Life As A Museful Hermit:
I have always found people interesting: at arm's length for the most part. Arm's length protects me from them and they from me. It is hard to understand why I, or anyone for that matter, become what they become. Part of it is kind of clear: our looks we get from our genes, our religion we almost always inherit---after that it starts to get increasingly obtuse and muddleheaded. Most of us realize at some point we should have picked our parents more carefully. Too late. It's all their fault and we really knew that early on. But they wouldn't listen. Parents can be so dumb.
Once on our own we found out dumbness seemed too oft all around us, and to be pervasively annoying, mixed with varying degrees of malice--- directed more so, of course, towards us than any of our malice towards them. How many times have we all felt, "stop the world, I want to get off and rest a bit". It seems most of life is a long tiring exercise in perfecting our logical nature only to find logic itself an elusive variable. The only unanimous conclusion reached by everyone seems to be that there are more horse's asses in this world than horses.
Love, happiness, justice, purpose of our lives, achievement, priorities---all these kind of things dance around in our minds until we get dizzy and we just rest a bit. Then we get up and make ourselves dizzy with 'stuff' over again. Space. I have always seemed to need a lot of that. Always, since I can remember, I have been a kind of crowd avoiding reclusive nonsocial aloof educatee of diverse personalities, cultures, and ethnicities. Teaching was probably a good profession for me---it gave me new populations of people to observe at a decent distance, the opportunity to contemplate the essence of others so that maybe I would eventually master an understanding of human nature. Unfortunately, I am not that Lincolnesque and whatever pitiful little I ever learned on my own is unimpressive. That is probably why I read a lot: to absorb knowledge about things from the greater brilliance of others. But I don't think any of us ever learn enough to really live or understand things to any level of real satisfaction. Plodders, every one of us, and when we try to gallop we fall on our face. Watching others fall on their face is mostly humorous, probably the original origin of ha ha. My cats don't laugh. Nothing is ever funny to them. I tend to be just the opposite---I see humor in most everything. Why not? I think those who rarely laugh get touched with some kind of insanity---get all depressed or angry to the point of hurting others, etc. Sometimes it is best to laugh in order not to cry or become some sort of suicide bomber. I guess I can picture myself at the wheel of a car all packed with explosives but am too indecisive---like which bastards do I take with me to la la land? Frankly I don't have a lot of trust in la la land anyway. Sometimes I wonder if my parents were smart enough to have signed on to the right religion. Of course they didn't sign on either. Hey, well somebody did at some point in my family history. Recently the Pope reaffirmed Catholicism as the only true religion. A lot of Muslims make the same kind of point. Pat Robertson certainly does. God talks to Pat, maybe we better pay more attention. Buddhism instructs its' followers to listen to no one and go find their own 'nirvana'. I've tried that, but nirvana is always just around the next corner. I have had my share of good luck in life, relatively speaking----so hope I land in heaven via the same basis. Sometimes it scares me to think that maybe those of us lucky in this life have already had our Heaven and the afterlife Heaven is for the unlucky in this life. What a revolting development that would be. Maybe I will ask to be buried dressed in tattered hand-me-downs. Then pop up and tell God, "Ha, ha, fooled you". Yeah, sure.
I think I EQUALLY like nature, solitude, and people (at arms length). It wouldn't take many fingers to count those people I ever let real close or trust. And sometimes the list changes, just like time changes. Change seems to be the engine which drives the creative process. Maybe that is why I have little use for words like fundamentalist, purist, true believer, conservative (depending on how the word is defined), hard-core, faith based, doctrinaire, prejudice, committed, family-values, braces-on-the-brain patriotic, devout, un-bending, rigid, and now I just realized this list could go on and on. I prefer words like tolerant, diverse, honest, sympathetic, helpful, encouraging, justice, freedom, flexible, humble, deserving, and this list too could go on and on too. I hate a rule-is-a-rule-is-a rule when in reality only the objective for which any rule exists is worth committing to. Fairness and justice tops rules any time with me.
If there is any concept I place in the forefront of human obligation it is leveling the playing field. This, to me, is the basis for religion, for politics, for friendship, for making things right in the world. Leveling the field is not possible without sharing and sacrifice. Sharing and sacrifice is not socialism. And limits are not stifling but necessary for justice to reach all. Adults may be mostly responsible for their own future, but all kids, in any just society, should be given a level playing field to the extent possible. Amongst nations, cultures, ethnic groups, religious groups---live and let live should be the operative mode. Primitive past cultures had it basically right---worship nature. Forget ornate cathedrals, dandy attire, important titles, silly-ass rituals, and trying to dominate other humans or other species. Our mission is not to dominate anything but to meld as best we can with the rest of God's creative process, using our mental acumen to achieve this.
The first page of my final exams at the University often included the following. I still feel the same way.
A Final Word From Your Instructor:
"Now the end is upon us, and so we face the final curtain. We have been like ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing: Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness: So on the oceans of life we pass and speak one another, Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence." (Longfellow)
As your world expands you will see so many people, so many opinions. Nevertheless, I encourage you to adopt an expansive philosophy and not be consumed by conflict. In this little chapter of your life you have toiled to learn some basic principles of physiology. To some, I suppose, the course has been just one damn thing after another. And sometimes it seems instructors are the bones on which students sharpen their teeth.
I like to keep things simple. "There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it hardly behooves any of us to talk about the rest of us." (Hoch) My final advice to all of you is don't stand still and passively watch the world go by, because if you do---it will. "It is not doing the thing we like to do but liking the thing we have to do that makes life get better. We do our work and sometimes it goes well and sometimes it doesn't. And when it doesn't we feel low. We pause for a moment, say a prayer in church, drink a beer in the backyard, go to a psychiatrist, or smoke grass if we are young. The granite mass of time cracks and we feel wonder at the world. We go on." (Taylor) As time passes you will eventually realize the best things in life aren't things. Be afraid only of standing still, for the "greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." (Confucius)
"Reality isn't the way you wish things to be, nor the way they appear to be, but the way they actually are. Either you acknowledge reality and use it to your benefit, or it will automatically work against you." (Ringer) This is the end of the course, but this course is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
"There is a way of life, a way of thinking, of behaving towards other men and your fellow creatures, towards all living things, towards the whole earth and the sky and the sun that is based on love, on compassion, on respect, on cherishing everything there is around you because it is wonderful, unique, it's natural and good and it evolved that way by itself, it's got to be cherished and if we think like that and live that kind of life, we can all have our freedom, we can all have our happiness, we can all feel the sun and smell the grass and smell the flowers and look upon each other with appreciation." (Davis)
