephant to arise from the rock rabbit. We find Neanderthal or Rudolfensis or Erectus identities and traits deep within our ethnic genes. We trace our ancestry online and sign in to DNA testing all in a search for our origins, all in the interest of discovering the far flung shores to which we owe some allegiance, some badge of identification; albeit solipsistically. So the kilt gets replaced by Romania. Or the rice-paddy-hat gets supplanted by a bowler. We are surprised that we are not really German. The Irish in us come out. After all, we want a sense of 'true' identity, at last, on which we may hang our hat.*

But the faults in my analogies in the above lie in my not championing the evolution of the individual. There is a natural tendency to presume that all elephants (in the room) materialized simultaneously: Poof! That one day we were apes, and the next day not. That Neanderthals suddenly, on April first, in the year 2 million BC, woke to find themselves more intelligent and humanoid than ever before, as though a Quantum Leap had taken place: "Everybody in the pool; last one in is a rotten egg!" Remember those games? Remember the strictures and the acculturation of how to advance in society, the adoption of language, identity, dress, religion, and traditional habituations to which you yourself became inured? We identify quite readily with 'the group", even though we may be urged to be at the forefront of it. Yet the fault-cracks in our collective-composite are created by the evolution of individuals, until each finds new community, coming out of the closets of self containment. Indeed, not all closets are kept closed by others.

A friend wrote: "Hello Richard, Firstly, I would like to congratulate you on your acting. You were good. (Indeed, one emotionally touched reviewer wrote: "The best acting seen in 20 years of attending Victoria theatre." Another wrote: “Incredibly powerful and moving.”) But we became friends because we were honest with each other, that was our bond, and I know that is what you would expect from me now. So let me say that while you were good, you were not stretched. It was as if you pulled on a familiar piece of clothing, an overcoat that felt comfortable on you, that was safe. You knew which button was loose, where the hem needed stitching, where the stain was that wouldn't come out. It felt agreeable. But I would like to have seen you pushed into the red zone, because that is where the creativity lies. We would have seen magic, my friend. You did the best you could with the material, but the play was dated. We have seen and heard this all before. The jokes were weak, the dialogue banal, the character development obvious. It was not raw, not edgy. And we're dealing with life and death mate! But I'm glad I saw it. Thank you for inviting me."

Yes, we are contained by the scripts we are given, walled within. (I wonder what Mitch Albom, the author of Tuesday's with Morrie, would think of my friend's critique?) Yet as Morrie himself asks, "Are you at peace with yourself? Are you trying to be as human as you can be?" Yes, it is one thing to exercise being "raw and edgy," to suit some, but also at the same time to be, as Morrie would have it, "filled with light." Or do we remain year after year, as individuals, as an identifiable organism, unscratched at the core, carefully closeted, and perpetually walled within?

* See: Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari.

Impeccable Integrity? (three hours before the Town House Debate)

"Already, some good has come of it," says Morrie Schwartz, and we wait to see what that might be. Well, we have all sorts of discussions going on about 'private parts' now. Between males. Between wives and husbands. Between sisters and brothers. And hopefully, very much around the immature ideas and childish impulses of boys, and girls, and between everyone who thinks about what they're thinking about, let alone what one says. Certainly, CNN news channel does!

Which of us has never been guilty? Which of us has never thought badly of another, or even said something in some derogatory term or other, without sensitivity that they too 'feel'? (Or do we charge people with oversensitivity? Do we simply say you need to develop a thicker skin?)

Political correctness aside, there is now a vulgar word or two not quite readily heard or shared across the news channels of the world. Some countries will delete out the topic altogether. But at least the subject of propriety itself raises the bar, sets a standard for sophistication and sensitivity and awareness and decency. The clarity is now (and was) that some things are undeniably lewd, crude, and rude. And the larger implication is that integrity itself is at stake.

