Friday, April 2, 2010

The Nature of Now

Regret. It’s been the single most crippling thing in my life up to this point. Every day something pricks me like a needle, reminding me of what I should have done, what never should have happened, who I should have gotten closer to and who I should have made myself become. There have been phases in my life where I’ve been woefully incomplete, shambling around like a half-person because I simply believed that everything I had done up to that point had been wrong.

We all know that regret solves little. To spend a day mourning a past you should have had is to waste that day. We all know that the only true way to improve our situation, to achieve our dreams, is to focus on today and tomorrow instead of agonizing over yesterday.

We all know that, but most of us carry that regret with us anyway. Something happened that shouldn’t have and the voice in the back of our minds will never let us forget it.

In my case, the burden I carry is largely not over something I did, but over things I didn’t do. When I was in high school, I felt the world crushing me. All the anger and the pain and the sorrow around me (from teenagers like myself, mostly, each with their own pressing problems) made me feel as if I would be flattened under it all. That no amount of trying could ever dig me out of the sorrows of the world. Very emo of me, right?

So since the weight of the world felt as if it were on my shoulders, I decided I could do one of two things. The first was to let it crush me. To allow all the picking and anger and humiliation directed at me to break my spirit and lead me to violence, as it has so many other vulnerable young souls in our society. I could never hurt others, but I could have hurt myself.

I had another choice however. That choice was to take that world sitting on my shoulders and carry it as such. I would accept all the pain of those around me and I would turn it into strength and resolve. The resolve to one day find a way to take that pain away from them, so that they and others like them would one day have no reason to hurt me or anyone else ever again. What’s the best way to deal with a villain? You turn him into a hero.

So I spent years writing and dreaming about how the world needed to change. How the faults of society could one day be corrected and prevent hatred and ignorance and greed from ever taking hold in our youth and in our culture. In my view simplicity was the answer. So much of our vice comes from unnecessary things we step over each other to gain. Material things, which in my view translated to a waste of time and spirit. I wanted us all to live like the Native Americans of old, the tribes of primal Africa, even the early settlers in Europe and our own country. They found joy not in gain or self-empowerment, but simply in living. Yes, they had war and greed and ignorance just as we did, but underneath those things they loved life and each other in a way I find uncommon these days. Our distraction is American Idol or CSI Miami. Their distraction was a rushing waterfall or a herd of grazing buffalo. It doesn’t take a psychologist to determine which one is probably healthier for the soul.

I still believe these things just as much. My ideas have evolved. I understand the practicality, and in some cases lack-thereof of my original ideas. But I still want them. My dream, to those that don’t know this, is to one day provide a place and a way of life to those of us that want it. An escape from the seemingly inescapable trap of society as we know it. A place where the goal is not to buy a better car or sleep with a hotter girl, but to build something worth building. To live from the land and from the aid of others. To trade, not to take. To give, not to steal. To truly experience, every day what it means to be alive.

That goal has never changed, and yet for twelve years I did little to achieve it. I talked and I wrote and I dreamed, but in all that time I didn’t actually do anything. Sometimes it was because the people around me seemed to embrace their shortcomings instead of fight them. That discouraged me. Sometimes it was because I took the time to be distracted by a pursuit of one love or another that simply wasn’t meant to be. Lately it has become because I have lost everything financially and it seems that every day is a struggle to find enough money to feed my cat.

And through all of those twelve years, I have regretted. I have blamed myself for not taking my dreams, my grand resolve, and making them a reality. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, right? And yet I have not taken that step. Sure I’ve had some false starts, but I have never truly begun to walk that path.

So I blame myself for a youth wasted. Sometimes I do, at least. Sometimes I look at the years that have passed and wonder why I did not run instead of crawl. I can blame it on distraction, which is true. I can blame it on my own ignorance, of never knowing how to begin making my dream a reality, which is also true. I can also blame it on fear, of knowing that in committing to a cause, I will lose many things I will never get back. This is perhaps the truest excuse of all. But in the end, they are all simply excuses. I did not act because I did not act. If I had acted…well, I wouldn’t be here talking about it, would I?

