Swimming Easy in the Deep

Radical Hope = Swimming Easy in the Deep!

To most of us it seems that nothing makes sense anymore.  Which is especially true if you expect things to make sense in the first place.  Silly you. 


Jonathan Lear's Book

"Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation" looks at the response of Chief Plenty Coups of the Crow to the collapse of his people's traditional way of life and culture to examine how a community should responds to the collapse of its culture - sound familiar?

According to him "Radical Hope" as practiced by Chief Plenty Coups is the ability to maintain hope in a meaningful existence even when one's existence has lost all meaning. It is hope that goes beyond one's ability to formulate an idea of what one hopes for.

If one cuts through all the hype, hyperbole and intellectualisation, what Lear confirms is that:

• The only sensible response to life is to insist on joy in spite of everything; and

 

• The only way to do that, is by swimming easy in the deep!

We fixate on global warming, the economic meltdown and the rise of religious fundamentalism while most of us know that there really isn't all that much we can do about any of those things except know that they too will pass.

Which isn't to say we should pollute, spend or pray our way into oblivion.  Far from it. 

What we should be doing is living the kinds of lives that resonate with the universe while laughing at the bogeymen that rise up to threaten us and refusing to be drawn into the bleakness and seriousness that envelops the world.

 

Here's the thing:  Joy is everywhere, even in despair.  Most often joy finds its way around even the bleakest and most challenging situations and when that isn't possible, joy is all you have ... and that's always enough.

THE BEST LAID PLANS OF MICE AND MEN …

And here I am having promised myself I will post at least something every day – I even have a reserve of what I call emergency posts – and not a single post for the week!

I won’t burden you with the all the gory details but between gale force winds that delayed our flight out of Cape Town to a car-hire firm that thought I was kidding when I said I can’t drive a manual gear-shift vehicle with my reconstructed shoulder yet to the unexpected admission of my wife to hospital tomorrow morning for an angiogram (we trust that it is just a precaution, but not nice anyway) to an imminent environmental authorisation hearing that just won’t go away, etc, etc, etc, I have had about an hour’s sleep a night and the prospects of more in the foreseeable future don’t look too bright.

All of which is, of course, entirely irrelevant. There are probably hundreds of people out there facing far worse challenges who would have posted twice a day given the chance. I never forget the story about the guy who complained about his new shoes pinching him who realised that he was better off than the guy with the tatty old shoes who was better off than the guy with no shoes who was better off than the guy with no legs ….

What the past couple of “post-less” days have done, is to give me an opportunity (the first since I took the plunge and went public with the Blog) to reflect on what it is I want to achieve with the Blog, and whether that is where I am going?

Swimming Easy in the Deep is about insisting on joy in spite of everything; even unexpected angiograms. It is about seeing the lighter side of life more often and more clearly, even (make that especially) when things get rough (and they will).

This is not to say that the Blog is intended to be just an amusing bit of distraction. As Tom Robbins said, being light-hearted is not the same as being light-weight. We take ourselves way too seriously and seem to think that unless we look earnest we can’t be taken seriously. I don’t agree. It may be scary to think that they are going to inject some sort of dye into Tilla so that they can take photos of her veins and arteries but that isn’t going to make her look any more elegant in one of those hospital gowns they make you put on backwards so you can’t see how ridiculous you look. Or make her paranoia about the state of her underwear, her heels and her leg-hair should anyone look while she’s asleep in hospital, any less funny.  

When I write reports or analyses in the course of my day job I always allow for a process of revision by mental osmosis. My deal with my subconscious and the universe is that I will do the hard work by churning out the best first draft I can manage. Their part of the bargain is to come up with a constructive critique.

When I revisit the piece after a day or two I invariably know how to rearrange it, know what to omit and what to emphasise and, best of all, find the right words so much more easily.

Perhaps that’s what is happening to us on a different level. We worked really hard to get the first draft out by organising this week down to the last detail.  Clearly that wasn't how it was supposed to be.  All we can do now is trust the universe to come up with a constructive critique.

Instead of worrying about how to post something to the Blog every day I have decided to take a leaf from my own book and to accept without question that evolution really doesn’t make mistakes. If, despite my best intentions, circumstances conspire to keep me away from the Blog for a day or two, then so be it. 