"You are the same person, wherever you go," says Morrie Schwartz (in Tuesdays with Morrie). It is a call not only to act much the same wherever one is, but also to monitor one's own thinking. But we do swear when children are not around. (Or even in front of them.) We wear faces for business purposes. We put on our teacher masks, our professional masks, our dress and garb and accoutrements all to impress and disguise and hide and cloak. At 14 we spend three hours preening in front of the mirror in preparation for meeting an 'other'. At 20 we may spend two. By the time one is 65 our personal preparations may have evolved to no more than ensuring we're clean. We do care about the comfort of others. We do not want to offend.

Impressing others is natural to us all. We use our vehicles, our houses, our clothes, our things and even our voices in the changes of ourselves to suit the occasion. But being authentic is not about using the same voice or wearing the same clothes day in and day out. It is about realizing that we pay deference to funerals, to weddings, to the opera. Being authentic is not about never having a dirty thought or expressing anger or frustration or disappointment or even ruling out showing up in your dressing gown to answer the knocking at the front door. It is not about being (overly) concerned about the cleanliness of your house. Being authentic is about the integrity of being aware of why we're thinking something, why we're doing something, and whether that thing we think or does is harmful to others, to creatures, or to things; let alone to ‘the self’. And that kind of awareness, mostly, takes education. It takes mentoring by our society. It takes the monitoring of oneself. It takes the maturational stages through which we all go in order to become yet more and more mature, insightful, and compassionate. We are always in progress toward getting older and older; at issue is whether we progress, or slip into that seventh age of Shakespearean second childishness, sans eyes (the ability to see), sans teeth (the ability to chew over all that feeds us), sans ears (the ability to discern that which we hear), and mere oblivion. (Just how very many things, around and within us, are we not oblivious to?)

Our world is at a tipping point, yet again, in history. We proved that black children can become the president. We may prove that girls can become one too. And we may prove that fear may continue to trump sensibility. That last point may collectively regress us to a state of shallow-callow xenophobia, racism, misogyny, and the sense of product before people. ("If their work is not up to my expected standard, I do not pay them.") The thing is, perfection is never a long-lived product; it always is a progress. Therein might we have compassion. And therein too, always en route, which of us is impeccable? Yes, already, "some good has come of it," indeed.

One Waves at Flies

Chaos and fractals invigorate. We love energy! Nature rearranging itself excites or at least provokes interest. Stasis, eventually, is boring. Action, if a story is to progress, needs to come early. And so, late last night in rain-drenched dark and along the wind-swept and leaf bestrewn Lagoon Road down to our beach, we drove with a certain privilege, ensconced in our warm car. It "was a dark and stormy night," and the howling winds wrestled with the trees and battered at the buildings. This was not Haiti. It was not Florida. It was simply those six or seven foot waves bashing themselves up in furious froths against our usually tranquil Colwood Bay. And with our car's headlights on high-beam (as well as with quite a few other cars parked there too,) the sea was lit up in its dramatic anguish. Out there, somewhere far-far off, huge winds and waves were creating more damage and resulting in more deaths than we possibly could countenance. Only in the aftermath shall we see the effect on our own beach, are we likely once again to regroup.

Yet the fly became the biggest bedeviller of our night. A loud buzzer, it crawled the walls above the TV and disturbed our enjoyment of an episode of 'The Good Wife'. And each time its black dot settled on the white wall I thought to rise and capture it. I've succeeded with other flies. A clear glass and a stiff piece of paper to slide carefully under the orifice once the spider or ant or fly is enclosed, securely does the deed. One can then escort the thing out. But it was already the late hour of 9:30pm, and the weather outside was dreadful! Poor fly. So I did not rise and disturb my own inertia. I wanted to. But I did not. I was tired! And then, at about 9:45, my wife suggested we drive down to the beach. "The waves will be nice and big!"she expostulated, so....

But by the eleventh hour I'd had enough of that fly. Back in the warm house, it'd followed us into the bedroom, buzzed busily and annoyingly over and about and around our faces, crawled along exposed arms, and occasionally tap-tapped at the ceiling with its efforts to get at the light. It did not appreciate the door temporarily opened for it. It did not allow me to get close enough to capture it. And so, frustrated by the prospect of a disturbed sleep, I at last reached into our laundry basket for a used towel and went after it with a regretful vengeance. Killing things was something I'd learned to unlearn. But when it comes to mosquitoes, or some flies, well...

