I must go down to the sea, to the lonely sea and the sky, (from Sea Fever, by John Masefield)
The impulse to go off into the woods, down to the sea or up on the moor is all about the impulse to look away from the human. To stop staring into the mirror of culture and find something else, something beyond: a breath of fresh air.
It is the fundamental spiritual urge. Spiritual as opposed to the religious urge, because religion is a cultural vessel for spirituality. Whether religious or not, almost everyone has an upwelling desire to try and see past our human perspective and this is a spring which pours through our lives. It might run partly through religious canals, which are after all designed for it (some might say to contain it, and some might say to harness its power), or it might find its own way entirely: waterfalling, streaming or seeping through our inner marshland as a sense of wonder, of beauty, a feeling for the wild.
The Oxford Junior Dictionary shed lots of its nature words a few years ago, to make room for the new words which have become prominent in the lives of most young children now. Words like attachment and chatroom displaced words like acorn and conker. It's a sign that we're allowing ourselves to fall more deeply into human life, and away from the more-than-human.
I lived for a while in a very landlocked and urban part of the country, and hearing the cries of seagulls in the background of phone calls home used to feel like a huge breath opening in my chest. I didn't know then what I know now - that I have to attend to the non-human. Thankfully, I can get basic rations by watching birds who still whirl through the air in our streets and parks, by noticing the fungi which spring up after autumn rain, by giving myself up to the clouds out of the window, or by looking closely at a wildflower by the side of the road. But you have to pay the attention, and very humble things like pigeons, clouds and weeds are hard to attend to in our world of global image-sharing.
We hungrily consume 'nature' on computers and TVs. Fabulous footage of distant places, amazing plants, extraordinary animals. Photos of beautiful landscapes, wild skies, green river valleys. But the trouble is, it's not nature. It's photography. You don't get a lungful of it. It doesn't soak the bottom of your jeans and you don't get to pick a bit of it up and carry it home.
Like Narcissus, we are held in a gaze of rapture. We think it's nature, the other, but it's still just us. We need to look away and go down to the sea, or at least the park, before we drown in our reflection.
Sunday, June 21, 2015
Monday, June 8, 2015
Location, location, location
Not so long ago, 20 years if that, I'd arrange to meet a friend a few days in the future and a little before the appointed time, I'd take a jacket with my keys and wallet in the pocket and set out. It feels brittle now - no means of communicating to repair or even improve plans on the fly. You'd stick to the plan, or stand your friend up. No other choices.
The first one to arrive would wait because how else would we find each other? Some people would wait longer than others, some would be more punctual than others. If someone didn't show up at all, you'd assume something quite bad had happened, although you wouldn't be able to call and find out till you'd definitely given up on them - because in order to do so, you'd have to leave the meeting point to find a call box, and the longer after the meeting time that was the more danger your friend would arrive, and on seeing you not there, assume you'd already left and leave again too.
Now we can communicate with anyone we know wherever they are. We carry all our contacts with us all the time. It's great.
But experiences still happen in specific places. I was in the rose garden at Mottisfont Abbey when I got a call telling me about my father's heart attack. That was over a decade ago and he recovered well, but the memory remains in that rose garden, part of what flits through my head whenever I'm there in that part of the year.
I covered a box file with woven paper strands while listening to a really moving afternoon play on the radio. I eventually had to get rid of the file, because I'd woven the story into it and it was much too harrowing to be reminding myself of on a daily basis.
We often holiday in the same town and have built up a patina of happy memories in the place: we all relax when we arrive. It's as if there are ruts worn into the place which make it hard not to be happy there.
I find it difficult to do certain parts of my day job from home, because my contact with the details of the meetings, calls and emails is much stronger when I sit at the desk or make tea in the kitchen where I had them. It's as if part of my memory is encoded outside my skin, perhaps in the arrangement of post-it notes, lego and paperclips on my desk.
The first one to arrive would wait because how else would we find each other? Some people would wait longer than others, some would be more punctual than others. If someone didn't show up at all, you'd assume something quite bad had happened, although you wouldn't be able to call and find out till you'd definitely given up on them - because in order to do so, you'd have to leave the meeting point to find a call box, and the longer after the meeting time that was the more danger your friend would arrive, and on seeing you not there, assume you'd already left and leave again too.
But experiences still happen in specific places. I was in the rose garden at Mottisfont Abbey when I got a call telling me about my father's heart attack. That was over a decade ago and he recovered well, but the memory remains in that rose garden, part of what flits through my head whenever I'm there in that part of the year.
I covered a box file with woven paper strands while listening to a really moving afternoon play on the radio. I eventually had to get rid of the file, because I'd woven the story into it and it was much too harrowing to be reminding myself of on a daily basis.
We often holiday in the same town and have built up a patina of happy memories in the place: we all relax when we arrive. It's as if there are ruts worn into the place which make it hard not to be happy there.
I find it difficult to do certain parts of my day job from home, because my contact with the details of the meetings, calls and emails is much stronger when I sit at the desk or make tea in the kitchen where I had them. It's as if part of my memory is encoded outside my skin, perhaps in the arrangement of post-it notes, lego and paperclips on my desk.
Everything happens somewhere, and it leaves a mark on both the thing and the where, at least as they exist in the minds of the players. Everything may well be connected, but it isn't all here. If you google 'living in the present moment' you will find thousands of considerations of the importance of attending to now rather than losing yourself in regret and nostalgia for the past or plans and anxieties for the future. But just try looking for 'living in the present place': it's clearly not an issue.