Someone asked me where I wanted the Blog to go. My first instinct was to come up with an erudite and witty response but nothing can beat the Sufi tale of the teacher who had become famous and drew crowds wherever he went:

One day as he stood before a crowd he asked them: “Do any of you know what I have come to say?”

When nobody answered he told them to go away and think about it and left without saying another word.

The next time he arrived to speak he again asked: “Do any of you know what I have come to say?”.

This time they all answered a resounding “Yes!”

At which point he said “Well then you don’t need me to repeat myself”, and left.

The crowd were ready for him the next time and when he asked them “Do any of you know what I have come to say?”, they answered: “Some of us do and some of us don’t”.

To which he responded: “In that case those who know can tell those who don’t” and left.

To be honest, I am just swimming easy in the deep with the Blog. I have no idea of what circles around in the waters below, no idea of what will happen next and am enjoying every minute of the suspense. As the gentleman on the deck of the Titanic said to the waiter: “I asked for ice, but this is ridiculous”.

 

Until next time. Insist on joy in spite of everything!

THE DIVINE PATTERNS OF THE UNIVERSE?

According to a rather amateurish New Agey booklet on the counter at the local pharmacy if we would only tune in to the “divine patterns of the universe” there would be no evil, no crime, no poverty, no need for states or police forces and best of all peace would reign forever.

The Biblical prophecy of the lion lying down with the lamb will come to pass, so the brochure claims, not just because the Bible tells us so, but because that’s the way the world really is. 

Oh yes, and if we all agreed to part with a sizable chunk of our already meager wealth, the publishers would let us into this long-lost “secret” so that we could all live happily ever after.

Truth be told, there are so many forgotten secrets floating around these days it’s a wonder we remember anything at all. 

There are two common denominators for these “secrets”:

• They only get revealed in return for cash; and

• They don’t work.

 

There may be two more:

• If it doesn’t work, there’s nothing wrong with the secret, you must have done something wrong; and

• It costs double to buy a second chance (which comes with the absolute guarantee that it won’t work either) and three times as much the next time around.

Unduly cynical?  Methinks not.  How many people do you know who have “asked, believed and received” a million dollars in the post the next morning or a red Ferrari by Friday or that special house on the hill? 

If they sold a gazillion copies of “The Secret”, why aren’t there a gazillion new millionaires or suddenly blissfully happy individuals … and how is it possible that John McCain can still win the election?

By now one would have thought that everybody knew that life isn’t a mail order catalogue, but it seems not; there are still people naïve and stupid enough to part with their hard-earned money in the expectation that they can order a different life as easily as they can switch channels on the TV.  

But I digress. The  “let’s-all-play-nice-because-that’s- how-it’s- supposed-to-be” brigade have always fascinated me – almost as much as the “we-dare-not-harm-anything” crowd.

Perhaps I’m just dumb, but I have always thought that if everything stopped eating everything else we’d drown in cow shit within a week or be queuing up for the last remaining leaf on the only non-sentient plant on earth. And if we (you and I) stopped eating other things, you can bet your bottom dollar the guy next door will start serving double-portions.

You just have to tune in to National Geographic or own a cat to know that “mother earth” works because some things kill (and others are killed by) other things.

If the lion suddenly lay down with the lamb, it wouldn’t be long before both of them (and the rest of us) would be looking for celestial soup kitchens as the ever growing masses of everything that was no longer being eaten bred us all into oblivion.

The bad news is that there are no divinely gentle patterns in the universe; no short-cut to Blandville where nothing ever goes wrong. The good news is that the myriad of violent encounters that happen every moment of every day create more windows of opportunity than we could ever use for those lucky enough to still be uneaten.

Perfection is the result of a cumulation of imperfections. Millions of years of evolution coupled with generations of selective breeding with less than perfect stock produce a champion stallion. Thousands upon thousands of microscopic scratches on what was once a flat glass surface will produce a perfectly smooth lens. We are perfectly in place right here and right now.

There are patterns to the universe but they cannot be bought, do not come in limited editions and will not reveal themselves to anyone who does not believe in magic or intends doing harm. 

If we tune in to the patterns of the universe we find peace in the perfect imperfections of life on earth; we see ourselves reflected warts and all in the mirror of space; and we vibrate in resonance with the strings of time. 

