This happens every time I go into Whole Foods – something about the place makes me happy, even knowing what I know about this world. Recently I realized it’s the sheer profusion of choices - especially in the prepared food section, and especially at Christmas - that creates an undeniably comforting sense of abundance. Never mind that you have to navigate a gauntlet of homeless-newspaper vendors and nonprofit charities (that you’ve already talked to) before making it into the store. (The Girl Scouts at their card tables out front are at least offering us something we want – comfort in the form of cookies.) What I really want to say in this guilt-inducing scenario is "Hey, I know you probably have a worthy cause, but I gave last time, or maybe it was to that other group like yours, but I have only so much money, and I know YOU don’t know all of that, so you have to try, but please don’t ask me for anything."
So I go home and make the donations I can afford to the few charities whose appeals hit me at the right moment. This might be the local environmental or healthcare coalition on the phone, or the battered women’s shelter looking for pantry items at Trader Joe’s. Or, the down and out woman on the corner who recites me a poem in exchange for a couple of bucks. If this were Mexico, we’d also be contending with kids on every corner selling chewing gum and cheap jewelry, and I’d buy some occasionally. (In Mexico, there are no laws prohibiting anyone from selling or busking anywhere they like. Or if there are, nobody in the poorer towns pays attention to them, because everybody is scraping to get by. Even the cops.) It feels pretty useless - a dollar here and a dollar there - but based on my current commitments, my life trajectory, and other hard-to-reverse factors, it’s best I can do right now aside from writing to my representatives and voting consciously.In the meantime, I walk through the neighborhood, in this city where starter homes cost $400,000, simultaneously appreciating and resenting what I don’t have. These Craftsman bungalows, so beautifully restored and manicured – where do the owners get the wherewithal – the time, money and energy – to pay for and maintain them? And that’s just the exterior. Look, they’ve got nice cars in the driveway too. What is it about me, about us, that we can’t manage to do this? I want a porch to sit on and read my book, or talk to neighbors from. I want to choose furniture because I like it, not because it’s cheap or came from a 2nd hand source. I wouldn’t mind a stone walkway and a mud room, and even a room with a long, cat-free table and lots of light where I can do my artwork.
And yet, to get many of these things I have to work in ways that don’t necessarily match my value system or my energy levels, and buy things that have been made by the sweat of underpaid and mistreated people, or by processes that poison the environment. Here we go back to Zen, and to the quote by John Muir: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” If you can’t see the sun, rain, loggers, paper mills, polluted rivers, poets, students, etc., in a single sheet of paper, you aren’t really seeing. Though greener and more socially just alternatives are increasing, there’s no way to avoid contributing to the problem in some measure.
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” So said F. Scott Fitzgerald. I‘m not sure about the intelligence part, but I can speak about functioning. Let’s cut to the chase: it ain’t easy for those of us who are extra sensitive. In this way, ignorance is truly bliss. An artist friend recently admitted that he thought about death every day. Not about suicide, but the existential angst about the human dilemma and mystery of being here, of the fact that life is short, confusing, and overwhelming, and it’s hard to know where to turn and what to do sometimes in general. Top that with the never-ending news about humanity’s culpability in "our demise" and you can see why sensitive artist types can go mad. I can relate, because I think about things like how many insects I am stepping on when walking across a lawn - all the time. The bottom line is, we destroy by simply being.
If there is any good news it’s that we also create by simply being. A look at Ode Magazine (tag line: for “intelligent optimists”) brings nothing but reports about good people around the world doing great things. Look around – on a daily, personal, interactive level, most people cooperate most of the time (except for traffic in Bangkok). Lots of people are working on our problems. Look at the outpouring of support for Haiti – it’s a stellar example of how technology acts like neurons transmitting furiously across our global brain/citizenry to rally a sympathetic response.
Another friend, John, would like to extinguish humanity from the earth – he’s that disgusted. Many are. What’s wrong with this plan is that it ends the experiment before the universe has a chance to have its say. If we are truly hitched to the cosmos (and how can we not be), then we are going in exactly the direction we are meant to go. It may not feel very good, but our human, always-changing feelings are irrelevant in the larger scheme of things. Chaos theory tells us that we must endure turmoil and confusion before a new order is established. There’s a lot of positive talk, a lot of good ideas and good projects coming to the fore, in response to the urgent needs we have created. Whether we have passed our tipping point into sure collapse is hard to say, because there is always the chance that an unknown, unanticipated element will suddenly enter and alter the picture.
Back to balance, where we started: the cosmos are built on the workings of yin and yang. There are seeds of light in the darkness. If we continue to get enough people focusing and moving toward that, then walking, breathing and living the Middle Way won’t be so hard to accomplish, and we'll be able to enter upscale supermarkets without a second thought.
