A post in honor of the Christmas season. If all goes to plan, I’ll have more to say in the coming year about “declarations.” I encourage any readers to come up with their own. Principles to reflect upon and hold up as a compass or perhaps a challenge. Hope can be a habit, an emotion, a value, or even a perception. In other words — a belief. Too often, perhaps, it borders on fatalism. The hope of my own believing is more active and defiant than that. What’s more punk than hope? Not much.
Habits learned in darkness
The problem with being –“etre” — is that you are lots of things you don’t want to “etre.” Passive, often afraid, insecure, a little bit lazy, and more than a little bit angry. Avoiding. That’s what you are doing. Like a beach that fools itself into thinking it is building something by letting the tide repeatedly wash over it. You can point to many instances in your life when you ran away from what was possible or watched yourself inhibit what was possible. Maybe you were waiting for salvation and simultaneously hoping it would go away: hoping for a message, a sign, that would clarify, absolve and unify your life, thinking, “I can’t do anything now, but I will be able to accomplish something grand as soon as it comes,” that thing which is an answer.
While you wait for it to come, you stay in the dark. But you’ve been in the dark so long, waiting, that your eyes have had time to adjust and you realize that it is possible, in fact, to see in the dark: the darkness is not as absolute and unqualified as you thought at first. At that point, you say, “This isn’t so bad, I can see my way through this cave while waiting for the light,” the answer, which may or may not be at the entrance/exit. But how much do you have to believe in the light to keep waiting for it when you can see well enough to survive where you are?
And what is the dark, anyway? It’s all of your habits and fears and weaknesses: I just wasn’t meant tos; faith predicated upon things not working out; wishing for external, effortless, even inherited legitimacy — all the while knowing deep down that true paths to self-value aren’t simply given.
Living in the dark one can’t avoid fantasies of escape. They spring up like dreams, both beautiful and nightmarish. Thoughts about suicide… coming in waves, but never do you think in terms of what might be missed (after all, why would you miss the dark?), more along the lines of release, a way out, a well-reasoned evasion strategy. And then there are addictions: Hoping that another person can lead you to the light, or show you the escape hatch, or become the escape hatch. Writing words and words in order to avoid, taking walks in order to escape, chalking up “accomplishments” all in an effort to crow-bar yourself away from the reality of darkness. Addictions that are seductive and frantic and desperate and “passionate:” despair instead of sadness, enduring suffering instead of acting bravely, collapsing inward instead being resolute. Like buying a cup of coffee from the departmental coffee machine and drinking it on the way to class instead of taking the time to acquire good beans, make an espresso and pour warmed milk into it.
The worst part about the cave is sensing the light, but not feeling capable of moving towards it. Maybe sometimes you even feel you’re on the verge of making a change (or at least that’s the story) and then something happens to show you how, frankly, impossible change is for you. And maybe you wonder, “Who am I kidding by doing the math — counting years, reworking the budget, making the checklists? This is it, man. This is who I am. If I haven’t done it by now, what are the chances?” It’s like that horrible feeling of the clock ticking down and ticking down while you remain in a situation that is being dictated by someone else. Or maybe you can’t even sense the light, but you can remember it. You know it existed once. Is the darkness payment for once being in the light? You say, “Everything has a price: the going price of beauty is health; satisfaction costs exactly one life.”
So maybe this explains why you can’t quite believe in the light. Could it be that waiting for all these years, desiring an “ultimate answer,” is really just a trick to convince yourself to stay put, to maintain the life of darkness and shadows in which fantasy can still be believed in and regret over past decisions can sap all available energy?
The revelations of vision
Maybe the cave would be enough. Maybe fantasy and endurance and the fetal position would suffice if the cave were only darkness; if reality were only, purely darkness; if you could convince yourself that the memories of light were not real, or even if they were real once, the light is gone now, irretrievable. Time to grow up and be responsible. But like an itch, there is a pinprick of light: turn away, or cover your eyes, it remains, interrupting sleep, ending fantasies, requiring active avoidance. The light refutes — no, actively changes — the darkness. Fantasy becomes cheap, and there, way off in the distance, there is the possibility of something different. The light is true, and it is demanding, so much so that you sometimes think you can’t take it anymore, that you want an easier and more convenient life. But at the same time there is a part of you that is excited because the light is there, and it is beautiful and it lets you, finally, see.
Vision brings with it the possibility that you can act and you can move — reach instead of hope for the lucky stumble. You see that, indeed, goals are external things not achieved by the internal states of dreams and fantasy. It’s like realizing after many years of college that the key is just to go to class, or realizing that the goal in a race is actually to cross the finish line as fast as possible. Simple realizations. Maybe obvious to some. And no doubt you’ll use these thoughts about how easy it is for others to stay in the dark. But the “damage” has been done. You can’t help but become suspicious of your sealed fate because now you can see that light is found and achieved and lost. That you’ve had to work to not notice the light, just as you have to work to see it. You know now that strength is more than passive endurance. What used to be hoarding “Good Things” to make the dark more bearable becomes a commitment to try to act in accord with that which is good. The light, you see, changes not only the external world, but the internal one, as well.
