True Callings

Recently, I’ve been accused of leading a noteworthy life. I must take this opportunity now, to express my own surprise, and to equate it with the surprise (no doubt) of others who have known me for some time. Could a less likely candidate exist, than myself, for the station to which I’ve risen? It seems that an unremarkable life is Fortune’s favorite, for it was only five years ago that I contemplated a quiet existence piled high with books and manuscripts and all the outward signs of inward contemplation. I meant to keep to myself, and to guard myself against the intrusions of a wide world. I have not changed all that much, though I’ve found it within to be social where I might otherwise have chosen solitude. So intransigent are life’s true callings, that when their time comes, one simply resigns one’s former life, as if its value were naught. 

No proof more testifies this renunciation, than that I, now a Congressional Spouse, once eschewed politics with an almost hateful determination. I turned off utterly, whenever it came to the dinner table. Equally, then, did I stare blankly, when a friend attempted to solicit my opinions upon some worldly issue. I accounted to myself, that some reason must exist for this dislike. I trusted my heart–not a foolhardy thing to do–and like all great opinions, I found an excuse to justify my strong feelings. My alibi read simply: the person who takes interest in the affairs of others, has no interest in himself; in time, knowledge of the world’s ills will poison him, and he will cease to see creation as it is, rather choosing to see what he wishes it to be. I was frightened of the capacity of knowledge to alter my perception of the world into which I had been born. Once asking a question–why is the sky blue?–does it not rob Nature of the beauty of simple existence? I longed to avoid inquiry, and thus to avoid knowledge, so that my view of the world might go on unadulterated. Perhaps, in so doing, I would experience the world unfiltered, whole.

Imagine when love led me to someone whose knowledge was voluminous. Our conversations existed, for a time, on alternate planes. He would make references to a concrete world, one measured and measurable. All the gorgeous facts of human knowledge as it had been collected through the ages, poured from his lips, and I doubted myself. I doubted my self-imposed ignorance of the affairs of humankind. How beautifully knowledge served in the name of humanity! Its testaments were all around, in the magesty of a skyscraper, in the exquisite alchemy of gourmet food. I felt suddenly quite foolish. I had wished to learn nothing of the world I yet chose to inhabit. If it was knowledge of human society I detested, why then did I go on living among it? There was a contradiction there, although one that my laziness compelled me to ignore.

I could see, all too clearly, the benefits of learning, yet I could not help but feel that knowledge was equally a blessing and a curse.

At the beginning of each day, I loved to check my e-mail. But by its end, I lamented what my letters to friends had wrought: I must now answer for the questions I had asked, while the hours passed me by, and the moon poured twilight on a world I would find no time to experience. Why must it be this way? The moment you invest yourself, no matter to what degree, you enter a process that may not end quickly. Every question must play out; every word must return. We cannot gain knowledge, then hope to remain uninvolved. It is true, a fact is a most dangerous thing to acquire. Once taken, it cannot exist in isolation. It demands the company of facts beside, lest it lose its meaning.

Consider this: once we learn that the Winter is cold, can we avoid discovering that the Summer is warm? Suddenly, all things become relative, and from relativity comes importance, or the lack of importance. Knowledge breeds inequality, just as ignorance breeds bliss. No longer can a thing exist of itself, but only in relation to others.

I will not burden you with the excesses of my contemplation upon this point, but I will say that my unwillingness to learn proved eventually detrimental. When it came to meeting my partner’s colleagues, I discovered myself unable to speak freely. There would be the economy, and the state of healthcare to discuss. There would be global warming, and the threat of the nuclear state. Not knowing what everyone else spent their days learning, I would be thought unintelligent, though knowledge is not intelligence.

At last, I resigned myself, that I must become aware of the society in which I live. No, one cannot criticize a way of life if one does not exist outside of it. Discontentment demands service. If you are unhappy, then you must act!  If an illness, you suffer, then you must treat it, though perhaps it involves you where you would rather stand by.

I do, indeed, wish that this were the sort of world in which we did not have to learn to survive. But if we choose to enjoy life as a society, then we must choose to suffer it, as well. I will learn the facts of an animal’s abuse, and I will hope that in so doing, one day, I will be able to lay down my books, and live alongside them. We must aim for that day when knowledge is not a privilege, when our neighbors are no longer our enemies. Knowledge is nativity.

