For many years I questioned what I wanted to be when I grew up - or rather, what would my life look like in old age. The first image I had many years ago prior to starting studies in Asian philosophy and medicine was that I would be sitting at a cafe in Florence, having a cup of coffee, reading a book, and watching the world go by like one of those old timers sitting on a bench, a whole life reflected in wise eyes. My work life would finally be over, I no longer needed to prove anything to anyone or make a living, I could finally breath a sigh of relief after quitting the high paced work life and give up the ghost of my 50 year career journey, I'd finally 'retire' and just sit there - exhausted - and resting.
The image that replaced it was one of a sage living up in the mountains in a small hut by a lake. I never thought much of these romanticized notions of my elder years, but the images would come to me every so often. What I failed to realize was that both of these romanticized notions had in common was that I was alone in both of them. Finally, the world had left me alone, I didn't need to do anything for anybody else and I could be left to my peace. No more drudgery and getting up to do something I didn't like so that I could get a paycheck and pretend I was happy by spending it on whatever would anesthetize the pain of 50 years of a 9-5 meaningless life - a life carting stones to build the pharaohs' pyramid as a slave to the empire.
What I failed to see until perhaps 6 months to a year ago is that both of these ends would be incredibly solitary, lonely, and fueled by a deep pain of being rejected by the world - a world where everyone's for themselves and doesn't really give a fuck about me. I would selflessly give everything, and the pharaohs would take, take, take, till there was nothing left of me.
Forced to give the best years of my life to the pharaohs I'd finally reject society with a big fuck you and live out the rest of my days in well deserved solitude and peace - of course, after paying my taxes to the pharaoh's for allowing me to live on 'their' land.
Those images of retirement looked serene at first, but upon closer inspection revealed the bile, anger, pain, and loneliness of a life lived without making a difference, nor a life where a difference was really made for me. Noone really contributes to anyone anymore. Noone brings you food or vegetables from their garden, or some extra fish they caught that week.
In the realization I knew that I didn't want to be alone and that this end is not what I want at all. What I want is a belonging, and a purpose to the very end - rather than washing my hands clean of life and being left in peace to have my white picket fence guarding MY land, my only, my precious. But how can one achieve this while still living in a culture that strives to tie you to the yoke for your life only to let you finally die in peace when you've served your best years as a pack animal.
Working till the last day of my life also seemed completely unappealing. And perhaps its because of feeling like I have to work and make a living to not be stoned by society that I have felt trapped and prodded like a caged animal in a circus to perform - as if this is the role that I was born to do and have failed somehow to recognize and quietly resign myself to and be thankful that at least I'm fed for my performance. The fact that I spent over a decade in formal schooling to learn stuff I wouldn't need, and14 years in the work force and accepted this as a totally normal part of life - one that I shouldn't question but simply live out, and collect my meal ticket at the end of work day is mind-boggling. The fact that people spend their whole lives, decade after decade in the work force and accept it as a normal part of life is astonishing. Its so accepted as an unquestioned assumption of life that it never looks astonishing at all, but simply how life is.
The reasons behind why this suffering exists in the world was never made clear by anyone. By no religion Eastern nor Western, and by no philosopher. It was certainly never explained to me by my parents, nor to them by their parents, not to them by their parents. Christians and Jews said it was 'the fall' - a story that never got explained to me to my satisfaction as explaining why we really suffer. Even Buddha didn't know why the suffering existed. His statement was that all life is suffering. This is simply how life is.
You are born, you must be thrown into a box to be given a standard education in stuff you'll forget and never need, and chose something useful to do with your life (hopefully its something you'll like to do, but 90% of us don't end up doing what we like to do), or have something forced upon you and you'll work like the rest of us have to, get your check, and be completely free to live you life with what's left of it. And if you ever think of dropping out of the game, and not working like the rest of us but becoming a bum, we'll stone you! Ok, ok.. we won't stone you.. we'll just give you the evil eye, we're resent you, and maybe feel sorry for you because obviously you want the rest of us to feed you and give you money at the intersection just so you stop looking at us as we're pulled up at the stop light. We'll resent your homelessness, we'll call you names, conclude there's something wrong with you, and perhaps will sigh as the light turns green and we pass you by - "what a waste of a life. He could have been a lawyer, or a doctor, or a plumber, or electrician - something useful. He could have been one of us and spent the best years of his life working for the pharaohs like the rest of us. He must be sick or demented to not want that if he prefers to live on the street". Its ok, we have TV, good wine, hard liquor, the latest Apple products, movies, valium, breast enlargements, designer clothing, SUVs, massages, colonics, healthy diets, acupuncture treatments, past life regression, therapy, aura visualization, inner child work, sex, drugs, and rock'n roll, and religion etc to numb the pain and compensate for the lack of freedom, joy, happiness, and fulfillment. We just need, more, better, or different drugs and distractions to make the pain go away. Perhaps if we just crack the DNA code we'll find out what's wrong with us and fix it, like we fix everything else on the planet.
