To thine own self be true

The snow had started falling again as I walked with my limping horse on the road. Given the cars sliding past us, I decided we’d do better on the sidewalk where others were walking, just to be on higher ground and patted my horse’s blanket-covered back gesturing where we were to go.

A tall man with a cane who had been hobbling ahead of us also made the same move. But when he reached the sidewalk, he took a tumble and fell hard in an undignified heap. “Well, aren’t you going to help him?” my horse looked at me, but I instinctively intuited the man’s independent air as he cursed, struggling slowly to his feet.

My horse indicated she wanted to meet the man who now stood shaking the snow from his cloak. When we got to him, she looked intently at the man, trying to communicate something of their lame similarity and how impressed she was that he had righted himself despite his bad leg. The craggy-faced old man was baffled and laughed heartily at my horse’s perspicacity. “Imagine, identifying with me!”

We then parted and my horse and I reached home only to find a note already waiting for us, inviting us to join a Mr. Steinbeck for an afternoon beverage at his place in the valley. Later when we arrived at his cabin, he was genial and hospitable, now more appreciating the earlier moment of identification between man and horse. As he and I sipped scotches, he fed my horse carrots by hand and remarked that “the third horse had been lame” like mine and him.

It was my turn to be confused. “You know the one” he continued. “The one who fell, but never got up again.” He rubbed my horse’s nape as he said this. “The one we both of us could have been. We were lucky,” he added, his blue eyes twinkling. “Yes, the one who never got up again.”

(another Mr. Steinbeck)

“I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of the Imagination.”

(Keats’ death-mask)

The two-note
chickadee song.

“Full many a gem, of purest ray serene,
The dark, unfathom’d caves of ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”

“With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and a definite hardening of the paragraphs” –James Thurber

(a rather good documentary on an eccentric American wit-cartoonist)

The connection process. It is that which makes observing my 18-month-young grandson’s journey so interesting. There was one day a couple of months ago that epitomizes that. It was a windy day outside, trees moving outside. He was sitting on the floor playing looking up at the front picture window at all this activity and he started gesturing gently upward with his left arm and hand in response. Then he turned to his right in the direction of the dining room window at the other side of the house, gesturing similarly with his right arm and muttering in his primary language, explaining that what he was seeing was the same thing going on outside two different, separate windows. There even seemed to be an element of quiet awe about this private moment of consciousness.

I have carried him for some time now, during visits, to various light switches and he has enjoyed turning lights on and off. Two weeks ago we were in the living room and I walked around switching on lights and lamps. Each time he said “‘ight”. True, he had previously correctly identified single objects each time he saw them beginning with “dada” and “‘nana” (for bananas), but these two experiences I’ve recounted show something beyond simple identification. He is making connections, even (in the case of the moving trees) connecting movement or process.

I suppose I should also mention his single-time verbalization of “windy” three weeks ago when we had the front door’s window open and he noticed the peacock feathers in the vase being ruffled by the afternoon breeze through the screen.

Making connections–what we spend most of our lives doing whether it be in our learning in school, in our empathy and sympathy with acquired friends, lovers, and mates, in our choice of work and career, in our daily lives whether unfolding online or in our family, neighborhood or community.

In those connections, the emergent information, knowledge, empathy, understandings, appreciations of what passes for life and daily living. In those connections, we discover ourselves, others, nature, and the world. In those connections, we find what engages and interests us, what gives our lives meaning and purpose. We begin and later develop what is inner and personal while connecting with who or what is external and separate from us.

Thus, we begin to see and better understand the basic concept of “‘ight”. The great mythologist Joseph Campbell said “Awe is what moves us forward”, akin to what Clarke wrote and Kubrick visualized in 2001: A Space Odyssey when the moon investigators ponder the mysterious black slab or the Star-Child ponders Earth at the end of that movie–aiming first at some modicum of understanding, and later (re)acquiring connection and wonder all over again.

(line from a dream last night) “Life is a bit of a gamble.”
…………………………………
Well, there you go. The proverbial roll of the dice especially in personal choices and decisions. We do make (up) our own lives as we go. There are many things we can count on these daze including more and continual change as well as new conflicts and challenges. Certainly personal growth requires risk and often taking the plunge to move forward in whatever ways.

Many of Joseph Campbell’s views and quotes were based on the latter idea. A sampling:

“A shift in consciousness is all it takes.”

