Identity

To Stand On the Rubble

/ michaelkilman / 2 Comments
A child sits with their back turned on top of rubble

This precious human life we have is ever-changing.

We wish things will stay the same forever when they are wonderful, and wish they would change quickly when they aren’t. We are always wishing, always trying to keep the bad at bay or hold the good up forever. But this is an unreasonable ask. All things fall apart eventually. So we become dissatisfied because we hold ourselves to an impossible standard of perfection. All structures are inherently unstable.

We are just a boat, on the ocean, riding the waves and tides. We have so little control over the forces that surround us. Up and down we go in the waves and troughs… waves and troughs. We do not know when a storm might hit, or when the wind might die, or when the sailing is smooth, and the food is plentiful, but we do know we must press on. The journey must continue.

It’s easy to allow yourself to be possessed by your fears, your anxieties, and your frustrations. It is easy to give in to self-pity and hopelessness. It is easy to feel that no matter what you do, nothing goes right. But to quote the band, Bad Religion, “Self-pity is always a case of mistaken identity.”

No matter your outer conditions, you have a deep natural curiosity and joy that lives inside you. You have an inner child who wants to play and explore and thrive, no matter the conditions of your life. For what child, seeing a pile of rubble, doesn’t want to climb up on top and declare themselves ruler of the world?

We rule our worlds. Not in any external way. You cannot control when things collapse or when the winds of changes blow gales through your life. But you can climb on the rubble and declare victory. You can turn toward yourself with compassion. You can live in a state of self-honesty and acknowledge those heavy emotions, but without letting them possess you.

Self-honestly can feel like a dark forest, with unknown shadows lurking behind the trees, at least at first. But when we connect with that forest, when we learn to love the land, we find wonders, medicines, and peace. Be like our ancestors and listen deeply to that land. Be in communion with it. Learn the lay of your own internal landscape. Learn its wonders and beauty.

Be present with yourself, with what is, but be present with all things in all moments. In every moment, there is beauty and joy, even in the darkest times. Life does not stop being beautiful, because we have forgotten. Choose to remember.

Let that child out. Let your life be full of wonder and interest. And when times are hard, be curious instead of furious. Look at the possibilities in collapse. For in the wake of destruction, it is in our very nature, and the nature of all living things, to change and discard qualities and aspects that are not useful anymore. Even our biological evolution is a process of adaptation and removal.

When things go wrong ask yourself, what isn’t useful anymore? Look at both inner and outer elements. Do not just remove everything you don’t like, understand it first. See its wisdom. It may not need to be removed but instead, reorganized. Look inward honestly and see what habits and ideas no longer work. Admit when you were wrong.

Be wary of the advice of others. Test their ideas out for yourself carefully, else you may venture a long way down a dishonest path. We are diverse in experience and motivation. There is no one right way to love life.

When you are honest, space opens inside you. Take that new space you’ve created, and fill it with love. If you love to be in nature, do it. If you love to create, do it. If you love to connect with people, or reconnect, do it. Find ways to bring smiles to your face and the faces of others. Help people to feel authentic, while you develop your own authenticity.

Be creative in whatever form that takes. Build things, explore things, and open yourself up to the wonder of all that is. Remember how many things had to come together, for you to be here, now, at this moment. You are precious. This life is precious. Love it the best you can.

Thinking About the Tedious

/ michaelkilman / 1 Comment

Verse 67 of the Tao Te Ching (via Ursula K. Le Guin’s translation) opens with the following lines:

Inside

“Everybody says my way is great,

But improbable

All greatness

Is improbable.

What’s probable

Is tedious and petty.”

I think every artist, every researcher, every teacher (or really every human being ever) asks at some point, why do I bother? Why do I bother to create art? Do students even care? Why do I even try? Why am I important anyway? Why do I wake up and go to a job I hate? As anyone reading this knows, self-doubt is a common human experience and for those of us who have chosen to try and create, it is perhaps even more potent and possibly more devastating.

I know I sometimes find those thoughts echoing in my mind as if I was screaming repeatedly into the Grand Canyon, until the feedback of my own mind feel like a high pitched aching distortion of misery. Sometimes, when I stop and watch this, it makes me laugh a little at its utter absurdity. Other times, I allow myself (like many people) to become enveloped by what feels hopeless. It is when we identify with our own thoughts, that we allow this hopelessness to persist.

All identity is crafted from a mix between our internal life, our social interactions and the wider cultural sphere(s) in which we exist. Therefore, identity is ever-changing and ever-moving. You are not the same person you were at the moment you began reading this.

So often, social pressure and cultural history interplay with our own consciousness in such a way that we ignore the small still inner voices that rage so quietly in the back of our mind. We allow the judgements of others, of our wider culture and perhaps most dangerously the wave of expectations from both the outside world and our own ideas of what the world should be, blot out the fact that we have created something beautiful or wonderful or unique. Or perhaps we forget the amazing amount of conditions that have coalesced to create this particular and quite miraculous moment in which we reside.

The easy path is to give up and allow our own misery to wash over us. The easy path is to continue with whatever tedium we have surrendered too. We urge ourselves to repeat the same cycles, because a new one is perhaps too scary or might be harder. But the path towards our own truth, towards the end of suffering is much more difficult. This is the path of honesty, of authenticity.

By the way, I am not going to tell you to take the road less traveled, or present you with some hollow interpretation via Robert Frost because in all honesty, that poem has been grossly misinterpreted.  (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/what-gives-robert-frosts-road-not-taken-its-power-180956200/?no-ist )

We need to be the Hermit, The Shaman, The Buddha, the Christ Figure (or any other symbol of a retreat in the wilderness and the exploration the inner life), seeking to understand the nature of our own suffering and the limitations we put on ourselves. We must ask ourselves, how have we been in our own way lately? Doing so, is the only way we break from the probable, from the tedious, from the petty. That is the only way that human beings as a whole will reach the distance future, for so many systems of suffering have been created by relying on structures we want to last forever, but are in fact impermanent.

In short, find trust in yourself. And for those of us who create, “Do you work and Step Back, The only path to serenity” (via Tao Te Ching verse 9). We must accept that the inner voice or our creations may never be shared with the wider world. That’s okay. Recognition, Fame, Respect, these things are all fleeting. Instead focus on the fact that the mere ability to create is the essence of remarkable beauty.