My whole life in school, college, work life, and till a few months ago had these unanswered uncomfortable resignations about life, and the drudgery of it. With money coming out of the bank, nothing coming in, and people wondering "What do you do for the pharaohs to get your allotment of grain from the guarded granarie? Oh, nothing?! You're a bum?! Go get a job damn it." I'm feeling the pressure from all sides. Noone is supposed to live and actually enjoy it. They must work hard and hate every minute of it and then bitch collectively as to why their job sucks more than their partner's, and plop down in front of the TV to numb the mind for the rest of the day.
No wonder so many people commit suicide than to face the alternative to participation in this culture. I could not realize why I felt so uneasy with the notion of working or not working - of participating, or not participating in the game until I started reading the books by Daniel Quinn which opened my eyes to the world as it truly is, the nature of 10,000 years of human civilization, and the prison that all by 1-2% of the world's 6 billion people are in - the prison where the food is locked up and guarded, and you have to work your whole life in order to earn the right to get at it, so that you can sustain your life on this planet. Through reading Quinn's work I realized in astonishment *why* the world is the way the world is, and that there are totally compelling alternatives to living one's life now and into old age which challenges the blueprint of how a 70+ year lifetime of a human being must be spent on this planet.
To go into Quinn's work in this blog entry, or even to mention it without its full context is to do a complete injustice to communicating the impact of his words on my life and the incipience of the existential revolution that is occurring in my life and will most definitely shape my life on this planet, and hopefully for all who are freed from the chains of our cultural prison by encountering his work and realizing the emperor has no clothes.
If my life lacked purposeful structure before, it has surely found one - if only as yet to recognize that it has been without a compelling one, one worth living.
The revolution will be franchised - and it will not be through actions, programs, or a fight against the establishment like that of prior generations. This revolution is in the heart and mind of each human being who wishes a life well lived and who will not compromise on what is authentic to every human being - the right to total power, freedom, and self-expression - not as an individual living a solitary life, but as a member of a community, a new tribe dedicated to living as a community that loves its members and looks after them like nature looks after its own.
Don't worry, I will not grow a long beard, shave my head, join an ashram, wear a saffron robe, live in the woods, renounce civilization and live on the streets and panhandle for a living - though in some ways this seems more appealing. All that is a pretense designed to reject the world rather than embrace it. That is not the purpose of the revolution.
Belonging....
Before encountering Quinn's work I got a horoscope in email several months ago that stated that the following transit will last from May through September in my sector of Career and Vocation:
"You're not sure what you want to be when you grow up, but you're sure that this isn't it. Don't beat yourself up about it. Big goals take a lot of time."I was not pleased to hear this. There are many times when I don't understand horoscopes and their application to my life, especially when highly generalized. Most only give you a layout for one of the 12 signs. The one I've been using was more precisely aligned to my individual chart which raises its accuracy. Whether one believes these things to be guidance from a cosmic clock (which I tend to believe) of known energetic influences (and not destiny) which influence observable changes in behavior much like the moon does on menstrual cycles - or whether one believes it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy which once read tends to manifest (I can't deny this is a factor) - it got me thinking: The statement really leaves me uncomfortable not because it has an ominous implication - but because I resonate with it and have felt very uneasy, shaken, out of place, and certainly not in a place of being comfortable about my life as it is right now. I'm not secure. I'm not in a routine. The horoscope resonated with me on a couple of levels:
1. I am unemployed, and I resent the notion of returning to work in software, or anything else requiring doing anything that I didn't "like", or that I wasn't suited for doing so that I could pay the bills
2. I was in Hawaii doing work that I no longer really wanted to do (because my work is now Five Element), but work which I felt obligated to do because of my prior commitments.
I knew this statement did not apply to my work in the field of healing, and it didn't apply to my new Five Element school in Colorado, as I love this work. When evaluating this statement further I realized that if I were honest with myself I knew there was another level at which I resonated with this:
3. I don't know what to do with my time between intensives after I come back to live in Colorado full time, and I know I don't want to work for the pharaohs, but loafing around and twiddling my thumbs is also not an option. Its boring, unfulfilling, isolative, and lonely. I cannot isolate, I must be around people and contributing in some way. What path I should undertake is completely unclear, and this is the most frustrating reality that the three sentences of my horoscope were asking me to consider i.e.: you don't know what you want, but this isn't it, and don't worry, resolution (of some kind) will come by september.
I know which realm this will take place in. The resolution will be in my career, vocation, and what I do with my day area - the very area that I've a void filled with confusion. What I do know is that whenever someone suggests something "You should do X, or Y, or Z" - I know immediately if it resonates or not. i.e: I certainly know it isn't it when I see it. When I do know is that I'm no longer willing to settle for 'a job', or settle for something that passes the time. I am committed to finding what is authentic for me so that when I do it, I know I will love it, and therefore I will excel at it and it will give me my living.
