Cactus Juice

Easter, Ongoing

My Easter Day started on a very Emerson note at my Dad's cattle ranch on the Central Coast of California.  My Dad drove me away from the ranch house, out the canyon and up the neighboring canyon until I was eight miles away from the ranch by road.  The route had me walk past a Sunrise service, set up in a pasture.  Following the service one of the celebrants found an abandoned car further up the canyon than I had walked and turned back to ask me if I was okay or if I needed anything.  We'll leave it to Emerson's ghost to determine whether she was motivated by sunlight on wildflowers, or her pastor's words, or simply because she was a good and kind person no matter what.

Our household for the day was myself, my Dad, my Dad's girlfriend Betsy, and a mentally handicapped woman named Louise that Betsy had befriended at some point in the past and had sprung from the group-home for the weekend.  Louise was overcome by the magic that had been created that morning- an Easter basket that had appeared overnight and the beautiful Easter table that had been set by Betsy.  Louise is somewhat lost in her own world, creating conversations between herself and herself, most of which focus her beloved Beatles and Monkeys.  She has plenty of CDs and DVDs of each, provided through the kindness of the near stranger who has now been her friend for many years, and after the enthusiasm of the morning wained she returned to her principle pleasures.

My Mom died a few years ago, with each of the two household dogs dieing immediately before and after her, leaving my father in a house full of history but devoid of almost all living things.  For the table, Besty had set out many of my Mom's most beautiful things and added a few of her own.  She told me that before an event such as this dinner she has to say, "Thank you Susie!" for having everything she could need or want there in the house.  For lunch we had added two married couples, each friends of my Dad and of Betsy.  One couple hadn't seen me in a while and asked after my husband, no longer a member of my own household.  I told them he wasn't my husband any more.  I told them the history of my Mom's things.

I had to leave after lunch.  I'm driving to San Francisco, and tomorrow I'll be flying back to the East Coast for work.  I've stopped at a Starbucks to write this post.  The sunshine is out and I'm not at the ranch and I'm not on the road with time to spare to stop at some of the sights along the way.  I've cut a little bit out of the middle of my experience of the day to write this post and communicate with the people I care about and anyone else who cares to read what I write.

The world is not perfect.  People misunderstand a beautiful morning walk for a mishap in the wilderness, perpetually innocent women are left without family, people who thought they knew enough to know how their lives would play out find themselves living very different lives.  But with some kindness, and with some appreciation for the kindness of those strangers that may choose to be our family rather than strangers (or perhaps we will choose them!), that which is broken in the world can seem not fixed, but just right the way it is.

I'll be getting back on the 101 in a moment to continue my drive.  Today my hope is not that I have fixed anything, or that there is anyone out there on the road or on the internet to fix me.  My hope is that the broken world is good, that if I forget how good it is there will be kindness there to light the way, and that I will be kind enough that the world will be good for someone else.

Easter Table, set by Betsy.

Pain

Occasionally my readers are confused, thinking that I created this blog because I am somehow the embodiment of the virtue of hopefulness.  This is not true.  I created this blog to focus on hopefulness, to experiment with hopefulness, to learn hopefulness.

I created the blog because I discovered that when I internalized everyone's favorite 12-step prayer --God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.-- I never got beyond the first line.  I had turned acceptance into the primary virtue of my recovery, and it was solidifying into a version of Stoicism.  When I read Paul Tillich's The Courage To Be, I discovered that Stoicism was far short of the ideal of Christianity he had in mind, and short of the ideal I had for myself.  As my intellectual connections with the breadth of existential philosophy have increased, more and more I realize that Stoicism is not a position I find ethically acceptable.

And that's as far as it goes.  I don't know the exact definition of a properly ethical hopeful life, or of a Christianity or an existentialism that I embrace.  I'm just developing my understanding that it is impossible to live without a spirituality and a philosophy.  Or at least, it is impossible to live the full experience of life that I would aspire to be living.

