I like public radio (MPBN). But it isn't for the reason you might think. That is, if you think I'm the NPR stereotyped listener, just because I seem to have emerged from decades of being digested by the culture's more disappointing intestines, as a fully formed Liberal crumudgeon. It's true that I may lobby more often with the “progressives” these days, but I really think of myself more as an Anarchist. I despise ideology of all kinds.
Anyway, no, no, no. My attraction to the public broadcasting *ideal* comes from my childhood memories of watching inarguably innocent shows like “Sesame Street,” “Mr.Rogers,” “The Electric Company,” and “Mutual Omaha's Wild Kingdom.”
I like the feeling that I am observing something innocent; something made for well-meaning reasons. Even the left-weighted stories on public radio seem innocent enough for me now—*pure* enough. These shows seem to cause no one any harm and might have even taught me a thing or two! Again, an ideal. This ideal is deep within and indicates to me that there are - somehow – psychological safe zones where I can return to the Park of childlike innocence; to the sunny days (whether real or imagined) that illuminated the start of my life.
Having nearly died a few times now, I understand very well how the push-down from the momentum to “give up” can be defeated by the slightly stronger up-ward lift of finding the will to trying over again. It has very little to do with physiology. It is all about will-choice. It seems that it is a spin on the old cliché to say that: making a will-choice to try again is just enough of the self-help needed for God to then jump in and offer he/she/it's own help. (If you will.) Life is either given up or taken. There is no in between. As long as a person doesn't currently have one of those things doing death duty, one can live, and even learn! Adding the lubrication of experience as it is motivated by will-choice is how true wisdom and maybe even spiritual maturity can polish the weathered parts of the soul that have long since rusted shut.
When I was a younger man I didn't know how to be on time to meetings. Though my colleagues were patient with me, I began to catch on that making people wait just because I couldn't plan carefully enough was disrespectful to them, and made me look like a dick.
Resolving to change my evil ways, I tried to manipulate my environment in order to make reality look more acceptable to myself, as I put my own time ahead of other people's time, thinking that might work. I guess that became literal. I'd set my clocks ten minutes ahead, so that, in an attempt at reverse self-psychology, I'd always feel like I still had time for myself. “Four o'clock! Oh, right! Phew, it's only ten of four.” This failed spectacularly. Then one day I had the compulsion to try something different. I decided I would instead set my clocks to the most precisely known, *actual* (or, most mutual and socially-agreed upon) time. I decided that at least it could be a fun new challenge. It was then, when my reality matched the state of the moment as well as it could, that I was final able to be on time for meetings. I can't say why. The change was instant and lasting. It was the socially-friendly thing to do too. Yes, I changed because I respect other people's schedules, but I ended up unwittingly helping my own reputation! No more, “when is dick gonna show up.”
Decades of being a rebel with no rebellion to fight for, as well as a socially skeptical and jaded, “shamer and blamer ” of others, has left me wondering about the value or harm of habitual rejection, for rejection's sake. Turns out that only now can I hold the mirror up at just the right angle to see how my pretension (often accompanying plenty of outward contention) was a subconscious way to strut around, philosophically.
Only since pupating back from the chrysalis of surgical anesthesia have I discovered that “the fight” has been molted out of me. I just don't care enough anymore to defend, or *offend* with my own personal belief system. It's done. I've said it already in great detail. I've said enough. If people still want to argue with me about what *I* believe, I hope to lovingly send them to this blog. It is the socially-friendly thing to do. I'd rather just get along now, as much as it really stings my pride sometimes. time is short. (Beware though: I still hate unasked for advice. And, if you attack me unfairly, I'm not above pulling out my dusty verbal/textual buzz-saw. Ha!)
For me, the things that are important now are like those that a new parent must respect. Stability, social responsibility, and protection are the priorities. As you may know, I care for my mom as she is figuratively and tragically, getting “younger,” more childlike and innocent, creeping toward the mysterious birth place from which she had first emerged in her own sunnier days.
There is nothing more important. I put aside my life of over-sized ambition and isolation for something much more valuable to me, than me. The complexity of silly obligations, subtle social cues, the transient face-value of an artificial and highly disordered human universe go straight around my mom, without her even noticing. It's like gravitational lensing. The growing gravity well of her mind disperses all that is not as vital as the immediate moment, and terminally, forever swallows the light of her own mortal ability to escape.
And the connections born of irony never cease. My mom was exceedingly generous to me as a kid. If I had been a greedy and ambitious child, one might say she spoiled me. But I appreciated her help and put it to the best advantage I could. She was everything to me as a child. She had to be in order to balance things as the “good cop” parent. But, in so many ways, my mom and I were also friends, especially as I got older. We would often talk to each other for hours and hours about the problems we were having. It is our friendship that still allows humor to be present and not allow us to take ourselves too seriously. Hopefully that will last a while. Now that she needs help with even the smallest things, I find it bitter sweet to be the helper she will have, at least for the rest of my life (as she will likely outlive me).
Mom is circling around and becoming innocent again; as innocent as the PBS shows she encouraged me to watch when I was her child. Back then, we stuck to the safe side of the road. Our clocks were right on time. We just never knew what that time really was. It didn't matter back then.
To stop myself from speeding I drive at exactly the posted speed limit. It isn't just Protestant moderation, or Yankee sensibility. It is just socially-friendly.
