Know thyself

There is something that you probably know about me that I struggle to come to terms with all the time. That is, I have a horrible time trying to know myself. I don’t know why the Oracle of Delphi was so blasé when they carved the phrase “know thyself” on the entrance to the temple, because for me, nothing could be harder. I say that you know because I think that our impressions about people are generally correct and while authors like Jane Austin have made a good name for themselves writing about how our impressions are invariably wrong, I have more faith in human intuition.

Know thyself. Know thyself. How the hell do you know yourself? What does it mean? I can stare in a mirror and memorize my features, I can sit in rapt meditation and recall all of the episodic moments of my life and yet, for all of my intimate knowledge of myself, I know myself not.

The most frustrating thing is that I take these personality tests likes Meyers-Briggs and they always end up different. I take one and I am an introvert, another and I am an extrovert. J. and I spent several months going over the results of just such a test with our local pastor. My conclusion? I am very human. Sometimes l like to be around people, and when I am their opinions matter to me, very much. Other times I like to be on my own and in these time when others interject their opinions I feel frustrated even angry at the intrusion. So far, so good.

Sadly I am unaware of these subtle shifts in my own personality. I am frequently frustrated by my own lack of understanding about simple things like what I want. I find mundane tasks like washing the dishes either annoying beyond believe or thoroughly satisfying. The difference being entirely on what time of day I choose to do them.

Talking with my wife this morning she made the then funny comment that she hated checking voicemail. It never occurred to me that voicemail was a thing to be disdained, so I asked her why. She gave me a funny sort of look and said that it had something to do with her past and taking ownership of things. I laughed because for me voicemail is the classic example of how not to take ownership of things. In moment where I want nothing more that to be alone, voicemail is king. I could have entire conversations doing nothing but trading voicemail. It would be like email, but with words. For me it is the ultimate in noncommittal relationships. Leave a voice mail and walk away. For my wife, it is something altogether different. For her, voicemail represents a kind of commitment. Something once listened to has to be given response.

The funny thing is, I think people have their own Ideas about me. They know, long before I do, whether or not I am going to return that voicemail. They have decided, and in deciding I have been defined. For them I am no longer the mystery. I am the fact. For myself the opposite is true. I have no idea, listening to the voicemail if I am an introvert hating to respond, or the extrovert, longing for the chance to be a part of the conversation.

In his monumental painting, Paul Gauguin asks the eternal questions. Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going? It is a monumental canvas that seems to beg to be read from right to left. On the right is an image of a young girl and an infant, the representation of birth, a beginning. On the left is an image of an old woman, the representation of death and the end. The story seems to be told, as all stories are, about infancy, life and our eventual end. Except that Gauguin has inverted the order of the story. In the west we read from left to right, and so the story would seem to be told from the end, namely death, to the beginning, which is life.

This morning I was standing, waiting for my daughters when I found myself engaged with the church secretary. I can’t remember the impetus of the conversation, but found myself saying, “I remember clearly my grandmother telling me that, as you got older, the days went by faster. I remember this because at the time I had no idea what she was talking about. But now, now that I am older I see exactly what she means. The days seem to run though my fingers like grains of sand on the beach, and I can no more slow them than I can look at them and wonder.”

There is a Zen story about a sermon of a Buddha in which he simply lifted a flower. Most looked on questioning but one looked with understanding. How do you explain a flower? Imagine you are describing it to a blind person. What would you say. Would you say that it is extroverted? Introverted? What is the meaning of the universe? What is the meaning of you or of I? It is just there. I think that if I were sitting there looking at that flower I would be one of those eyes that question. I would want to know what the Buddha was saying to me. What does he mean by “flower.” Why this flower and not that. What else is there? Why do I not understand?

I look at these questions, like I look at the question of know thyself and I see so much doubt. Who am I? My god. I have been with myself so long and I still don’t know the answer. How stupid is that? I trust the momentary intuition of strangers over the chorus of my own experiences, when really I should just listen to them. I listen to myself talk and I think, “Why don’t I listen to myself?” and then, instead of listening, I forget.