Computer Trouble

I’ve spent the better part of my day today attempting to get our computers up and running. I’ve all but succeeded, with only the speakers still stubbornly refusing to cooperate. I wish some cosmic authority would deign to enlighten me when these sorts of situations strike. Nothing more exasperates me than a full-day’s labor that does not get the job done. In all honesty, I love technology. It’s what allows me to impart these observations. I loathe busy work, and so I adore the tools that attend to it in my stead. Yet I find, on days like these, that when I am kept from venturing outside by a seemingly simple transaction with wires and outlets, I am embittered beyond words. I would rather write a thousand pages by hand than waste a day in setting up a word processor. I hate staying inside, beneath artificial lighting, with the burnt smell of radiator heat and my feet sliding on polished floors. In the end, I wonder if I’ve spent my time living, or if I’ve simply wasted hours on human invention.

Nature gives us precisely what we need to live, no more, and no less. If my computer solves a problem, certainly it is not one created by Nature. Humans are really excellent at contriving solutions for the dilemmas they themselves devise. One could very easily mistake human ingenuity for a step forward, but its chief objective is to return us to a state of normality, in which our negative actions don’t add up to a lesser quality of life. Therein lies the irony. When we begin life on Planet Earth, our lives are in balance. When we are hungry, we eat. When we are tired, we sleep. When we are cold, we seek shelter. Our needs are met without fail in Nature. It is only after we add desire to need, that we must undertake to balance our lives anew, and we never truly do balance them. Our longing for space is matched by augmenting houses, which consume yet more energy, which, in turn, troubles our scientists to no end, thus creating the need (and the ingenuity) for alternative sources of power. That is how we get into this mess.    

The computer is simply one of many preoccupations I’ve suffered since arriving in Washington, D.C. Menial duties have kept me from doing what I might if I had a view to spiritual fulfillment. There are drippy faucets, and tiny disasters of which to take note. There is laundry and garbage, and dates to place in my calendar. Small things have a tendency to grow large when they go unattended. And all of this is done for the sake of expedience, so that I will not have to address tomorrow what I have the option of addressing today. Ironically, there is always more to do, no matter how many items I cross off my list.

I don’t believe I’m the only person with list troubles. Life as a human being is complicated. It begs to be ordered. And our answer to that chaos is its ennumeration. I have tried to organize myself in this way, hoping therby to free up future times when I might go for a walk or sit by a flower. I do everything as I should, in order to be an effective person. But more often than not, I somehow miss the time that preparation should guarantee. Why is it that the more prepared we are, the less prepared we are? Like knowledge, you gain only to recognize your deficiencies. I quite literally take time to prepare my preparations for tomorrow, and that is a dismal thought, indeed.

I don’t bother wondering why I don’t simply forego these preparations. If I didn’t now set up my computer, then tomorrow, I would never see a certain highly-important e-mail reminder of a package that just left the shipping facility. See how sadly amusing? That package probably contains something to help me plan my day, or else to waste it on another human contrivance.

The sun shines through a window merely three feet from my chair, but it might as well be a thousand miles away. If I throw open that window, and decide to really live, then this computer will wallow in its packing peanuts another day, and I’ll only despair of another chore left undone. Self-discovery begins when one has nothing to do. So long as I am busy, I remain a stranger to myself, and to others. 

What I need is a list with an ending. If I could see how many, tedious chores I must complete, then I would go to it with gusto. Perhaps, then, I would free up my life.

There are many reasons I admire animals, but more for this than for any other reason: I admire their passion for life. They spend it in fields and mountains, in sunlight and moonshine, dashing madly into snowdrifts and reclining in the shade of a tree. They do not gaze out from tiny windows onto a world they desire; but they rush into it with no time to waste!  If they plan for anything, it is to have food enough for the Winter, or to find water on a hot day. Their plans are one with their needs. While we toil away over grand visions of what life will be, animals revel in the experience of it. I dislike planning, but I am at a loss how to avoid it. Things should catch up with me very quickly if I didn’t arrange for their arrival. Again, I am sadly amused. Suppose things did arrive and we hadn’t prepared for them? What terrible sentence would we serve?