This was a hard week.  I traveled hard across two time zones for work including a stressful eight hours of driving in ice and snow.  I had huge work demands.  A handful of physical ailments probably created a biological basis for depression, including recovery from food poisoning (serotonin, ever-so-popular as the hormone of mood is actually 90% a hormone of intestinal regulation, your medical fact for the day).  Emotionally, it was probably the hardest week I've had in more than a year (I say "was" hopefully because I have no particular reason to believe I'm going to feel better tomorrow).  There was weeping, and of all things I most certainly don't weep, but there was daily weeping.

Yes, it was a hard week, but the suffering of the week was about the great big stones that went crashing through my Stoicism.  I found that I had hopes that I had been working very hard not to have.  I had ideals for what I want out of life that were not being met.  I found out, against my will and painfully, that I am a person with hope.

Commitment to Reality: The Drought, Lévy's book on Sartre, and Mourning Addiction

The Drought

The hysteria over the drought in North Carolina reached (I hope!) the zenith of it's absurdity when the News & Observer published the latest of their water saving tips: hair styles for non-daily washing.  This is the same paper that analyzed the water use of a normal responsible family and found that it was almost within the governor's "request" of 25 gallons per person per day.  I know someone who dutifully collects shower water to flush the toilet, and whose daily mood is partially influenced by whether or not it has rained.

Meanwhile, it has been pointed out that the water bills in most of the municipalities are impossible to read.  It doesn't matter what they say anyway, because at least one municipality has decided to put a flat surcharge on all bills (regardless of use, regardless of size of household) to cover the shortfall in revenue due to (this is so great!) people conserving.

In actuality, the State of North Carolina and it's municipalities are failing to respond to water limitation issues.  Instead, politicians are using the responsible sense of conservation and the individual social/political action of environmentalism to cover for their failure to provide leadership and, more importantly, policy.  Disorganized job and housing growth can continue one more election cycle, if only you will wear your hair in an oily ponytail for a week.  This is not stealing from the poor to give to the rich, it is stealing from the willing to give to the unwilling.  It is exactly the kind of cynical and warped appeal to altruism that so inflamed Ayn Rand.

Meanwhile, our communities go further and further down the road to unsustainability, and there will be serious pain we run into a reality that not amount of stealing from one group of the community to give to another can resolve.  This "drought" is a blip, currently of about 20% variation from the recorded mean.  If it were a serious natural anomaly, you would see changes in the environment such as the die-off of deciduous plants.  Look around- the natural world expected this kind of variability in rainfall.  We're the only ones who failed to account for it.  Look at that failure to respond map- it isn't about climate zones, it is about uncontrolled grown.  We cannot continue to cover for politicians who continue to fail to make a real response.

So live your life, wash your hair.  Heck, put an extra 10 gallons down the drain, the fish will thank you.*  Instead of carrying buckets to the toilet, put those politicians against the wall and make them face reality.

Lévy's Book

This week I started reading: Sartre: The Philosopher of the Twentieth Century by Bernard-Henri Lévy (trans. Andrew Brown).  Lévy is apparently an odd sort of figure, and the Publishers' Weekly review called the book a "haze of grandiloquent verbiage" ("grandiloquent" is an amusingly self-referential word, isn't it?).  I'm enjoying the book very much, to me it reads like a road trip: you just sit and watch the scenery go by.  How much of it is Sartre and how much of it is Lévy, I have no idea.  The books is an enthusiastic response to Sartre (the review called it a "love letter"), which is really the most a philosopher could ever hope for.  As a blogger, I write responses, riffs off whatever strikes me (I am now), so that is fine with me.

Lévy's response to Sartre's essay "What is Literature?" (pp. 60-69) focuses on the the idea of "commitment."  What is a writer committing to?  Ultimately, to reality.  The writer writes out of his time and place, for his time and place and (Sartre urges) to as wide of an audience as possible.  When it comes to this commitment to humanity, the journalist is no less of a writer than the philosopher and perhaps even more of one.  Lévy calls this last commitment on the part of Sartre "a real generosity, a superabundance of being, a prodigality -- and hence a form of courage." (p. 69)

The common criticism of existentialism is that it can descend into solipsism.  The idea that you control your life and the ways in which you do actually control your environment can turn into the wishfulness which (interesting because of it's core solipsistic nature) is best expressed by the "prosperity preachers" of today's popular Christianity.  It appears that what holds solipsism back is commitment.  Commitment to reality.  Just think of that in terms of the issues with the drought and personal and societal/politic response discussed above.