So, that is it. I spend so much time thinking about what it means to be here or there, to be angry or sad, to be busy or lazy, and all the time I am doubting the very things that are telling me why I am here. The truth is I am just here. I am engaged in the activity of being alive. I keep telling myself that I am looking for meaning, that I can know myself, but really what better knowledge is there that the experience of being alive? I find an immense amount of comfort in the idea that being alive is the, THE reason for life, and then, just when I think that I have it, I am distracted by life and it all slips away.

What Then?

In a recent Facebook status line I wrote “when we are disturbed we need only look to ourselves for the source of our agitation.” It is a quote I lifted from the literature of Alcoholics Anonymous that was shared with me several years ago by a friend in that program. I love that quote for many reasons. Mainly, it is a reminder that I need to take personal responsibility for my feelings. Sure people can be difficult and even that is an understatement at times. But all I can do is choose to react or ignore behavior that I find disquieting. Usually I react, and my reactions tend to leave me feeling even more unhappy and upset, and so I use this reminder, as a way of telling myself “think before you react.”

Anyway, I posted this thing in my status line and my friend from Az. Commented “What then?” Which totally left me stumped. I mean sure I know that I am the one that is making me crazy, depressed or down right irritable, but what then? Some months ago I blogged about watching a friend decompress after having become upset with his child. I marveled at his ability to self-sooth and craved it for myself. I sad to report that I still fair no better in this department. So, what then?

You may notice that my blog has been quiet for some many months and that I only recently started posting again. Honestly my readership was never that extensive and I wonder whom, if anyone I am writing this for? Posterity? The Void? Interestingly when I reactivated the blog I noticed that several sites listed on my blog-list were also dormant or otherwise neglected. It seems starting about a year ago people began to drop off blogging one by one. They all had their reasons and all those reasons are good, but it made me realize the absence the dialogue that I had created for myself. I would read other people’s blogs, comment on them, post responses of my own and of course write my thoughts and experiences and so forth. It was great fun, and I miss it. I don’t suppose I will have anything like that again, but in an effort to rekindle what was once so important to me, I have decided to start writing again.

I only mention this because I asked myself the same question that my friend asked me. What then? You see I, like everyone else, experienced set backs this year. Unforeseen events which, in some cases were caused but my own actions and in some cases caused by others, but which, in the end caused me to recoil and hide away. I have been in a kind of cocoon waiting for something, anything to tell me that the craziness, the pain, and the suffering were over. I tried starting a new blog, hoping a fresh start would some how help me. But it was a half-hearted attempt and really it left me very frustrated. People told me that my blog was too depressing or that my blog was too brainy and I let these comments affect me as well. In the end I stopped blogging not so much because blogging wasn’t working for me as I did because I reacted. I didn’t think. I reacted.

The saying “when we are disturbed…” the saying I started this thought on, comes from a discussion about the meaning of the tenth step of alcoholics anonymous, which says “continued to take personal inventory, and when we are wrong promptly admitted it.” You will note that this saying says nothing about getting it right. In fact it rather shamelessly suspects that I will get it wrong and will have to do something about it. The axiom of the tenth step, that my feelings are my own and do not come about as the result of the actions of others reminds me that not only am I going to get it wrong, but the subsequent step I take will probably be wrong as well. Which is exactly what I described above. I get upset (probably wrong), I react badly (wrong), I make things worse. For me, “what then?” is not a reminder to do things right. What’s done is done. For me, “what then?” is a chance to unspool the actions that I have taken, and then to possibly learn from them.

I miss blogging. Blogging, for me, was always a chance to sit down and reflect a little bit on this or that. I won’t deny that I enjoyed the idea of having “readers” but that it was never really about readers. I was more of a diary, a chance at reflections, and that is really all I need it to be. I don’t have to have the world’s happiest blog, nor do I need to smart it up or dumb it down. For me “what then” is to be content with what I have, and a chance to start over and try again and possibly, just possibly, do things a little better the next time.

So blog. It is me and you. Let’s see if we can’t try again, and maybe have a little fun in the process.