I refuse to use my phone in any way except as GPS while driving. It isn't because the law demands it. It is because I need to know what it's like to follow the rules, to be responsibly to society. Throwing snowballs at the street signs felt good as a rebel, and I could cover them occasionally. But snow always melts and the signs stay. Cooperation is a will-choice for innocence.
Doing the cooperative thing isn't about right and wrong. It isn't about turning up my amp above the rest of the band and shredding through a guitar solo, or brandishing a unique physical appearance in order to cause intrigue and controversy. Only now do I realize that it isn't about the melody. It is about the harmony. While I would never advise capping creativity, originality, or novelty, I understand now that those three things shine best when they are highlighted least. They can make the show, rather than stealing it.
I have mentioned many times in the last couple years, that I believe my post surgical world (the world I came back to—THIS world) is like an over-the-top B-grade, sci-fi film, done in shaky handed video, like “Cloverfield” (but much worse), where every now and then you catch the microphone dipping down into the shot.
When I was prepped for surgery I left a semi-rational world; one where the most ridiculous thing in history was the election of an orange colored American president. The earth in the reality which I awoke after surgery was – right off the bat – like a shit show playing out in a shuttering boxcar, coming loose from a runaway, crazy train, on a dark and stormy night. No metaphor does this world any justice.
But, you'll be happy to know that I have since regained a largely unfounded faith that at least this version of earth is not, indeed, hell, as I had postulated about somemonths ago. Nope. I think this is just a less ordered local universe than the one I left. I know how unhinged all of this sounds. Ha! I am fully aware that if your world – my new world – seems so radically off the average planetary standard deviation curve to be real at all, it probably means the only truly weird character in this discussion is ME! Okay, that will remain up for discussion. But something happened to me while I was in between worlds.
Was it a lack of oxygen? Was it an overdose of imagination? Where is Occam's Razor? We will never know. I will never know. But, like every over-thinker who has ever thought about existential realty a little too long—because duh, that's what ya do, I – like you – have to eventually choose a belief system that integrates as much as possible about how my existence fits into everyone else's consensus reality. I choose to believe that this world must, instead of being a “beautiful hell,” perhaps the only sure way of avoiding that spiritual insanity-fate.
Of course, this space isn't perfect. No space is perfect for me or you. But our adventures in time can be a perfecting engine for all of us. Space and time are a *place.* What will lead to perfection in the end, can, in hindsight from there, be deemed a perfect place, but only then. Is that determinism? No, I don't think so, and thank you for asking! A perfect static circle may be seen from above, but an ascending and dynamic spiral staircase is what we see from the side. We may never see it from above—and thence both perspectives, but I believe we will!
And maybe the eternal striving for perfection simply takes us home to the sunny days just after we were born, subsequently linking each of us into the human over-mind that we know and love in this life—when we truly were innocent? I believe we are playing out the time-constrained dramas that we ourselves – in spirit – authorized in the deep past-planning of whichever world we all agreed was best, before meeting around the eternal camp fire.
Then, to enjoy the material freewill, like you read about—as adventure, we have briefly become mortal again, in observation. We learn the consequences for the moral decisions we make, like a kind of magic. Or, we don't learn.
I'm fortunate that the Universe or Universes has given me such ample opportunity to have another chance to try again. It is the golden dream: to return to innocence for one more try. This time? I remember what to do. I remember what is at stake. But most of all, I am perked up and ready to learn more about the plot of my own story. I think we are all doing that.
Here's a trip toy for you: Ultimately, I perceive a future Sea made up of all souls together, unified as One uncountable mega-multitude; sitting there in common ascendant perfection, at the Center of Infinity. For sport or entertainment, they like to dip their consciousnesses back down through the depths of their past experience—the decisions and events which allowed them to sit at such a lofty place of perfection.
Here on earth I am not really me yet. You are not yet you. We (writing and reading this) are like probes sent from our future selves to re-live the formulas of spiritual calculus our spirits once chose way back at the start of all things to complete the circle of eternity.
Only by experiencing the consequences of the erroneous decisions we make purely to help ourselves can we understand that love ends up meaning helping others. Love is many things. To give wisely without the expectation of any possible return on that love investment is one form. And, yes, admittedly, the extent to which that last sentence is followed is directly proportional to the purity of the love being proffered, I think.
The most profound realization I have had lately is that love doesn't have to be very pure, to be pure enough. Nothing has to be pure. Not yet. Things don't have to be ideal in order to be idyllic. Even people don't have to be perfect in order to claim they are “perfecting.” Knowing this allows for finding innocence again. We can all be forgiven, for truly, we know not a fucking thing about what we say. And what we say has to carry all the weight of what builds our world, from the Planck scale to the deep fields of starry twisting filaments teaming with endless galaxies. Terence McKenna said, “The world is made of language.”
I once walked and wrote about the roads spanning a single continent on a world I thought I understood, but toward which I was perpetually angry. Now, I've been kicked over to a world I don't understand, and for some reason I want to play nice now! I'm just walking the circular arc of the spiral, returning to innocence.
I still think you'll see my soul on the outside before I'm gone. Mom's soul is just a little further up the path... Look within! There she is!
Aw, she's smiling the first smile I ever saw! The most beautiful smile I've ever known and what I judged all other women by. Together, we're off to the Park, to the sunny days at the start! Come play with us whenever you are ready.