When anyone promises to lead you to a perfect world in which the lion will lie with the lamb, think “wolf” and “Little Red Riding Hood” instead – you are about to be had!

Swim Easy in the Deep. Insist on joy in spite of everything.

POSITIVE PESSIMISM

Yvon Chouinard is as close as one can get to being an invisible icon. Rock climber, surfer, falconer, writer, angler, entrepreneur, environmentalist, visionary, would all be appropriate descriptions for the founder of the company that makes patagonia^® outdoor clothing who is adulated by many but completely unknown to many more.

Chouinard is credited with inventing the “slow company”.  In various interviews he shrugs off the notion and explains that all he really did was to keep his company’s focus on what it did instead of how much profit it made – an unintended consequence has been that his profits have easily outstripped the opposition (for whom profit was all that mattered)!

His company is at the cutting edge of environmental accountability, he has probably done more than any other individual to nudge corporate America in the direction of a gentler approach to the environment and he celebrates the outdoors.

Which is why we should take notice when, in an interview carried in the July issue of Maverick Magazine Chouinard bemoans the fact that as far as he is concerned:

“It’s completely hopeless. Civilisation is out of control, growing way beyond its resources and it will destroy itself. Anyone who really thinks we’re in charge, that we can honestly change the course we’re on, well, they’re mistaken”.

Does this depress him? Not a chance.

Chouinard, you see, is a positive pessimist. As Andy Davis who wrote the article puts it:

“He literally oozes happiness and vitality – even when decrying how deeply screwed we are”.

Over the next few days I’m going to explore this notion of “positive pessimism” because it points to perhaps the most inconvenient truth of all:

Nothing that human beings can do will ever threaten the existence of our planet.

No, that is not a typo, I mean it when I say:

Nothing that human beings can do will ever threaten the existence of our planet.

Evolution doesn’t make mistakes. Where we are right now is where we are supposed to be right now.

Whether human beings survive as a species on this planet is entirely irrelevant to everybody but human beings.

The planet, cockroaches, crocodiles and various other planetary contemporaries were here long before we came along and there is no reason to believe that they won’t be here long after we are laughed off the existential stage.

How many species we take down with us matters more to us than it does to the planet. Whatever we do, on how great or small a scale we continue to screw up and whether we are here or not, the universe will maintain the evolutionary equilibrium we are vain enough to think we can influence.

What we are trying to save is not the planet, but our own collective butt!

And we’re not doing well at all …. Despite all the noise we are still spending and consuming ourselves into oblivion at an ever faster clip.

What to do? Nothing we can do. As Chouinard points out, we are well and properly screwed. So, as they say in the classics, we may as well lie back and enjoy it.

But that’s also not entirely true. What Chouinard is saying, as I understand him, is that whether human beings will survive as a species or not is not in our hands – never has been and never will be.

All we can do is to trust the universe and there's no reason, no reason at all, why that can't be fun.

Positive pessimism means:

• understanding that if our future depends on people we don’t have one; and
  
• knowing that just as the universe conspired to get us here in a moment of inspired craziness, it is still crazy enough to keep us here.

All the universe needs is for us to say we want to stay and to behave as if we want to be here, as if we enjoy being here ... which is what Chouinard (and Swimming Easy in the Deep) is all about in the first place.

 

HAPPINESS IS A SURPRISE

Krishnamurti compared happiness to humility and suggested that:

Being humble is something you are and not something you do.

In fact, as he saw it, the moment you became aware of being humble you weren’t humble anymore – and if you became aware of being happy you weren’t happy anymore.

I’m not sure that I agree with him.

The problem as I see it is that most of us are confused and wouldn’t recognise happiness if we tripped over it.

We are taught that being happy is what people want to be, not what they are. This presupposes that being happy is not likely to be where you’re at but somewhere else (Happiness is a journey, not a destination); and that happiness is not a usual or normal condition but something to be aspired to.

We are also taught that happy is not how people usually feel but how they have to decide to be (You are only as happy as you decide to be (attributed to Abe Lincoln)) .

Add to this that we live in a world where nothing exists if it can’t be measured and you have a recipe for rampant societal melancholy and wretchedness.

