A (tongue in cheek) Theory of Negativity

            I’ve been having a word or two with myself for not posting in awhile. In the beginning I committed to myself, and to you who give me time out of your day, to post at least once a week, and I’ve been lax. I can say that I’ve been writing a new story, editing an old story and doing re-writes on one in between, all of which is true. I can say that I took a long weekend to see my eleven year-old son who was visiting from France, a truly meaningful time for me. I can say that my time and attention have been claimed by a number of other things (like that cursed thing, work) which cannot be denied, and all these things would be true, but they would be excuses and not reasons for not posting. The reason I haven’t posted in awhile is that, recently, I’ve been under the sway of negativity – negativity in the form of dissatisfaction.

            Just about anything produces in me a negative reaction: government at every level, insurance companies, rich people, poor people, banks (don’t get me started on banks), you name it. I try to keep my mouth shut. I mean, people are discouraged enough without having to hear my negative two cents worth. I’m successful about half the time. Yesterday I backslid. Someone said that something was on sale at Walmart. The first thing out of my mouth was, “Walmart has financially impoverished every community it has entered.” And while that’s true of Walmart and every other big national chain, it was a negative comment.

            I wonder if my attitude has anything to do with male menopause. Yes, men go through a change of life, too. I wish they’d find another name for it, something unique to men, like testosteropause or something. Oh, well. That isn’t important.

            I don’t like being negative. I want to be upbeat and positive, but I realized something on my way home after work. The negativity caused by dissatisfaction is what has moved civilization forward.

            Yep. You heard it here first. Negativity is the catalyst that moves civilization forward.

            Okay. Here’s my reasoning. As children we heard it said that ‘necessity is the mother of invention’, but I beg to differ. I propose that every invention that improved life or made it easier came because someone was dissatisfied with things as they were.

            Picture it. Go back with me for a moment to a time in the ancient past. We can’t see in the utter darkness of the cave, but we hear the curses as some young mother stubs her toe, again, in the dark as she goes to soothe her crying child. “Why does it have to be so dark?” she might have said, to which her patient and long suffering husband may have replied, “It is better, dear wife, to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” To which she replied, “Candle? What’s a candle?”

            Ah hah. See my point? The negativity caused by our dissatisfaction moves us forward. With that in mind, I don’t feel quite so down on myself. I wonder where my dissatisfaction will lead me.

            Thanks for your time.

The Coincidental Divine

            I recently read a definition of coincidence that went something like this: a coincidence is an occurrence where the divine chooses to remain anonymous. That isn’t the exact quote, but it’s the gist. It’s an interesting point of view, but not wide sweeping enough for me. It’s my belief that 99.9% of our interactions with the divine are, for all intent and purpose, entirely coincidental. Let me give an example.

            In 1988-89 I worked for eight months at a facility for juvenile offenders. The boys, sixteen to eighteen years old, who were serving time in the ‘reformatory’ were not hardened criminals or violent offenders. One kid, for example, had gotten into an argument with his step-dad and, in a huff, had driven away in the family car. He often took the family car without asking permission, but on that occasion his angry step-dad decided to make a point and had the boy arrested for grand theft, auto. The charge stood and the kid was sentenced to six months. Some of the kids had been caught smoking marijuana and were doing time for that. They weren’t angels and a few were on track to become career criminals and deserved to be incarcerated, but mostly they were a rambunctious but not a violent bunch.

            One day I got into the lunch line behind three boys whose horse play was getting a little out of hand, so I called them down. One kid whirled around and pointed his napkin-wrapped flatware at my throat. It was a stupid teenaged bluff and I was in no real danger. Before I could say a word, the boy’s eyes flicked over my right shoulder and instantly took on a look of anxiety just before his hand jerked away from my neck and he turned quickly around.

            What the heck, right?

            I turned to my right to see another of the boys, one of the bigger, meaner boys, behind me. He just nodded nonchalantly at me and turned his attention elsewhere. But it was clear that he had given some signal to the boy in front of me, and that boy had desisted, most quickly, in his bluff.

            What had happened? I knew the bigger boy, it was a small group of kids, but we had not developed any sort of friendly bond. So why had he come to my defense? Maybe he had a kindly feeling toward me. Maybe he had an unkindly feeling toward the other kid, or maybe they were friends and he didn’t want him to get into trouble. There was a reason, there always is, but the reason doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is, in that brief moment in time, he was my guardian angel.

            Pure coincidence, that certain small group of people coming together in a given space at a specific point in time, brought together purely by coincidence, and one chose to be, and was tasked with being, a guardian angel. He chose, and he was tasked. To me, it’s the same thing. I think that’s how the divine works. Another person, I, was chosen to be reminded that the divine is at all times near, sometimes even in the guise of a big, tough juvenile offender.

