I'd like to take this holiday opportunity to reflect on all that I have in my life to be thankful for. But what I want to say is more than just making a list of all the nice things I have and auspicious things that have happened to me. In fact, depending on my mood of the day, I could just as easily make a list of pro's and con's about my life and demonstrate by analysis how lucky or unlucky I've been.
Actually, it's been a tough year, and I've struggled with motivation for my work and study, relationships, professional aspirations, values, etc. I even asked my advisor if I was going through a mid-life crisis in my post-exam period (I passed my qualifyers in March). He reassured me, no, it's only a crisis if you let it stop you in your tracks and you give up (besides, I'm way to young to be anywhere near "mid-life," thought it's obvious I'm nearing a crossroads). Considering the rock-n-roll, the skateboarding, the interest in new things, the martial arts and a bunch of other things I was into in the beginning of the year, I should consider it more of an "exhuberance" than a crisis. I've also had lots of time to reflect on what's going on, who I am and what I care about.
From all my reflection, I've learned that I have a lot to be thankful for. And it has nothing to do with feeling at any moment that I'm somehow "better off" than I was. If I were to be so relativistic about it, then there would have to be times to be thankful and times to complain and be sorry for myself. But I'm thankful now for experience, love, kindness and mercy that I recieved during the lean times when things really weren't going so well. And though I may not be rich in any measurable way (like during the stock market crash, I was wondering what a 401k really is and where people got them...though it seems I may not be missing much), there is an intense vibration of promise all around me, promise to bring about an amazing but unseen, unknown future. I'm thankful, therefore, for things that have not yet come to me which I can feel growing all around me.
I know the future will be lean, and I know I will suffer many losses - much greater than any I've known so far. How will I be able to be thankful then, when everything around me falls apart? I think then, in learning to be thankful I need to think beyond pleasure/satisfaction vs. suffering/loss. I made a list of things that I've learned to be thankful for, that have carried me thus far and I hope carry me onward.
I'm thankful for the people in my life, friends and family who have listened to me when I wanted to talk. I haven't always been such a good friend when I "unloaded" on them, and it was probably selfish. And yet, I've had friends who listened, helped me a long, and forgave me. I'm thankful for that.
And I'm thankful for the people in my life who have opened up to me and trusted me with their hearts. To have someone give me that trust feels like the most precious thing in the world, and I feel truly gan-dong - that my heart is moved. And I'm thankful for the soft heart I've been able to keep through it all, that I haven't become too calous to help people or be helped, and I haven't tucked it away for "safekeeping" so as to be rather useless in interfacing with the love that's around me.
There's plenty of other things to be thankful for - my parents for knowing me better than anyone else (even when I think they're wrong), my teachers for being patient with me even when I'm a pretty pathetic student, learning wisdom when I might prefer to dwell on bitterness, humility when I could be self-rightious, and so many others. And what about specifics? I'm thankful for a certain friend that always hangs out even when neither of us is feeling so great. I'm thankful for a kung-fu teacher that kicks my ass and makes me laugh on bad days. I'm thankful for a friend who lets me know, sans tact, when I'm out of line. I'm thankful for a little girl who comes to her lessons prepared and with a brain like a sponge. And I'm thankful for a student who comes to class and challenges me with a belligerant, ignorant attitude - and yet opens just a tiny crack in his armour and lets me see just how vulnerable and sensitive he really is.
So you see, the list goes on and on, good things to sustain me in hard times, sobering things to give me humility when I could be self-satisfied. What more could I ask for? I want to know how to be thankful. I know a tiny little bit that I've learned. Just a little bit...but it's so amazing. If I just try to savour those good times memories - that hard-won victory, that standing ovation, that awesome moment with a friend, that suprise birthday party - I might become jealous of them, to want to live in those moments and forget about the cold present and unknowable future. But to learn to be thankful for those and other things makes them more meaningful, and makes the present and future that much more meaningful as well. As a disclaimer, I am not an expert in this stuff, and anything that seems to make sense is probably the result of falling on my ass enough times to get just a glimpse of the wonders of life I should appreciate and give thanks for.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
Love and the End of Time
The way we identify change in our universe is by observing events, changes, and the relative permanence (and impermanence) of things as we can see by our own perspective. Our individual perspective, in observing change, assumes that we ourselves are in fact permanent. But even in knowing full well that we will not be here forever, and will not even be the same biological and psychological phenomenon from one minute to the next, the permanence of self is completely real to us, and the only thing of any permanence that we have with which to observe the universe.