"I was too young when I abandoned my mother," Morrie Shwartz shares with Mitch, his former student from sixteen years ago. "And you were too young too, when your uncle needed you. We did what we were able to do!" Yes, along with forgiveness of the self, as well as compassion and awareness of another's point of view, we come to each moment in time only with all that we have in that given moment. And yet, towel in hand, and several ineffectual whacks later, I could not reach the culprit. All it did was eventually dart aside into the bowl of the ceiling light fixture, and there, since I heard not further sound nor saw again a sighting of it, I presume it died. Ugh!

But I thought a long time about that thing. And about all those so drastically affected by the storm off the coast of the USA. And I wondered at how all the future of the possible progeny of that particular fly, and then too of the very many people who died in the damage wrought by the big and brutal waves of nature, could so be yoked to chance and circumstance and location and even to an Other's intentions. We can help. We can save. We can avoid. And we can follow our instincts that'd have us get up off the couch and do something about life as much as possible, as early as possible, young as one may be. (Even if it is to arise and search out that which moves us, and to watch life with an interest and care and concern and momentum that gives one “peace with oneself, wherever one may be,” as Morrie says.) How else to change our very epigenetics? How else to affect the changes needed to wave after wave of our ancestral and individual habitations? How else to be as conscious as one can be of the significance of our lives to the future? Except perhaps, when disturbed by something as little and simple as a fly!

Anxiety, Personally

Anxiety erodes. It sneaks up and o'erwhelms one. It takes precedence over the carefully laid plans and undermines patience, forbearance, and sensibility. Something may go wrong! How can one be reassured? What if...? And so on and on. The chatter of anxiety is no chirping bird on one's shoulder; it is the perseverance of a rattle-snake's warning, not so subtly disturbing.

Too many of us suffer from it. Too many thoughts wobble with it. Which of us is not affected? It is more insidious than negative self chatter; it is the perpetual ricochet of self-doubt. Somehow, surely, something is amiss. And whatever prayers we may send, whatever wishes we may feel, there still shall be some fault betwixt one's actual action and whomever it is intended for, or else why suffer from anxiety at all?? (Whoever doesn’t?) If only we did not take things so personally!

"We cannot but help ourselves," a close friend admitted, "our house needs be a show-home if guests are to visit." The admission hurts. It belies peace and comfort and ease. It reveals just how uneasy we can be within the propensity of fears we inculcate over the possibility of others' judgments. Is the pantry tidy? Is there a spot on the bathroom floor? What if they look in this cupboard? What if they lose and search for a coin between the couch-cushions? What if they look under the bed???

Experience can make things worse! About two years ago a very good friend we housed for a weekend in our guest suite (since each apartment had-had the right to reserve it when we lived there,) found someone else's pair of dirty socks under the bed when she tidied up! I can still feel regretful when I think of it! She'd slept on that guest room bed and I myself had not sufficiently checked the tidiness of the room! After all, we do pay the housekeeper! (Still, the mistake will never be made again. One checks!)

But it is not just housecleaning that drives anxiety. It can be road-traffic and financial statements and the things one writes or says. It can be the inability to forgive oneself for the past. It can be the fear one feels at being disliked when yet again about to be in the presence of someone one has wronged. It can be about having to forgive the hurt to the self that others once upon a time instigated. Even as a child. It can be about the trembling wait for the prizes to be announced; it can be the insecurity of being held in abeyance while waiting to be admitted into a given society, until their self-standards are deemed sufficiently to be sufficed.

A frisson of fear attends anxiety. It is like words we do not recognize, slightly irritating, making us feel insufficient. Ignorant. It is the mistakes we make. It is the inadequacy, repeated, over and over. It is the imbalance and the stumble and the fumble and the bruise we are sure to get from our own incompleteness. How to become whole? How to be at peace? How to be resolute in the face of the roiling possibilities of upset and interference and probabilities of chance and circumstance all coinciding to trip one up! Anxiety is terrible. If only we did not take things so personally!