Regardless of mobiles and the internet, we are still creatures, and we have a location. Where we are is meaningful. It's hard to talk about the importance of proximity without sounding parochial - the very word has become negative, when it used not to be. We know of a bigger world, but we live in a small one. No matter how much we travel, we are only actually in one place at a time. We may stay in one place long and deeply, or flit and skitter over a wide area, and that will affect the thoughts we think, but not how many hands we can hold at once, and what that holding means.
Regardless of mobiles and the internet, we are still creatures, and we have a location. Where we are is meaningful. It's hard to talk about the importance of proximity without sounding parochial - the very word has become negative, when it used not to be. We know of a bigger world, but we live in a small one. No matter how much we travel, we are only actually in one place at a time. We may stay in one place long and deeply, or flit and skitter over a wide area, and that will affect the thoughts we think, but not how many hands we can hold at once, and what that holding means.
Sunday, June 7, 2015
Poisonous aspirations
These days we set objectives and fill up our diaries months ahead. We strive continually to improve ourselves: physically, psychologically, intellectually, spiritually. There's a truly massive industry supported by our sense that we are not fit, serene, rich, beautiful, happy, stable, educated, witty, creative, productive or just plain good enough.
We also have instant access to images which show how far short of the ideals we fall. No matter we know many of these images photoshop the truth: with their aid, we can vividly imagine and compare ourselves to the dream. Now some would say that the urge to be a better version of yourself is wholly a good thing, that it keeps us from becoming complacent slobs, wasting our talents on a life of TV and junk food.
I'm starting to think that the story of the Fall from Eden is all about this. Once you have knowledge of perfect 'Good', it is extremely difficult not to strive for it, or to fear, judge and attempt to conceal your lack of it. These are the features of being fallen, and shame at one's nakedness makes a good symbol. Nakedness is vulnerability, honesty - introducing the separation of good and evil leads to anxiety, grief and a desire to cover oneself.
But we don't learn best when we feel stupid, and regimes based on denial can take us only to the limit of our will power. Willpower is a finite mental resource, besides depleting other functions when it's being used. It's a temporary, stop-gap approach: it can't be the foundation of anything.
We all know that the second something is identified as a 'target' for some business or public service it becomes much less useful and generates unfortunate side effects into the bargain. Making something a target changes its relationship with its context.
I recently heard about a hospital target set to discharge recovered patients by 11am. Intended to speed up release of both the patient and the bed, in practice it led to some patients staying an extra night so that the target could be achieved... the following day. Similarly, we rank schools by exam results, and unwittingly affect the attention given to everything else that happens there: healthy physical, emotional and social development, creativity, self discovery. A growing body of research shows that when we reward children for anything we quickly re-focus their interest towards the reward and away from what we were actually trying to encourage. And this seems to be the case even if the activity we were rewarding was something they wanted to do in the first place.
Let's all stop looking over our shoulders at ideals of mind, body, heart and soul, and instead let our current lives fill up our whole attention. We're not perfect. Nobody can actually be perfect: perfect is a moment, as considered in a particular context. It's not something that can be an ongoing attribute of a living being. The attention you withdraw from striving can be reinvested in your actual life. And that will surely lead to learning and growth and do so easily because the effort is drawn from you by interest and supported by what's around you.
So put aside objectives and aspirations: they cast you out of Eden. Make peace with fallibility, your own and everyone else's, and you'll be instantly back there, and realise that you never really left.
We also have instant access to images which show how far short of the ideals we fall. No matter we know many of these images photoshop the truth: with their aid, we can vividly imagine and compare ourselves to the dream. Now some would say that the urge to be a better version of yourself is wholly a good thing, that it keeps us from becoming complacent slobs, wasting our talents on a life of TV and junk food.
I'm starting to think that the story of the Fall from Eden is all about this. Once you have knowledge of perfect 'Good', it is extremely difficult not to strive for it, or to fear, judge and attempt to conceal your lack of it. These are the features of being fallen, and shame at one's nakedness makes a good symbol. Nakedness is vulnerability, honesty - introducing the separation of good and evil leads to anxiety, grief and a desire to cover oneself.
But we don't learn best when we feel stupid, and regimes based on denial can take us only to the limit of our will power. Willpower is a finite mental resource, besides depleting other functions when it's being used. It's a temporary, stop-gap approach: it can't be the foundation of anything.
We all know that the second something is identified as a 'target' for some business or public service it becomes much less useful and generates unfortunate side effects into the bargain. Making something a target changes its relationship with its context.
I recently heard about a hospital target set to discharge recovered patients by 11am. Intended to speed up release of both the patient and the bed, in practice it led to some patients staying an extra night so that the target could be achieved... the following day. Similarly, we rank schools by exam results, and unwittingly affect the attention given to everything else that happens there: healthy physical, emotional and social development, creativity, self discovery. A growing body of research shows that when we reward children for anything we quickly re-focus their interest towards the reward and away from what we were actually trying to encourage. And this seems to be the case even if the activity we were rewarding was something they wanted to do in the first place.
Let's all stop looking over our shoulders at ideals of mind, body, heart and soul, and instead let our current lives fill up our whole attention. We're not perfect. Nobody can actually be perfect: perfect is a moment, as considered in a particular context. It's not something that can be an ongoing attribute of a living being. The attention you withdraw from striving can be reinvested in your actual life. And that will surely lead to learning and growth and do so easily because the effort is drawn from you by interest and supported by what's around you.
So put aside objectives and aspirations: they cast you out of Eden. Make peace with fallibility, your own and everyone else's, and you'll be instantly back there, and realise that you never really left.
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