            The whole thing is just too cool to express, but you can see it working, if your eyes are open to the coincidental divine.

Myth, fable, legend

            My position, stated in the previous post, is that, even though we try, humans cannot lead the divine in the dance of life. Here’s some of my thinking on that.

            We all have a general idea of the distinctions between myth, fable and legend. A legend, to me, is a story that doesn’t need to teach anything – ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’. A fable is a story, often with animal characters, which is intended to teach a lesson – ‘Aesop’s Fables’. A myth is a story which is supposed to tell us why things are the way they are.

            My personal favorite is myth. I like the word. I like the way it sounds, the way it comes out of the mouth like a feather. And I like the way I understand it. Once upon a time, myth, to me, was the same as ‘lie’, but no longer. I did a research paper on myth back in the day, and the way I view the word and its function changed completely. I came to see myth, not as an ancient fabrication, but as a living thing. Myth has a function in life.

            I believe a myth is 1) a story which attempts to tell us why things are the way they are, and 2) a living story in that it can come alive to us and help us interpret ourselves and our existence. What does this have to do with the human tendency to try to lead in the divine/human dance?

            Theologians call it ‘original sin’.

            We’re all familiar with the story of the fall of Adam and Eve. It’s a myth, as defined above. It answers the question, where does evil come from? In my opinion, the insight the ancients were trying to share is usually lost on us because we get distracted by apples and snakes and debates over whether it actually happened or not. We get distracted and we miss the insight.

            In Sunday School, we were told that we are separated from the divine because of ‘original sin’. As a child, it made no sense to me that I should suffer because of something someone else did. As I grew to adulthood, it continued to make no sense to me, and I found no help from people who I hoped would know the answer. So, I came to my own conclusion. I think the key is in the temptation. Forget the garden, the snake, the fruit and the two naked aboriginal humans. Forget the question of whether it actually happened or not, and look at the temptation: ‘you shall be as god’. I believe we are separated from the divine by our efforts to take on the prerogatives and semblances of the divine, generally as it relates to other people.

            I read recently that one percent of the US population controls forty percent of the nation’s wealth. My first thought was, how can anyone need so much wealth, but it was a silly question. Wealth is power, and power lifts us above the ‘unwashed masses’ and allows us to ‘lord it’ over them. Power makes us ‘godlike’ in the eyes of our fellow humans. The poor bow before the rich, begging for a crumb from his/her table. (Give me a job, please.) The powerless idolize (which means to worship) the powerful. Ordinary people stand in line for hours just to catch a fleeting glimpse of movie stars and sports stars. (He waved at me!)

            Power is a temptation few of us can resist. It may be the most potent of all aphrodisiacs. And you can never have enough.

            So, here is where the myth of Adam and Eve comes alive for me and instructs me. Here I believe I can see the insight of the ancients because I commit ‘original sin’ every day, multiple times a day, every time I seek to lift myself, every time I chose to enhance my power, however little it may be, over others.

            The man from Galilee warned against that. He told us not to lift ourselves, but to lift others, especially the weak, the poor, the fatherless. He said, and this is important, that the divine would lift us.

            In our efforts to lift ourselves, we struggle against the divine. In our efforts to empower ourselves, we are trying to lead the divine/human dance.

            The ramifications are many and daunting. One could argue that even my desire that others read my words is a desire to be lifted, to be empowered. As I consider the ramifications, I feel like I’m standing upon a precipice, gazing into the immense gulf which separates me from the divine, a gulf which I myself have dug, and I feel the anguish of the ancient writer who said, ‘woe is me, for I am undone’.

            But then I sense a hand reaching out to me, and a gentle voice inside my soul says, “Would you like to dance?”