Measuring happiness is where most of the SHAM practitioners (Self-help and Actualisation Movement) suggest the biggest troubles start.  That is wrong too.

The actual problem is even thinking that happiness can be measured. How do you measure faith? How do you measure love? You can’t. Just like you can't measure happiness.

Because people can’t figure out how to measure happiness for themselves, the media (ably assisted by a happiness-seeking-convinced-that-it-is-unhappy public) has created idealised pictures of how happy people look and how happiness looks – and that’s what people try to be like. When they can’t measure up, they’re even more unhappy than before.

Perhaps we should stop trying to dissect happiness as if it were some unfortunate laboratory rat or analyse it and simply accept that:

Happiness is a surprise.

You can’t buy it, chase it or spring it on yourself and it will only happen when you’re not looking.

THE MAN, THE BOY AND WHEN A BANANA IS JUST A BANANA

Many, many people dream about a perfect world where there is an explanation for everything and nothing happens without an obvious reason. People don’t like uncertainty.

We are content if we understand how and why something is the way it is or how and why it happened, even if it isn’t nice. If we don’t, or heaven forbid can’t, explain or understand something, we have a problem.

There are two standard human responses to the unknowable and inexplicable:

• to pretend it doesn’t exist (which is quite common in the scientific community where anything that can’t be observed or measured doesn’t exist by definition); or

• to invent an explanation or reason (whether it corresponds to reality is not really an issue, as long as there is an explanation and a reason).

Just how silly this is, is well illustrated by the following stories:

A man goes to the doctor …

A man goes to the doctor distraught beyond words because he has a major and most embarrassing problem. After examining him the doctor prescribes medication for the man’s condition and a mood enhancer and instructs him to be back in a week. When the man returns the following week the doctor is delighted to find him in a much better mood, smiling and joking with the receptionist and other patients.

Doctor:

I am so glad to see that you are feeling better. The tablets must have worked.

Man:

Not a chance. It’s much worse than last week.

Doctor:

But then you were ready to jump out of the window and now, even though it’s worse, you’re on top of the world. How come?

Man:

It’s those little blue happy tablets you gave me Doc. Ever since I’ve been taking them … well … it doesn’t matter.

Berry patient

A doctor has spent the better part of an afternoon patiently plucking tiny berries from a little boy’s left ear.

Exasperated Doctor:

Just tell me why. Why on earth did you stuff all these berries in your ear?

Smiling Boy:

They kept falling out when I stuck them up my nose!

Sigmund Freud may have got some stuff wrong but he understood the sometimes random nature of life as this often-told story shows: While they were studying the meaning of dreams (and focusing on bananas as phallic symbols in dreams) the great Doctor came down to breakfast one morning to find his daughter (who was also his research assistant) extremely troubled:

Freud:

What is it?

Daughter:

You know how our research shows that when we are dreaming about bananas we are actually dreaming about penises?

Freud:

Correct.

Daughter:

Well, last night I had a dream about all the men in the city including you. Every one of them, including you, had a banana and yours, yours was much bigger than anybody else’s. Whatever could that mean?

(After a short moment of thought)

Freud:

Well daughter … sometimes, just sometimes … a banana is just a banana.

 

It may have been nice to have an explanation for everything. We don’t.

Living in an uncertain world is a given. All of us (you, me and everyone else) were signed up for the adventure at birth – and there are no emergency exits along the way.

Just like the intrepid explorers of old, we are hacking our way through our own jungles without a clue of what we might encounter next.

We can pretend we aren’t and take little happy blue pills that make us feel better without our being better; we can keep ourselves busy with nonsense; or we can buckle-up, enjoy the roller-coaster ride and make it up as we go along.

Which sounds like more fun?

Insist on joy in spite of everything!

Swim easy in the deep!

ALL YOU NEED IS ENOUGH!

Sometimes you come across an image so powerful that it instantaneously etches itself into your consciousness. I felt like that when I first read Giovanni Sartori’s memorable lament:

 “I fear we are becoming a generation of intellectual midgets

   having to take longer and longer steps

   with shorter and shorter legs”.

 He sums how we feel up perfectly. Who doesn’t have this gnawing sense of panic at the rising wave of information and harassing horde of media we have to battle our way through every day?