Mourning Addiction

With all of that in mind, someone from my Weight Watcher's group recently hit that moment of mourning addiction.  This experience I have found best described in Existential Psychotherapy by Irvin D. Yalom, a book I read many years ago.  There is a point in overcoming addiction when one looks back at the wreckage of previous failures with horror.  Along with the realization that you can control your life today comes the realization that you were in control of your life yesterday.  That the meaning of addiction is to have played a game with reality, a game where you made the rules and the rules said that you lose.  For some that realization is too harsh and a decision is made to simply stay in addiction, stay out of contact with reality.  For others, all you can do is hold their hand while they weep, and then turn attention toward the promise of the future.

The only thing that makes the promise of the future possible is a profound attachment to reality.  After considering the hopelessness of the entangled motivations in response to the drought, after reading this idea of the writer's commitment to reality, I'm realizing that commitment to reality has a broader meaning than I had previously considered.  It isn't just about untangling motivations- which the games of politics would prefer remain tangled. It isn't just about honest and authentic interaction with the world and the things in it- what the addiction meaning game undoes.  It is about burrowing into reality with dedication, not just accepting reality, but choosing.  Not just being there because you've found the limits of your self-definition, but committing to being in that place.

I know that my accepting phase is well; I am fairly sane and not given to the delusions of wishfulness outside of it's proper place.  Only this week did I start to understand what commitment means, and how far I have to go.

P.S.

*We use surface water here; this is not the wildly destructive act it would be in a place where pumped water is used.  If you live in one of those places and just have to do something, wash your hair and dress it nice and go protest in front of town hall instead.

H-France review of Lévy's book.

New Year's Day

New Year's Day is the special holiday for hope.  I'm not sure how much can enter into the boundaries of hope-  was Queen Elizabeth hopeful when she spoke of leaving her annus horribilis behind her, or was she merely wishful?  I'm not sure.  The power of hope is not in wishfulness, and neither is the power of faith for that matter; a topic I intend to write more about in this coming year.

In the local paper this morning was a report on First Night.  Apparently the Raleigh version of the event included a Resolution Oak Tree, where you could hang your resolution.  Considering how unfortunate it is to have your resolutions revealed with your name on the front page of a newspaper section, I'll be fair and reveal mine later.  This is what The News & Observer reported:

     Amid resolutions to lose weight and get organized were promises to "Make NC a Better Place," "Give Back to Others" and "Be More Green."
     Julie and Michael Massey of Raleigh made resolutions meant to start the new year off fresh.  Hers: "To love and forgive like a child."  His: "To be a better person."

I am someone who has over almost two year lost nearly 100 lbs. and kept off 75, so I know a thing or two about the Most Popular New Year's Resolution in America.  Those things probably apply pretty well to New Year's Resolutions in general.  The more I think about it, the more I believe that Fromm's four requirements for love (I looked it up this time) also apply to hope.  The union is so clear that it brings up the question of whether hope can be defined as an act of love; perhaps it can.  Fromm's requirements for love are: care, responsibility, respect and knowledge. (The Art of Loving, p. 24)

Ultimately, a hope with no bearing on reality is just as wish.  It takes care and responsibility to bring a wish to reality, and a plan is the only way I know to do that.  A wish with no respect and knowledge is a flimsy thing that has no connection with the power of hope (or of faith or of love). My New Year's Resolutions come into my mind already in a format that falls somewhere between wish and action:

• Onederland. (A body weight that starts with a one.)
• Forty miles of training per week. (A minimum goal that I was already meeting through 2007.)
• Six hours with the French language per week. (A couple of days ago I was claiming 9 as the commitment, but let's call 9 the "reach" goal.)
• Return to a cash-based lifestyle. (After several years of living on cash, I had drifted over to my credit card with poor results.)
• Remove from my house the things that are not useful, beautiful or meaningful. (These categories are based on David Allen's Getting Things Done, but at the moment I cannot find his specific list of things one should have vs. not have.)