But are our individual selves really the only "permanent" object that we know? I remember something my father told me a long time ago. I was already either a young adult or rather large child - in either case, certainly certainly beyond being a baby, toddler or elementary school student. I asked him, "How do you see me, compared to how I used to be, like years ago when I was a baby or a little kid? Isn't it kind of like knowing different people, all those different imature versions of myself, and aren't I going to be quite different in the future?" It didn't take him long to find an answer. He said, "No, actually, when I see you or think of you, it's like I can see all those different stages together - past, present and future. I can't see you as anything else but you, no matter how old you are or were." I had a bit of a hard time digesting this obsersevation, but I remembered it until today. How was it possible he could see me as a person who is, was, and will be me, and his son, and yet has undergone quite substantial transformations?
I was also thinking of how we remember young people who died early in their lives - as children, students or young people. Do we freeze them in our minds at the age we last remembered them? Has a friend I knew growing up who didn't make it remained forever a child while I have grown up and left him or her behind, always widening the chasm of our age difference? No, I thought hard about this, and it's not like that. Nor do I imagine those friends and acquaintances as they "would be" now, although I might ponder the possibility. I think what happens is that I remember them through the eyes of myself at that age. As I sense that I am permanent in my perspective, I was the same person at age 12 as I am now. I can be that person and feel as I was at 12 in an instant. And a classmate who is for whatever reason no longer in my life, is universally my equal, not 5 or 20 years younger than my now-self at all.
So what can I make of all this? I think the way we know and in fact love those people close to us may in fact transfer the permanence we believe of ourselves onto those around us who we love. I'm not saying that we are blind to the physical effects of aging - we can always figure out the passage of time and the trajectory of our biological mortality. But as I am myself and have not been anybody else despite immense development, my grandmother is, was, and will always be herself in spite of her 86 years. It's really hard for me to remember her as anything but herself, even as I've known her for 29 years.
Some of this may seem quite obvious since it's all part of our everyday human family life. But, I do think that in closer relationships, and particularly where the bond of love is so strong, that the permanence of ourselves is extended to the permanence of those we love. There is nothing immortal about our flesh, and our mortality is certainly a reality. But, a part of being human is to know ourselves, consciously - to measure the passage of time and the nature of change from our own awareness of now. And our nature is to love other individuals who themselves measure the passage of time and the nature of change from their own awareness of now. At our intersection in space and time, we are connected by this consciousness of each other.
But are our individual selves really the only "permanent" object that we know? I remember something my father told me a long time ago. I was already either a young adult or rather large child - in either case, certainly certainly beyond being a baby, toddler or elementary school student. I asked him, "How do you see me, compared to how I used to be, like years ago when I was a baby or a little kid? Isn't it kind of like knowing different people, all those different imature versions of myself, and aren't I going to be quite different in the future?" It didn't take him long to find an answer. He said, "No, actually, when I see you or think of you, it's like I can see all those different stages together - past, present and future. I can't see you as anything else but you, no matter how old you are or were." I had a bit of a hard time digesting this obsersevation, but I remembered it until today. How was it possible he could see me as a person who is, was, and will be me, and his son, and yet has undergone quite substantial transformations?
I was also thinking of how we remember young people who died early in their lives - as children, students or young people. Do we freeze them in our minds at the age we last remembered them? Has a friend I knew growing up who didn't make it remained forever a child while I have grown up and left him or her behind, always widening the chasm of our age difference? No, I thought hard about this, and it's not like that. Nor do I imagine those friends and acquaintances as they "would be" now, although I might ponder the possibility. I think what happens is that I remember them through the eyes of myself at that age. As I sense that I am permanent in my perspective, I was the same person at age 12 as I am now. I can be that person and feel as I was at 12 in an instant. And a classmate who is for whatever reason no longer in my life, is universally my equal, not 5 or 20 years younger than my now-self at all.
So what can I make of all this? I think the way we know and in fact love those people close to us may in fact transfer the permanence we believe of ourselves onto those around us who we love. I'm not saying that we are blind to the physical effects of aging - we can always figure out the passage of time and the trajectory of our biological mortality. But as I am myself and have not been anybody else despite immense development, my grandmother is, was, and will always be herself in spite of her 86 years. It's really hard for me to remember her as anything but herself, even as I've known her for 29 years.
Some of this may seem quite obvious since it's all part of our everyday human family life. But, I do think that in closer relationships, and particularly where the bond of love is so strong, that the permanence of ourselves is extended to the permanence of those we love. There is nothing immortal about our flesh, and our mortality is certainly a reality. But, a part of being human is to know ourselves, consciously - to measure the passage of time and the nature of change from our own awareness of now. And our nature is to love other individuals who themselves measure the passage of time and the nature of change from their own awareness of now. At our intersection in space and time, we are connected by this consciousness of each other.
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