Birth, Death, and Rebirth

December is, in the mind of a child, synonymous with winter and, of course, Christmas. My own memories of Christmas are sporadic. I remember, for example the first time I heard Santa filling my stocking followed abruptly by the muffled sounds of my father stubbing his toe. I remember the time my great-grandfather was brought to our house from the nursing home and realized that he had no idea who any of us were or why he was there. It was my first experience with senior dementia. It sounds glum, but many of my Christmas memories are dark, though not all. I remember the time my Santa brought me a Big wheel-like John Deer Tractor, or the time I nearly leapt into the fireplace, as I was so excited that I received the star wars figurine I desired. Good memories are, in general, associated with childhood presents. A few though have been formed upon reflection. I can for example summon to mind the last Christmas I spent with my great grandmother, and while I can with equal rapidity recall the Christmas I had a terrible fight with my father, I recall with equal clarity how my grandfather helped me overcome the emotions of that fight by allowing me to sob hysterically into his overcoat while he sat patiently stroking my back.

I think it is fair to say that Christmas, for me, is a mixed bag. It has been good. It has been bad. It has been surreal, blessed and spooky. I guess in that way you could say that Christmas is a day like any other. For every day has something different. But I won't insist too strongly on this point, after all, I think we all know that this is not entirely true, and to insist that it is, is to deny centuries of celebration and veneration that has held our imagination since practically forever. Christmas is something special, a time of great focus and attention, and to say it is nothing more than a day like any other is to deny something intrinsic not just about the holiday, but about ourselves.

It is interesting how we are creatures of celebration. I mean there isn’t a culture known that doesn’t celebrate something, and that, in the least says something about the importance of a day like Christmas. I mean who doesn't celebrate something? A birthday, an anniversary? and I mean really, who hasn’t heard of Christmas?

I started this musing because of a sentence that popped into my head. The sentence was “Christmas is a day where we celebrate the birth of a baby that will die four months later.” I don’t know where that thought came from or why I thought of it. I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular, and certainly not on the holidays. It just sort of came into my mind and there it was. It wasn’t supposed to be dark. I think I was telling myself that holidays that occur in the darkest of winter can be about birth, and that holidays that occur in the spring can be about death, even though it would seem that just the opposite should be true. I mean, why do we celebrate the death of Jesus (and technically his rebirth) just as spring in bounding into life? In the same vein, why do we celebrate the birth of a baby even as all around us is dead and dying?

For those of you rushing to answer, realize, please that these are rhetorical questions. The real question isn’t about birth, or death, the real question is, why does it matter? Not, why does it matter that a baby is born, or why Jesus or anything like that. Those questions I have. They have been beaten into me in Sunday school and in an infinite string of sermons and Catholic nuns in High school. No, that question I think I got. No, the real question is, when there is so much pessimism and cynicism and doubt, why, when Christmas really does sometimes feel like just another day, albeit a day with presents and turkey, why does Christmas matter?

I recoil just a bit at this question because it feels a little like “Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” But in the end, it is exactly that Christmas is a day like any other, a day of birth and a day of death, as day of cycles and change, and a day when all of this is brought to our attention. It is precisely because of this day that I can summon so many good things, so many bad things, and so many different memories of all sorts. It is a day in which the memories my parents, my grandparents and my great-grandparents can be summoned back with such clarity it is as though they are alive for me once more. Old memories are summoned and new ones are formed. It is a time when the past and future collide, a time of death and rebirth, and, I think, why humans tend to celebrate, not just this holiday, but any. These times hold a mysterious power over us, they are unexplainable, mysterious, and, I think, if we were wiser, we would fear them, and not just because of the sacrifices and the stresses, but because the power of these days of celebration, and the myths and stories that surround them which are awesome in their power to hold us.

I think I will close by adding a comment made by Joseph Campbell: “The individual has to find an aspect of myth that relates to his own life… The first is the mythical function, the one I have been talking about, realizing what a wonder the universe is, and what a wonder you are, and experiencing awe before this mystery. Myth opens the world to the dimension of mystery, to the realization of the mystery that underlies all forms, if you lose that, you don’t have a mythology. If mystery is manifest through all things, the universe becomes, as it were, a holy picture. You are always addressing the transcendent mystery though the conditions of your actual world.”