Of course, this is no Hollywood movie. All those habits, acquired over years, do not just fall away. And you are bound still to stumble — you are still in the dark, after all. Nonetheless, this first choice — to get up, to stand, to move forward — now that is a leap and it does terrify. “You’re in danger, you’re exposed, you’re weak!” is the voice of your mind. All you can answer is, “I trust the reality of the light.” And you realize that the light has engendered your body. You see now that you really are a woman; you see now that you are a man, not just in fantasy, but in fact. And in a way, all of this new information requires a new kind of acceptance, a different kind of passivity. You know by now that passivity is dangerous, that it is something you need to fight against so that it doesn’t take over, but this new passivity is wonderful because it’s only possible with trust. As a heart is the body of a soul, and around a heart beats a physical life, you begin to see that it is possible to be reformed from the inside out.
Right now your only goal is to move toward greater illumination. So, you set up schedules and come up with rules: Set money aside. Avoid dissipation of purpose whether that purpose involves exercising, staying in touch with friends, listening to music. Value the finish more than the initiation. Get through the drudge. Strength — that is what you want, and need, because the cavern still surrounds you, even as you walk. You know that to reach the entrance of the cave, you have to be resourceful. You can’t be wasteful. And this in itself is a new sensation. It is something to be grateful for. And only in this way is living in the dark neither bleak or doomed because it makes you attentive and sensitive to the light. For the first time you see the surrounding rock of the cavern for what it is so that when you do stumble you understand that good and bad things happen, but they really are independent — that living is experiencing/feeling both the good and bad things fully. This is also why it doesn’t make sense to go looking for signs. Being open to their possibility, though, is a different thing. Signs are not destiny or judgment or the word of God. They are more about the meaning that goes along with action or potential action, and that meaning can be accepted or rejected.
At first, the walking is difficult. How many years were you fetally curled? You don’t know. Yes, walking is difficult and you are not even sure if you remember how to do it: you try out anger, telling the world, “Fuck you, I’m doing exactly what I want, when I want it.” Or maybe instead you think in terms of sacrifice — that you will make your life a bit harder than it has to be and that will make you virtuous, where virtue means bringing yourself into the light. But then you see these mental tricks for what they are. It’s not about selfishness or sacrifice: it’s about feeling like you are enough so that you don’t have to mediate between yourself and how you act in the world. There’s no need to self-censor or to put up guards to protect yourself. It’s about chipping away at the middle conscientiously, in mind and in practice, all along, experiencing life healthy enough, safe enough, confident enough, trusting enough — so that living becomes automatic. It is like traveling alone in another country. Or going out with a friend, drinking just a little too much beer and talking about philosophical things. It is swimming in the lake in the summer, hiking in the mountains and skiing in the winter. Appreciating the food, and the way it is eaten, prepared and sold. You see that it is possible for your life in the light to be miraculously easy…easy not because the demands are easy, but because those demands are seen to be so clearly right in spite of their costs.
Then a strange thing happens. You have been moving toward the light, scrabbling over rocks, taking detours, all under the impression that to do so was a leap of faith. And it was. Like driving a car and focusing down the road versus looking at each painted line. The light is the answer. It is a demanding and overflowing thing that you want to experience as clearly and as often as possible. But now that you are moving, you realize that to move is no longer a leap, but a choice of one existence over another. And the choice is not between good and evil, between right and wrong; it’s not that simple: it’s more like choosing right over less right. Only in the light can you see the finer distinctions between things: justice is more right than beauty, the life of earth and of land is more right than the life of commerce, a community centered on healing is more important than one centered on consumption. You choose justice over beauty at every turn and earth over commerce in every act of living. And even though the choices are right, they don’t eliminate fear or pain. There is no way to get around the pain of any choice — either guilt and terror or sacrifice and terror and defeat and bitterness. But you trust your choice, just as you trust the light.
At the entrance: the life of sunlight
So, on you go. The light brightening more and more of the rock around you, revealing more and more of what a cavern is when shadows are pulled back. And maybe your steps begin to falter. Yes, you’ve become accustomed to light, but what is actually outside the cavern? What are you really moving towards? Might it not be best to camp out right here, the light pouring in from the entrance that is still a ways off? Isn’t it possible to live in the warmth of the light and the safety of the shadow? Just enough reality and just enough fantasy. Well, that’s the thing. You can only guess what the world is like outside the cavern. You can only hope. What comes next? Etre, strength and mystery. All “shoulds” fall away. All guilt and all shame. You will be compelled to incorporate without fear (which is different from “consideration”) of any other’s reaction. Become…What? That is the mystery. Being through faith. Those are the words, but there is no way of knowing if they are true or not, at least not while you are still here. What you do know is this: that part of you will be brought into the light of day, and that this is a choice, and you know, even, that you made this choice long ago. You chose light. You choose light. Every step is as preposterous as the last. Yet they happen. It was and is true. Maybe you can’t figure out what awaits. For certain you can’t. It is the stone thrown that never reports its landing. But that is true of every step taken. You might not have planned it or puzzled it all out — the possibilities were given to you by the confluence of darkness and light — but you were prepared, you did plan and you did choose to walk into the light.