It may mean a 'job' of some kind - or it may mean living off savings and loans until I am able to open a private practice and in the mean time finding a place to contribute to the community voluntarily in a way that serves.
I am open to receiving guidance and wisdom from the great universe and listening for the signs...
The Tribe of Waimea...
I knew when I left Colorado to go back to Waimea that I didn't want to be there. I was leaving my new Tribe of Louisville behind and losing out on the opportunities to build deeper friendships and concentrate on my school work. I knew I wanted to be home and living in my own place. I knew I didn't want to spend more money on learning in Hawaii. I knew I didn't want to sleep on someone else's bed, and I knew I ultimately do not want to make the modality I'm learning in Hawaii as the focal point of my career. I wanted to be home. But I also knew that I was getting value from my clinic experience, that I was extremely lucky, and that in making my commitment I had to sacrifice my wellbeing for the sake of some greater good out there - that being the creation of the best well-rounded education I can give myself in the arts of acupuncture that are possible with my resources.
When back on the Alcatraz, er, I mean the Big Island, my floating prison - my life was focused on clinic, writing, attempts at doing homework, fighting a toothache, and reading Daniel Quinn's books.
In hanging out at my former school, and chatting with former roommates, students and teachers I knew that I was now a foreigner. An infiltrator. A persona-non-grata. A deserter. A disloyal member of the clan. A defector.
Everyone treated me nicely, smiled, nodded, welcomed me, asked me how I was. I went out to dinner and spent some time with a few former classmates - but ultimately - I was no longer one of them. I didn't share their struggles anymore. And because I didn't share their struggles, I was a marginal individual on the periphery of the social group and no longer an insider. Things were not the same anymore. I knew it. They knew it. And it was as it should be. Its natural. Its normal. When a person leaves the tribe to go to another, they are part of the new tribe. And I missed my new tribe very very much.
On the flight back to Colorado I started to get excited on the leg from Phoenix to Denver. I watched the whole journey out the window and saw the deserts below slowly changing into snow capped mountains with green spreading through the valleys until we were flying above spring manifesting itself along the front range. With each passing mile I was giddy, antsy, and like a puppy who can't wait to get outside from excitement, I felt like my tail was wagging. If it weren't for the fact that it wasn't sanitary, I would have kissed the ground when I got off the plane. I was home.
The Tribe of Louisville...
My tribe here is small, but loving. We're all new to each other, and we're growing closer by the day. When I live here full time I know that we will get closer still. I don't want to leave my new home. I want to become part of the community. What compels me into my new future since reading Quinn's work is changing the context for belonging into one which reestablishes the best of what human nature has to offer - a new tribal revolution. A revolution wherein you are needed as much by the tribe as the tribe is needed by you.
The Tribe of Colorado...
In native tribes the tribe was all there was, and all that needed to be. You had all your needs met through the tribe, and you supplied the tribe whatever they needed. This wasn't work. This was simply being and responding to each other's needs and helping eachother because the tribe knew that their survival was depended on your survival, and that your survival depended on the survival of the tribe.
You contribute to the life of the tribe whatever abilities, skills and resources you have, and the tribe supports you, gives you food, clothing, a place to belong, a meaning for your day to day life which directly impacts all others.
A tribe is not a commune. A commune is a group of people with a common belief structure that unites them together but without the requisite skills to really succeed at running a self-sustained community. A tribe, however, is a group that self-references. Gives purpose and meaning to each member and is defined through the contribution and participation of each member to the tribe. It has no hierarchy of power. Its self-policing, based on reciprocity, integrity and authentic contribution.
This is the tribe I wish to belong to, this is where I want to make my living and feel like I'm making a difference. What that looks like is an unknown. With enough people wandering the world looking for a tribe, we may find each other and in small ways contribute to eachother's lives and well-being in a way that gives our time on this planet a meaningful existence.
I will give my services and time to those who will give me food, money, and clothes for my back in exchange for my helping them in their lives as directly as I can so that none of us need to work in a meaningless 9-5 job anymore building pyramids for the pharaohs.
I paraphrase of words spoken by Dianne Connelly of Tai Shophia as she addressed a community workshop:
“You think that you’re here for you. You are not here for you. You are here for the seven generations of humanity that lives, breathes, and walks this earth today. You are here for the your generation, all parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, all children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. You are a part of the seven generations, and we are a part of you.In the words of George Bernard Shaw:
You were brought here to help ensure that the generations continue and do not forget the sacred knowledge of nourishing life passed down through the ages.
If you seek a meaning for your life, what greater meaning is there than that of contribution to the generations that have given you life.”
“This is the true joy in life. The being used for a purpose, recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”My ad in the Planet Earth Times will read ...
"31 y/o single white male, seeks tribe. Willing to contribute to wellbeing of others. References available upon request."