To let it go! To give up our limiting beliefs; our clinging to the past; our need to control the future; our own natter of negativity; our reliance on impressions; our sense of complaint; our needs to be right; our own resistance to change; our easily laying blame; and especially our need for others' approval; that's the thing! Thing is, anxiety is a fluid medium on which our passions and even our thinking voyages, and so to set sail with as much sensitivity to the prevailing winds, to the surging tides of the sea, and to the directions of one's own compass becomes all a part of the acceptance of ‘All’. Or what price is there else to pay for one's own peace? How else to swim among those sea-snakes of fear in one’s thoughts? (Or are there just as many land-based rattle-snakes?) How to accept and integrate the fear; to take out all those over-emotional and personalized reactions; to think it through; and to be as fully human as we can be? You, or me.

A Natter of Negativity?

It is insidious. Like a snake in one's pantry, negativity lies hissing at disturbances. One needs sustenance; we reach into our storage rooms that we've stocked over the years, and instead of savour and succour, the snake raises its sinister eyes, and lashes out with its forked tongue. We easily fall victim to the negativity. Our peace is disturbed; often severely; sometimes, it seems, fatally. We easily can see "every setback as the end of the world."

'Tuesday's with Morrie' tunes down that snake. Despite the imminence of certain death, Morrie stays positive in a world of angst. "Are you at peace with yourself?" his question resonates. It is a theme that drives the show. That, and the phrase, "Yes, but you are the same person, wherever you go." And when so very much of one's life can be a natter of negativity, it is worth examining the thoughts that so pervade our sensibilities. “We are what we think.” And since our thinking evolves into our speech, into our habits, and even into our actions, to be "at peace with oneself" is a hard-won concept, indeed.

Negativity is like a great seething pond over which one hovers on temporary Lilly-pads. We can feel so very good, for but a while. Generally, there's this morass of moments waiting to suck us in. There's the kitchen to be cleaned, the bed to be made, the clothes to be ironed, the dog to walk, the plants to feed. There's the mouse the cat brought in. It is the phone call; the problem with scheduling; the parking spot that someone else took. It is the price of eggs. It's the concert that is sold out! It is the desire to be anywhere but here. It is the uncomfortable conversation. It is the disaffection and the distancing and the uncertainty. It is the snake that hisses up at me. It is my thoughts and feelings and insecurities and the wishes that I might have done otherwise, especially in the past. "You only have regrets if you've lived your life the wrong way, chasing after the wrong things," Morrie says. And so that snake sidles on in the psyche, saturating the senses.

Being at peace with oneself is a time-worn practice. We can but do what we do. How else to forgive the self? How else to forgive others? "I was too young when I was needed most," Morrie tells his former student, Mitch, "And you were too young too. We did what we were able to do!"

Yes, we can forgive ourselves, and more importantly, forgive others if we have compassion for the fact that at each step of our journey, on the perfect moments of our own imbalance on those insecure Lilly-pads (of our progress over the slew of possibilities,) we chose to move on to the next; and after that, the next one too! We make decisions in the moment, based on who we are at the time, not on who we are now. For, "…inside me I'm every age I've ever been." And one needs be at peace with that. And one needs be at peace with ‘now’ too. Or when might one otherwise be? "If you're waiting for that perfect moment to say the wise and wonderful things you want to say to someone at the end," Morrie intones, "you better have great timing! The wise and wonderful things you want to say to people at the end, are the kind of things you should say, all your life."

Yes, being at peace with oneself is a perpetual practice. (Even maneuvering from Lilly-pad to Lilly-pad is an exercise of getting one's feet wet.) We cannot but be distracted by the daily dictums of living, "the accidental journeys; the unexpected questions." We needs indeed have that "little bird on your shoulder that asks, am I ready, am I being the person I want to be?"

Or does one give in, give up, "withdraw from the world", and allow for the insidious natter of one's own negative feelings and talk pervasively to hiss up from the very recesses of one's own being, let alone from the perpetual assaults of the daily diurnal of dissolutions that seems so easily to sink one into despair? No! Acceptance is all. And doing almost anything that we do, with grace and gratitude, helps, indeed. Yes? (Now then, to get up and clean those windows!)