“You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”

“To refuse the call means stagnation.”

“When this refusal of the call happens, there is a kind of drying up, a sense of life lost.”

“The call is to leave a certain social situation, move onto your own loneliness and find the jewel, the center that’s impossible to find when you’re socially engaged. You are thrown off-center, and when you feel off-center, it’s time to go. This is the departure when the hero feels something has been lost and goes to find it. You are to cross the threshold into new life. It’s a dangerous adventure, because you are moving out of the sphere of the knowledge of you and your community.”

“You enter the forest at its darkest point, where there is no path.”

“Where you stumble there lies your treasure.”

“As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm. Jump. It is not as wide as you think.”

“Money is congealed energy and releasing it releases life possibilities.”

“If you follow your bliss, you will always have your bliss, money or not. If you follow money, you may lose it, and you will have nothing.”

“Snake and moon both die to the old, shed their shadow to be reborn.” (A comment on mirroring natural processes.)

“When threatened by fear and desire, let ego go.”

“The limitation comes where your judgement comes.”

“The creative act is not hanging on, but yielding to new creative movement.”

(from Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion)

……………

highly recommended reading and viewing: Campbell’s The Power of Myth

Much of our early life consists of following our personal interests, exploring our ruling passions, and seeking the daily information we require as we go. In this, frequently is a desire to control as much of our lives as possible and influence as many people as we can.

At some point later, we may be lucky and end up knowing who we are, with many or most of our unique missing pieces filled in or somewhat addressed. Whatever freedoms we are lucky to experience from middle-age onward typically require connecting and then letting go of whatever Blakean “mind-forg’d manacles”.

Maturity and aging, in themselves, require an acknowledgement of one’s ‘warts’, foibles, and shortcomings. In that, some key self-knowledge but, more importantly, acceptance of one’s own limits and limitations. As the cliche says, no one is perfect. We are, finally, who and what we are, have been, and will largely continue to be. We begin to learn to let go of the past, past people, and larger chunks of our lifestyle and whatever impossible dreams.

The same generally holds true with regard to others, and the situations one lives in and experiences. Correspondingly, there are and always will be limits and limitations to others and whatever situations. They are what they are and will be what they will be, likewise. Often people and situations become frankly burdensome in various ways and cannot ever be changed by oneself or despite one’s best offerings or support. Letting go, again, proves to be the ticket to freedom. This is a stage in which we level with ourselves in the many limited/limiting contexts and admit that it is time to move on to other growth possibilities.

With others, humility, empathy, humor, and kindness will do as a general final daily mode of operation. There is certainly nothing that needs proving at this point. It is always useless at this stage to go against the tide or lack of or impossibility of change. By and large, other people have to work out their own lives on their own. Whatever will, positive choices, or desire to change has to be generated from within.

So, life process requires adjustments that steadily move one towards autonomy and the increased freedom that accompanies it. There are choices and adjustments to be made on the road to acceptance of self and others as well as self and situations/contexts. As a result, both freedom and autonomy create the attitudes necessary to live out what is left of a satisfied, fulfilled, authentic life.

(Edison’s phonograph for playing recorded music was one of the 40 most useful, indispensable, beneficial technologies)

Medicine
-birth control
-autopsies
-cancer radiation
-artificial insulin
-penicillin and antibiotics
-vaccines
-aspirin
-Prozac
-artificial heart and other organs
-syringes
-band-aids and bandages

Communications and Transportation
-printing press
-telegraph and telephone
-typewriter
-photocopiers
-photography
-motion pictures
-bridges
-sanitation technology
-World Wide web
-traffic signals
-roads and highways
-seatbelts
-elevators

Industry
-steam engine
-jet engine
-hammer and nail
-assembly line

Science and Electronics
-modern numbers
-computer
-transistor
-microwave
-radio
-television
-phonograph
-calculator

Everyday Items
-drinking fountain
-toilet paper
-disposable diaper
-batteries
-lightbulb

(Adapted from the interesting National Geographic 101 Inventions That Shaped the World)

Smartphones, tablets, and laptops–a neverending black hole into which the hoi-polloi regularly pours money into.

The planned obsolescence and the mass’s common denominator desires to own the absolutely latest gadgets, pointed out by Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman in 1949, continues in the West. Chasing Carroll’s White Rabbit into the vast neverending labyrinth of escapist e-distraction.

(the 1951 first movie version of Arthur Miller’s classic play)