Dancing With the Divine

             A month or so ago, I said in a post that my novels are about people ‘wrestling with the divine’, and I went on to say that, in my opinion, ‘all of life is wrestling with the divine’. A couple of people asked for elaboration and clarification, and I shied away from it. I shied away because there are two things that are certain to alienate people: politics and religion. This post was never intended to address either one. But since that blog, I can’t seem to let go of the idea. My work requires me to drive a lot, which gives me time to think, and the divine/human interplay keeps teasing me to try to unfold little pieces of it. I can’t let go of it, or it can’t let go of me, which in my understanding are similar things, if not the same thing. So, I’m going to air a few of my thoughts about the divine. I have no objective, other than to put my thoughts down on virtual paper, which often helps me to clarify them in my own mind.
            I should make a couple of preliminary comments. First, I’m not a religious guy. Yes, I ponder the divine/human relationship, but I’m not religious in the traditional sense. Second, I’m not trying to sell anything here. I’m not advocating anything. I’m not evangelizing, proselytizing or any other sort of ‘izing’. I’m just sharing thoughts and observations. Third, I use the term, ‘the divine’, in order to avoid the names and titles we’re familiar with. I do that because ‘the divine’ seems to carry the least amount of baggage.
            So, having said all that, I’ll tell you that when my wife read the blog mentioned above, she took ‘wrestling with the divine’ to mean ‘struggling against’. And why not? We’re the products of our TVs, and ‘wrestling’ is two people in a ring, each trying to overwhelm the other. So when she made her comment, I was sure that others would have understood it the same way. While there are clearly times when we struggle against the divine, I would want to put equal emphasis on the element of the divine struggling together with us, struggling alongside us. So, I decided that I needed a new metaphor; I decided to change my metaphor from wrestling to dancing – dancing with the divine.
            When this metaphor came to mind, a memory popped up and wanted to be included. There was a country song popular not long ago that said, “life’s a dance you learn as you go. Sometimes you lead, sometimes you follow.” While that makes for a catchy lyric, and while it’s true in certain instances (we lead our children, we follow our leaders), I don’t think it’s true of that broad, wide concept we call, ‘life’. In my opinion, all of life is informed by the divine/human interplay, the divine/human dance.
            And we can never lead in the divine/human dance. We must always follow.
            It has been my observation over the years that those who are most unfulfilled in their relationship with the divine are the ones who think they can lead the dance. It’s not wholly their fault. We seem to have a proclivity for ‘leading’, so we get in line to hear religious leaders telling us that we can ‘name it and claim it’. We get in line when we hear religiously unaffiliated people advising us that, if we know ‘the secret’, we can call the cosmos to do our bidding. Maybe I’m missing something here, but isn’t that calling the divine to do our bidding? Isn’t that leading?
            If that’s how you choose to believe, I sincerely wish the best for you, really. As I said above, I’m not here to change your point of view, only to express mine. In my understanding, the human can never lead the divine. The human must always struggle to be attuned to the divine, to stay in step with the divine.
            But as we struggle to stay in step, the divine struggles alongside us.

            Next: why we try to lead the dance.

Update

            An interesting thing happened on my journey through last week.

            Last week, life served up for me a platter with a most interesting mix of the usual and of the unusual. There were the ordinary demands of life and family and one which was quite out of the ordinary. There were the typical issues of writing, re-writing and editing and a new issue which gave new urgency to my efforts. There was a manuscript a friend asked me to read critically, and last, but certainly not least, there was a small upsurge in my business, the business that feeds my family. In this economy, even a small upsurge in business is welcomed, no?

            Since the stated purpose of this blog is to follow my path to being published, here’s an update on that. This is the new thing which gave urgency to my editing and re-writing. Drum roll, please. Last weekend I received an email from a publisher who is interested in both ‘What Rough Beast’ and its sequel, ‘Taylor’s Kin’. Yee Hah! I was as giddy as a pre-pubescent boy with his first girlfriend. You remember those feelings. ‘She likes me. I think she really likes me. I know she likes me. Does she really like me? Oh, my. Now what?’ I don’t yet know the ‘now what’, that’ll depend on how things go forward from here, but I’m excited.

            Following closely on the heels of the publisher’s email was another from an IT guy I had been talking to. He is going to set up my personal website. I know, everybody has a website, but this one will be mine, and I’m excited.

            Without getting into the specifics of the unusual family and business issues, I’ll just say it was a week with many competing and sometimes conflicting necessities. As I picked my way through the week, trying to impose order on the chaos, I was reminded again of the various ‘persons’ who live in my head. Before you lift your eyebrows too high, let me remind you that you have them too: the inner voices that tempt, tease, instruct and direct you. I started keeping a loose mental notebook of my inner voices.

            One is the spoiled little boy. It’s a little embarrassing to acknowledge him first, but, like spoiled children everywhere, he’s the loudest and most insistent as he stomps his feet and says, ‘I want to write. Leave me alone and let me write what I want to write!’ There is a schoolmarm who looks over his shoulder and corrects his spelling, grammer (oops) grammar and punctuation. My wife, truly, just walked in and wanted to talk – nothing ground shaking, just talk. The spoiled little boy was not happy with the interruption, but the principal stepped quickly in and put him in time out so that the supportive partner could listen and respond. There is a time manager who suggests what I should do and when, and a business manager who tells me to watch my spending. I have a resident villain who is always at odds with the resident hero, and of course there is the town Marshall of the little town of Chris’ Head who tries to keep the peace. And there are others.

