I just realized that I am superstitiously afraid to call this a GOOD day.
As if that will attract the attention of a cruel and wicked universe, who will then say, “Oh YEAH? Well then try THIS! Not so smug and cocky NOW, are we?” and then do something horrible to me in order to punish my temerity.
When it comes to superstition, fate is never kind, is it? It’s basically Old Testament God. peevish and jealous and spiteful.
Our Angry Father, who are in Heaven, please don’t give my daughter cancer just because you’re in a bad mood and hate to see people be happy.
But remember, God is Love, kids!
Rewinding to the actual topic, yes, even I am prone to superstitious thinking. Everybody is. I bet even Neil DeGrasse Tyson avoids walking under ladder and gets nervous around religious officials.
We need superstition in order to cover the same gaps in our knowledge I was talking about yesterday. Without it, we would have to confront the hardest of truths : that the universe can fuck us over at any time in ways we can neither predict or avoid.
Boom. You have ALS. Bang. A drunk driver jumped the curb and plowed into you and now you don’t have legs. Pow, Your spouse is leaving you and wants a divorce. Wham. Your car is totaled because it hit black ice.
Now if, like me, you are human, you responded to each of those scenarios with thoughts on how you, personally, would avoid them.
Get screened for ALS to catch it early. Go everywhere in your car, or take the bus. Treat your spouse with patience and loving care. Drive slow.
Because we have to believe that there is something we can do to keep terrible things from happening to us, whether it’s eating healthy or prayer or a lucky penny.
And because modern society has done such a superb job of eliminating a lot of the ways the arbitrary hand of fate once fucked people over – things like war and famine and plague and forest fires and car crashes and civil unrest – we have the luxury of thinking our superstitions are working.
This unfortunately can bleed over into blaming other people for their misfortunes. Oh, of course THEY got totaled by black ice because they’re not smart like ME. I bough the more expensive TIRES.
Serves them right for being cheapskates!
The real truth – that they did nothing wrong and there was nothing either you or them could have done to prevent it – is just too hard to bear. We can’t stare unprotected at the brutal reality of the limits of our power over our own fate. We need some kind of way to believe we are in control.
But if we do manage to make peace with this bitter truth, we can overcome our individualistic need to believe the world is fair (at least for us) and realize that the only hope we have against the cruelty of fate is to make damned sure we be there for each other and to hell with what people supposedly “deserve”.
Forget your urge to judge people according to whether or not you think they got what they deserve and instead listen to the voice of compassion in your heart that says a fellow human being is suffering and I want to help them.
Even if all I can do for them is care.
Caring can mean an awful lot to a soul in pain.
Sometimes all you really need to hear is, “I am sorry that happened to you. That must really suck. My heart goes out to you. ”
It may not seem like much but it tells them that they are not alone with their pain.
And that can mean the world to someone.
More after the break.
The long and winding road
Looking back at what I wrote earlier today, I am struck by what a meandering path these dribbles and scrabbles of mine take.
I never know where I am going to end up, but I know that the odds are heavily in favour of it being nowhere near where I was trying to go at the beginning.
And that’s the way it has to be. If I had to come up with an outline then follow that outline to make a coherent and well argued point, I would not even bother showing up.
Because fuck that noise. When I am blogging, I am exploring. I follow the connections between things wherever they go and while this does occasionally result in my getting completely lost, far more often I discover things I never even knew I wanted to know.
I mean, how else can I exceed the limitations of my current mindset? I have to take the philosopher’s road deep into the jungle of the world of ideas in search of treasure in the form of insight and understanding.
To me, that’s what expanding your mind looks like. To hell with psychedelic drugs, mystic meditations, and all the other spiritual prosthetics needed by lesser minds.
I don’t need any external bullshit to prod my mind into thinking creatively, thank ye very much. That place you hippies need drugs and chanting and a guide to reach for just a fleeting moment is the place where I live.
Welcome to the neighborhood. We’re weirder than your average fuck here. Hope you can handle it.
When you have a mind as free and open and uncluttered by social filters as mine, you can’t just swim along with all the other fish.
Those narrow little channels they call their lives are far too small and restrictive for a giant sea mammal like you.
You need the open sea in order to feel free. And no net can hold you. No harpoon can pierce your blubber. No mortal vessel can so much as slow you down.
And as I swim and explore and feed my giant brain, I grow. I get bigger, and stronger, and more able to swim to wherever the hell I want.
And if the lesser minds don’t like that, they have my full and wholehearted permission to fuck all the way off.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.