One of these days, I may just shut down my e-mail and turn off my phone, or else I’ll trouble mysef in thinking of the days I let pass while all I stared at were the four walls of my room.

I’m Back!

Time truly does pass in the blink of an eye. Three weeks ago, we piled our car high with moving boxes, for a trip that would take us to our new lives in Washington, D.C.  I was surprised to see how neatly our lives, which had seemed  unkempt in Boulder, fit then into so many boxes. I knew we would return, and yet, in packing our things, I felt uninvited to the task. A part of me saddened to see the items we had lived with, taken from their shelves and drawers, and packed away for a trip to another place. I have always fancied that objects–what we deem otherwise, unconscious–mark their surroundings, and witness change, as through eyes and ears. Like old men and old women who have not stirred from their spots in ages, so too, a picture gathers dust, a letter waits patiently at the bottom of a drawer, to be read once again. Perhaps they do not live, but the world is such a cold place, one needs the comfort of familiarity to make it bearable. And sometimes, it is the unlikliest of witnesses to our lives, that we cling to most jealously.

My desire for attachment is, I believe, common among all people. We long for the world to be our backyard, and to trust that we may go anywhere, and do anything without fear. In the secret corridors of our minds, we wish our lives were not so serious as they are, and that we could truly delight in the experience of living.  If only we could stop racing! If only others would stop with us! We envy the animals, even as we condone their suffering.

A number of years ago, I celebrated Thanksgiving with my family. It was in a year when much of my life as it had been, was changing. I knew little where I was heading, or how the decisions I made would ultimately return to me. I was unhinged. But it did me well to have my mother and father, my sister and partner, in a single place, for a single purpose. We were together and we were happy. How little I knew, then, of the nature of life; that it changes without notice. Had I but an awareness of things as they are when they are fading, I might then have loved those moments even more than I do now. I might have memorized more from those few hours, taken notice of finer details, paid more attention to the conversation. I would not have polluted that sweet air with petty indignation, for I had been bitter over some trifling complaint. There is much I would have done to crown that moment. But I let it pass as if it were any other moment. By the end of the evening, when my family had left, already I was picking over its remains, like some poor, starving creature.

My longing as the years passed, to return to that night–and to many nights before–brought forth a resolution to keep the unopened cans of cranberry sauce and candied yams that my mother had brought that night. They are in my pantry now, seemingly untouched by time. I dare not open them, for I know I would see the dust of a mummified memory. The outside lived, even as the insides perished.

I speak often of the appearance of things: how, ironically, blindly, we trust our eyes. So it seems to us that a thing is dead, in which life’s heart beats still. And what we trust is living, may yet hide a shadow beneath its skin. We pretend that the outside is the inside; that to look upon the face is to look upon the soul.

When what we see upon that face, is a pleasure to behold, we withdraw our gaze, contented. But when we hold in our gaze, the images of suffering or pain, then we turn away and have no desire to find out why.

We console ourselves that a happy thing is happy through and through, and that a sad thing will, in time, come around to its own joy. We do not bother with its pain.

With its exterior unscathed, I can pretend that my can of cranberry sauce is the still-living witness of that happy Thanksgiving so many years ago.  But I will not open the lid, lest I see Time’s ravages. 

Our misuse of animals is not unlike that can.

We frame the faces of cows and chickens. We ogle them with fondness, for they seem so carefree and happy. But suppose we saw past those faces. We would see the hard life of a cow that eventually goes to slaughter. We would see it spending long hours in dark hallways, torn from its family, used, as if an interchangeable part in some monstrous machine. If we looked beyond their faces, we would see that we unwittingly condemn those animals to genocide. It is no different than when we turn our heads from the suffering of children in war-torn countries. We would rather not look beneath the surface, but refusing to look does not erase the reality of a thing. 

We pretend that they feel no pain; that when we strike them, they do not bleed as we would bleed; that death is a plight unto their bodies alone, but that they are souless; their flight from this world is unfelt by their survivors. But, are we not all united on this Earth? Are we not all flesh and blood? Do we not nourish our bodies with the same waters? How different are we, really? How similar? Before you condemn an animal you never bothered to know, ask yourself: are you sure of these things? Are you sure it feels no pain? Are you sure that the way you live today is the way you should live tomorrow? The animal before you deserves at least that small consideration. And perhaps more.