Row, row, row your boat

[Sharkey]

Talking with a close friend yesterday who has lost his direction and is struggling with life changes that he doesn't know if he wants to complete. After the phone conversation, I sent him this piece, originally posted on the Upper Left Edge web site at this address

Michael Burgess has proven himself to be a humble sage over the years by hitting the center of the target repeatedly.

The paragraph insertions are mine...

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12 Jan 2006
Behind the Times
Michael Burgess

The new year, new beginnings, the return of the light. If we can learn anything from recent times, it may be the wisdom involved in giving up. There’s power in admitting that, in the big picture, the game’s over and they won. The trick, as Lawrence of Arabia used to say, holding his palm over the flame until his flesh burned, is not to care. It’s hard not to care. When the supreme court (small case intentional) appoints to the presidency a favorite son who, with the eager assistance of an administration that behaves like a swarm of ravenous insects, manages to take arrogance and greed to dizzying new heights; when the world’s economy is being savaged by the same slavering cabal of bloodless swine who've been robbing humanity blind since the middle ages; when the international monetary fund and the world bank, both managed by men who've never worked in the rain, waited for a bus or missed a meal, offer starving people interest rates that would make a loan shark whoop with laughter; when world governments come out proudly as nonprofit subsidiaries of global business and the cradle of civilization is being leveled to make way for cemeteries and shopping malls, it’s hard for the thoughtful peasant not to grab a torch and pitchfork and march on the castle.

The trick is not to care; or at least to care more about something else. Disengaging from madness isn't retreat, it’s advancing in a different direction. In any game whose goal is mutual destruction (and rule by global corporations is certainly one of them), the only way to win is not to play: to, on some fundamental level, put your marbles in your pocket and go home.

A man I know mentioned recently he'd found a new philosophy. Because we’re both men of some age, redefining reality is a significant event; cause either for celebration or serious concern. He seemed calm and happy and reasonably balanced so I asked what it was. He asked if I remembered the children’s song "Row, Row, Row Your Boat"? I said I did, trying not to roll my eyes or show fear. "That’s it," he said. "Don't roll your eyes, I'm serious." And he was. We all have a boat. It’s the only boat we have and, if we plan on getting anywhere, we need to row it. Who else, after all, is going to row it for us? Why, when you stop to think about it, would we let them near the oars? Gently down the stream. Not upstream, against the current, jaws clenched, chest bared to the storm; but paddling gently with the current, the sun in our face and the winds of the universe at our back. Finding and following, as all energy does, our path of least resistance. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily.

Of the many approaches we can take to life, we could certainly do worse than merrily. Granted, we all have a sad song to sing and there'll be days that nothing can keep us from singing it. But it’s good to remember we’re just pattern integrities at play in the fields of space/time, and that we’re about as happy as we decide to be. There’s much to be said for being as happy as we can manage, as often as we can. Life is but a dream. What seems at first sight a thought barely deep enough for a bumper sticker is actually a reasonable picture of the creation described by mystics of every religion as well as the universe described by quantum theory and relativity. The world, which is to say the world revealed to us by our perceptions, is the interface of perspective and potential: a collaborative construct, a set of relationships, a viewpoint. Whatever we see wasn't there before we looked and wouldn't be there if we hadn't: the surface of reality, not its volume. Enclosing everything that is, is everything that might have been and everything that still could be. The universe that emerges from the equations is more like a thought than a machine.

"That’s it," he said it again. "Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream; merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream." What a brave and cheery little song to sing as civilization crumbles around us: when, instead of unfolding, the universe seems to be unraveling, quickly and from every side; when the human comedy is turning tragic, distilled to an endgame of hubris, blind elephants and no laugh track.

The times have veered toward the Wagnerian and, if nothing else, they offer an interesting challenge. Rising to it may first involve giving up. As any poker player will tell you, if you don't know when to fold your hand, the game’s playing you. As our government of the people, by the people and for the people announces the cost of peace and prosperity involves preemptive strikes against anyone who can't be bought; when the price of AIDS medication exceeds the annual income of the dying; when the government whose attorney general draped the naked breasts of blind justice can read your email; and when sitting in a tree is a terrorist act, I find it easier and easier to tend my own garden.

I still rage against the machine of course: to do less would be a crime against humanity. My beliefs haven't changed, only my practice. My resistance may be quiet, but it’s no more passive than gravity. It’s inertia, pure and simple: the force that mass, and the masses, are left with when the king has taken everything else. It manifests as a patient search for peace of mind, right work and good company; and in a deeper appreciation of those I love and who love me. If there’s submission or defeat here, I haven't found it.

I'm an old dog now. I know there are events I can't alter, wrongs I cant right, wounds I can't heal. What I can do, what I will do, is nourish and strengthen the things that remain: those things that are truly mine. In what we call, a little too smugly sometimes, the dark ages, monks retired to monasteries to illuminate manuscripts and preserve knowledge. As this new year breaks, thoughtful peasants retire to their gardens to illuminate life and preserve what it means to be human.

Row, row, row your boat.

[Stillphil]

THAT'S pretty cool. I think a lot of us old geezers feel this way. I hope the young folks have more energy for the fight. I know <I> want to disappear from the radar screen.

Phil

[j_nigrelli]

well said!