There was a time when we could switch off; take the phone off the hook; go for a walk; go to sleep; catch a little peace and quiet ....

Not anymore. Mobile media like cell phones have insinuated themselves into even our most remote and intimate moments.  The difference between “my time”, “your time” and “our time” has disappeared and you are just as likely to get a business-related phone call as you cruise down the Zambesi on a perfect Sunday morning as you are at work – it really doesn’t matter where you are or when it is, they will get you anyway.

The problem is made worse by what Seth Godin wrote about in his perceptive posting “Signal to Noise”: there is an inverse correlation between the strength of a signal and the amount of noise and right now our signal is being drowned out by a cacophony of often completely useless noise.

The crazy thing is: It’s our own fault!

We have somehow allowed ourselves to be convinced that all will be lost if we unplug ourselves from the tumble-dryer our world has become for even a moment so instead of stopping to smell the roses or blow our nose once in a while, we spin our lives away somewhere between out of control and hysteria.

Here’s the thing: The world is unlikely to even notice you clocking out; there’s not much short of global catastrophe that can’t wait just a little bit; and most of that “critically important” stuff you are trying to manage, absorb, use is utterly useless.

And here’s another: Generations of people managed quite happily without all this grunge cluttering up their consciousness all the time. They invented the wheel, sent people to the moon and figured out how to make the perfect soufflé without ever having gone onto the internet or using a mobile phone. Just as well, if they hadn’t, we wouldn’t be here!

Which brings me to the title of this post:

It’s true:           All you need really is enough.

The rest is just noise.

I got it from a good friend in response to my post “When they write the history of the world ...”. It was something her Grandfather used to say.

The saying was probably coined with material things in mind, but it applies equally well to just about everything: time, knowledge, skills, love.

The intended consequence of tuning out the noise is to optimise the signal. But it doesn't stop there.  The constant barrage of noise, like the headlights of an oncoming car, takes up all your attention making it impossible for your mind to wander or wonder.  With the noise gone your thoughts are set free and the unintended consequences of being in a quiet space will flow to the farthest outreaches of who you are and what you do.

Among these unintended consequence is likely to be the realisation that you have become so inured to the constant clamour that you are deaf to what really matters and the rediscovery of what it means to actually listen and hear for a change.

So, when next you feel yourself flailing on the existential hamster-wheel, sense your legs getting shorter as the speed increases, just stop, tune out the noise. 

Sartori may be right about how we feel. As far as living your life is concerned, he is dead wrong!

It only feels as if your legs are shrinking; it only feels as if the stepping stones of life are further and further apart; it isn’t true.

Life still happens one second, one minute, one hour, one breath at a time ... and your legs are long enough ... and that’s all you need.

As is the case with most things, there is a flip-side to knowing that all you need is enough: Too much is too much ... but we can talk about that some other time.

TIME IS A BLIND GUIDE

The first proper rain over the Karoo this year has washed away the season’s dust leaving everything fresh over the past day or three. To many 15mm (or just over half an inch) won’t sound like much but down here it is almost 10% of the annual rainfall and for quite a few of our local farmers it has come just in time to save livestock and landscape. Which is great.

 

Rain over the Karoo – Rob Millenaar

My post-shoulder-surgery rehabilitation programme means I have to travel the 167 km (104 miles) to George which is our nearest city and back twice a week for the next while.  The rain has been wonderful for the farmers and tourists, but it does mean that these trips now easily take an extra hour or two which puts massive pressure on an already over-full schedule – and explains why no post was made yesterday.

There are two ways to respond to events that slow you down despite yourself: frustration or celebration.

Like most people my natural instinct is the former. My salvation is the latter. Somewhere between there and here it dawned on me that whether I have smoke coming out of my ears or not makes absolutely no difference to how early or late I am going to be so I may as well sit back and take in the scenery.

Years of experience has brought the understanding that: Refusing to become frustrated is a choice. You either make it, or you don’t ... and it really doesn't help to blame that guy in front of you who doesn't know how to drive!

While I initially struggled to keep the demons of impatience at bay I found it a lot easier once I made it a conscious choice and whenever the occasion arose physically decided to take a more relaxed mental route in the same way as I might decide to take a scenic rather than an express route.