Which has led me to an old philosophical interest of mine: The nature of destiny. Do I believe that our eventual destination in the cosmos is determined by choices we make throughout our short lives? Choices that seem important to us but are truly insignificant in the face of human history and the grand scheme of the universe? In essence, do I believe our life culminates in a crossroads, and the only choices are salvation or damnation? No. In fact, I do not.

I do believe in the benevolence of the world. By the world, I mean God. By God I mean the Tao. By The Tao I mean The Atman or Mother Earth. You see where I’m going with this. Since I believe in that benevolence, I believe that everything will turn out alright in the end. All of our suffering and pain will have been for something, and that one day mankind will earn its salvation.

The reason I believe this is because I believe that it’s already happened. It has happened, and is happening, and will happen forever. Just as the act of me writing this and you reading it is not only happening now, but has always happened.

You were always here, now, reading this.

Think about it. If this day were to play itself over and you were presented the same set of choices and circumstances that led you here, you would make them again. And again. And again. Since we do not know the future, we are in fact destined to create it.

Believe in God? Ok. Believe God knows everything? Cool. Now how does God know everything? Past, present and future? I believe that God knows everything because God IS everything. Past, present, future, creation, destruction, sorrow, joy, thought, instinct, everything…all at once.

Think of time…of destiny…not like book with a beginning a middle and end, but like a map spread out on the table. A great, endless map. See the world? There’s America and Europe and Asia. Say America is what you did yesterday, Europe is what you’re doing now, and Asia is what you will do tomorrow. When you look up close at the middle of the map, you can only see Europe. Now take a step back. Now another. See that? Now you can see America and Asia too. What does that mean? It means you’re seeing today, yesterday and tomorrow all at once because they all exist that way…all at once. This, I believe, is the way God, or any mind potentially more developed than ours, sees history. All at once.

Still want to think of your life like a story? Like a novel with a beginning and an ending? Fine. Pick up the nearest book. Open the first page and read the first word. There…you were just born. Now skip to the end and read the last word. There…you just died. Now go to the middle and read a sentence. That’s you getting married. Now…go back to the beginning. That first word is still there, exactly the same as it was the first time you read it. By reading it again, you’re reliving your birth. As you read the first page, that last page is still there, signifying your death. When we pick up a 600 page book and read page 1 for the first time, page 134 is already there. It’s already written and it already says what it will say when you eventually get to it. Just like life, the novel is already written. Past, present and future are all already there, and always have been from the beginning of…everything.

Now, do I think that means our choices mean nothing? Absolutely not. All the epic moments in our life, from our first kiss to the day some of us stand up and change the world still have to happen. Just because somebody has already written our book doesn’t mean that we have to know how it ends. In fact, we can’t. Our choices are just as real in this worldview as they are in any other. After all, don’t you root for the hero in a novel? Don’t your fear for their safety as they face great peril, even though the author already knows what happens to him or her? The ending has already been written, but the journey has yet to unfold before us.

Believing this, and reminding myself that I believe it now more than ever, has given me a measure of comfort and eased some of my regret. After all, the past has happened. It has always happened. I can never, ever change it. If I were reborn exactly as I was 29 years ago I would behave exactly as I did on the way to this point in my life.

I have always written this and you have always read it.

Therefore…tomorrow has already happened. It has always happened exactly the way it will. To me, that’s thrilling. I feel as if I’m turning the page now, dying to find out what I do next. I will make mistakes. I will help people and I will hurt them. I will encourage and I will disappoint. I will change the world…or I won’t. The point is…I will.

I will act towards my dreams because I know how I want things to happen, but when they do not happen the way I wish they had…I will take heart knowing that my current failure was always meant to be…and the successes of tomorrow will always, always be real.

So perhaps, on that map of history God is peering at right now…I’ve already fulfilled my dreams. Maybe my goals have already been reached, and the weakness I feel right now is just one small step on the road to reaching them.

I may not know what lies before me, but I have to believe that someone, somewhere does.

And I’d like to believe that someone is smiling.