As a fairly concrete thinker, it takes effort for me to backtrack from hope to wish.  I am suspicious of any New Year's Resolution that is termed in wishfulness, and I give low marks to the likelihood of such resolutions ever reaching reality.  However, reviewing my list, I can see some value in wishfulness, perhaps the ultimate "why" of my activities.  Wishfulness backs up a step, presents some other alternatives.  I suppose if someone starts at wishfulness it might not be so bad, but after starting there hope and action do have to come back to earth in their proper stages.

Hope hovers just above where the rubber meets the road.  In making a New Year's Resolution I am the kid that has wound up the car and is just about to set it down, in whichever direction I choose to go.  Perhaps that choice of direction is nothing more than wishfulness.  Hope says that it won't sputter and stop, the gears won't spring apart when confronted by tall carpeting, the dog won't grab my toys and drop them in the bushes.  From where I have had success, I say make a plan- smooth out the path, where possible tie up the dog, and let those New Year's Hopes roll.

Looking Back

Despair is a luxury I gave up early in life, and with it went backwards-looking hope.  I hadn't realized that hope for the past was something that a person could be missing.  The past is signed, sealed and delivered.  No crying over spilt milk.  Move forward.

Recently a friend insisted on expressing sadness for those sad things that periodically crop up in my life history, and the danger of the insistence signaled the absence of hope.  It isn't the first time a person has insisted there has been sadness in my history, an obvious fact.  However, the danger can usually be written off as a reaction to the over-enmeshment of a person who insists that I express the sadness they are feeling about my life.  Catch the tennis match?  I - they - me.  It's easy to get confused.

Taking out the emotional tennis game, the sadness itself is dangerous.  Sadness is not despair, but it is leaning a bit over the cliff that borders the requirements for daily functioning and sanity.  One very well could fall in.  Stoicism, as always, is the chain-link fence erected by the appropriate safety authorities.  Up go the cautionary signs: "Stay away from the edge!"  There is no crying permitted here!

One could say that hope is the safety line a prudent person should use, if they wish to go near the edge of the cliff.  But there is no safety; you could fall in.  You will fall in.  Hope is the safety net that you cannot see until you think it is too late.  Not even a net, but just a puffy white cloud that seems too insubstantial to handle such a crisis.  Sadness is not enough to bring one of the great Christian virtues to bear; it takes the grave existential danger that is despair.  It is not just that hope is not safe; hope cannot be safe.

On Top of the Swing-set

I was talking to a friend in her backyard, while her advanced toddler played on his new swing-set / battleship / fort / in all ways multifunctional backyard object.  He had climbed on top of the crossbar of the swing-set.  "Mom."  "I see you baby."  "Mom!."  More demanding.  "Yes, baby?  "Mom," he declared seriously, "this is not safe."

Over my visit, I watched this child continue to press the boundaries of his physical safety.  His parents would intervene, often saying, "Baby, that is not safe."  He continued to gleeful report what was not safe, now that he was learning which was which.  But to him, what was not safe was mere information, as if you were telling him, "That is an activity we do on Wednesdays, and today is Friday so instead I want you to do something else."  There was no particular moral component to safe or not safe; safety was just a whim of his parents.

Of course, because he has good parents, he is not completely safe.  He has a swing-set that he can climb on top of while his mother is watching.  He tries new things.  He is too young for courage, because he does not have properly understood fear.  He just has some information, "This is not safe."

I've been trying some new things lately, things that I hope I won't regret bringing into my life.  I found myself thinking, "Hope is not safe," and I remembered the boy sitting on top of his swing-set declaring, "This is not safe."  Life is not safe, but that is just information, not a reason to stay out of the backyard.