It never ceases to amaze me how this enforced down time which I used to think of as idle or wasted hours unfailingly adds unexpected value in unexpected places.

Driving requires a fair degree of focus to begin with. The passing landscape sponges up the rest of one’s concentration without you even noticing it so that for much of the time that one travels there is no space for the mental noise that usually jabbers away all the time.

Magic happens when the mind is quiet and you spend time with yourself.

As Anne Michaels so eloquently put it in the wonderful opening line of her novel “Fugitive Pieces”: “Time is a blind guide”.

When you become quiet in this way your subconscious and the universe conspire to reward you with insights, answers and peace – though not necessarily in that order and not necessarily all three each time.

Once you do become aware of what happens if you trust the universe to get you to your destination at the right time (which is not necessarily the same as your preferred time) each trip is like one of those Lucky Packets with mystery toys we used to get as children: that it will be fun is a given; what it will contain, a mystery. You may somehow remember where you put that extra set of car keys that have been lost for a while, or what to say in your next post or you may just be more in touch with where you want to be, you can never know in advance.

Time may be a blind guide, but as Kinky Friedman once said: “The unaimed arrow never misses”.

UNDERSTANDING RELATIONSHIPS

Most of the challenges anybody ever faces have to do with their relationships with other people: parents, siblings, friends, enemies, strangers, suppliers, clients, spouses, children, supporters, opponents, bosses, employees, bank managers, teachers, doctors, counselors, patients, priests, idols, heroes, competitors. The list seems endless.

Countless millions and entire lifetimes are spent trying to make, break, change, fix and understand relationships. 

Despite more probably having already been written on relationships between people than any other topic newspapers and magazines are dominated by stories about relationships gone wrong and new books punting the next-best-one-size-fits-all instant remedy for fixing them reach the top of the best-seller lists all the time.  

This is strange because the most difficult thing about relationships is realizing how simple they really are:

• There are only two roles in any relationship: “screwer” and “screwee”.

 

• Everybody in every relationship is destined to spend time in each of these positions.

 

• In a healthy relationship everybody spends more or less equal time in each of these positions.

If you find yourself at the bottom most of the time the relationship is in trouble, but no more so than if you were always on top … and this applies to every relationship you or anyone else will ever have.

At first blush this may sound simplistic and gimmicky. It isn’t – as Tom Robbins had occasion to point out, being light hearted is not the same as being light weight.

When you are having or are afraid of a relationship-related hiccup on any scale – and they can range from the mundane to the monumental – it is often sobering, enlightening and surprising to draw up a quick balance sheet of who was where, when and for how long in the relationship. 

Don’t be surprised to find that things have gone awry not because of anything the other person has done but because you have been getting your way too often and for too long.

 

WHEN THEY WRITE THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD ...

In my real life I wear many hats: environmental law consultant ... chef … accidental artist … sometime political analyst ... blogger ....

Most of the time the universe plays along quite happily to help me keep as many balls in the air as I like. Sometimes, just sometimes, those invisible forces that govern the universe conspire to have some fun at my expense and as is the case this morning (it is barely 04h00 and I have been working for a while) make that really difficult – I think they enjoy watching me scramble as I handle crises in rotation of receipt!

At times like these it is not always easy to keep insisting on joy in spite of everything and I often find it necessary to physically slow down, refocus and re-centre. Over time one learns: Slowing down speeds you up.

Without fail this involves my Dad who turns 80 next year. He is not a man of many words. Born and raised on a farm in what is now Botswana his actions have always spoken louder than his words but when he does have something to say it is usually worth listening.

When stress levels rise and things seem to be going wrong I am reminded of him saying:

“When they write the history of the world, how much space are they going to devote to this?”

And when things did go wrong as they inevitably do from time to time his stock-standard response is always: 

“The Boer War  was worse, then they killed donkeys … and people!”

You can replace “Boer War” (in which by way of useless information my grandfather - his father - was one of the youngest combatants at age 11) with your local equivalent such as the War of Independence or whatever.

I don’t know how original these sayings are and that really doesn’t matter.

When it comes to wisdom:

• What matters is what you do with it, not where you get it; and
• It wouldn’t be wise if it weren’t meant to be shared or couldn’t be used!