            Was there a point to all this? Not really. It started out as a simple update, but the spoiled little boy took over. So there. Pbttt.

Friends

            “Who loves you, baby?”

            Do you remember that line? If you do, you’re revealing your age. It was Telly Savalas’ tag line in his TV cop show, ‘Kojak’. When was that? Oh, my. I think it was in the mid 1970s.

            I received another credit card application in the mail the other day – actually two – and that re-kindled the same set of questions that always pops up in my mind when I get that type of unsolicited mail. First, is there someone who gets paid on the volume of applications he/she sends out? I want that job. Okay, okay. Yes, I know that those things are computer generated and ‘never touched by human hands’, which leads into the second question: just how many computers (in how many companies in how many countries) contain my name, mailing address and other information? I’m a very private person, and I can’t help but suspect that it isn’t in my best interest for the world to have such easy access to that information about me. That leads me to the question of whether or not I could just drop off the grid. I have to admit that the idea of dropping off the grid sings its siren song to me on occasion. Sometimes I visit websites where they tell you how to make your own bread, generate your own power and construct your own dwelling. No more hassles with big government, big business or big money. But I don’t know if it’s even possible anymore in our high tech, computerized world to drop off the grid.

            A little self-serving plug here – ‘What Rough Beast’ presents a world forced off the grid, a world where all cultural and societal conventions break down. You’ll see it through the eyes of one man, Jonathan Taylor, as he struggles to survive the ensuing chaos.

            End of commercial.

            I was talking about credit card applications. Both of the applications I received used the same hook. They began by trying to entice me with the prospect of saving money. Who doesn’t want to save money, right? These credit card companies were offering to help me save money. This is all sinking in, isn’t it? Just how gullible do people think we are? A credit card company wants to help me save money? Right. That will happen when donkeys fly.

            But since reading is one of my weaknesses, I had to read a few lines. There was a crafty artfulness about it. It read like a letter from a friend, a friend who knows how I struggle from week to week to juggle the financial demands of life. Like a letter from a friend.

            It started me wondering, who are my friends? Certainly banks, credit institutions and their ilk are not my friends. Who would be beside me in a time of crisis? Who would I talk to if my world was crumbling down? And that made me think of Telly Savalas’s line.

            “Who loves you, baby?”

friends

            “Who loves you, baby?”

            Do you remember that line? If you do, you’re revealing your age. It was Telly Savalas’ tag line in his TV cop show, ‘Kojak’. When was that? Oh, my. I think it was in the mid 1970s.

            I received another credit card application in the mail the other day – actually two – and that re-kindled the same set of questions that always pops up in my mind when I get that type of unsolicited mail. First, is there someone who gets paid on the volume of applications he/she sends out? I want that job. Okay, okay. Yes, I know that those things are computer generated and ‘never touched by human hands’, which leads into the second question: just how many computers (in how many companies in how many countries) contain my name, mailing address and other information? I’m a very private person, and I can’t help but suspect that it isn’t in my best interest for the world to have such easy access to that information about me. That leads me to the question of whether or not I could just drop off the grid. I have to admit that the idea of dropping off the grid sings its siren song to me on occasion. Sometimes I visit websites where they tell you how to make your own bread, generate your own power and construct your own dwelling. No more hassles with big government, big business or big money. But I don’t know if it’s even possible anymore in our high tech, computerized world to drop off the grid.

            A little self-serving plug here – ‘What Rough Beast’ presents a world forced off the grid, a world where all cultural and societal conventions break down. You’ll see it through the eyes of one man, Jonathan Taylor, as he struggles to survive the ensuing chaos.

            End of commercial.

            I was talking about credit card applications. Both of the applications I received used the same hook. They began by trying to entice me with the prospect of saving money. Who doesn’t want to save money, right? These credit card companies were offering to help me save money. This is all sinking in, isn’t it? Just how gullible do people think we are? A credit card company wants to help me save money? Right. That will happen when donkeys fly.

            But since reading is one of my weaknesses, I had to read a few lines. There was a crafty artfulness about it. It read like a letter from a friend, a friend who knows how I struggle from week to week to juggle the financial demands of life. Like a letter from a friend.

            It started me wondering, who are my friends? Certainly banks, credit institutions and their ilk are not my friends. Who would be beside me in a time of crisis? Who would I talk to if my world was crumbling down? And that made me think of Telly Savalas’s line.

            “Who loves you, baby?”