Dear Friends, Family, Neighbors, and Those of You I Don’t Yet Know —
Last week’s edition of “Odd Company” touched on the idea of finite and infinite games. You might recall that the object of a finite game is to win. The object of an infinite game is to keep playing. I’m somewhat abashed that I didn’t include gardening in my list of common infinite games, as it’s surely one we see all around us, from pots on a high-rise balcony to lush suburban landscaping. I’ve been a gardener all my life. You don’t have to know me very well in order to notice that one of my personal big challenges is always having more to do than I have time for. Yet I always manage to grow some vegetables and some flowers. Every now and then, someone asks me why. My response? Because I feel incomplete without it.
Slight tangent, but only slight… In Tai Chi, we learn the importance of staying in close contact with yourself and with your fellow Tai Chi dancers. It’s an anchor — the only way you can know your own intentions and those of others. Gardening is one of my anchors. I want to know what nature is up to in this time of rapid change. Are the worms still working? Are the bees still with us? Will our trees survive the drought? How are the birds doing?
In this week’s “Odd Company,” I want to talk about change; loss and grief; and the basic human need for safety and connection. At this particular time in history, every conversation is a little boat on a swift, dark river of worry caused by rapid changes and the losses they bring. The changes we worry about most vary from person to person. There are plenty to choose from. Fires and floods. Covid. Vaccinations. Changes in our communities and in the nature of our work. Some of our worries we can’t even put into words. We experience them as a deep uneasiness. Nothing seems quite right. It leaves us irritable, casting around for simple answers to complicated questions.
“When I’m beguiled by the fear/ that darker days are drawing near” I often turn to my garden for hope and solace, or to songs like this gem by the Scottish singer and philosopher Karine Polwart. Yah…that’s right. A woman with both massive musical talent, and a degree in philosophy!
We don’t generally make a point of having conversations with people we don’t know, especially if they seem very different from us. Or I could put it the way Lyle Lovett does. We don’t go around taking bears to lunch. (See the July 26 issue of “Odd Company.) It’s simply not done. That’s what makes Lovett’s song so funny. Seriously, though, substitute the word “stranger” or “person registered with the other political party” for “bear.” Often, when we don’t want to take a bear to lunch, it’s because we’re afraid. Afraid the bear won’t like us and…well…you know…angry bears have a reputation. Or something.
In our compassion class, we learned early on about the natural human tendency to categorize people as either part of our own tribe or part of some other tribe. We do this because belonging to a group — even a small group of friends — gives us a feeling of safety. Our instinct is to choose a group of people who have a lot in common with us — people we don’t have to argue with, because they already agree with us about the things that matter most to us. It’s just easier. So if we have a choice about where to sit, whether it’s on a subway car or at a town council meeting, we’ll probably choose a seat near someone who looks like us. That is, looks like they’re from the same side of town as we are, the same socioeconomic or racial group, can speak our favorite language, etc.
In these divided times, it’s perfectly possible to sit down beside a bear and not know it. So, having made that “mistake,” or maybe having done it on purpose out of sheer exhaustion, how do you talk to the bear? A few years ago, we climbed a mountain in Rwanda to see the wild gorillas who lived there. On the way up, our guides taught us a few words of gorilla. The most important one was “ung-hhhhh,” which is to be said in a low, soft voice. (I’m doing my best to transcribe an untranscribable sound. You had to be there.) It means, “I’m good. Everything is cool.” There were other rules. No walking sticks. (To a gorilla, a walking stick looks the same as a poacher’s rifle. I know I’d be skittish if a stranger with what looked like a rifle were coming toward me.) Don’t touch the gorillas. (Do I like to be touched by strangers? No. Neither do they.)
My point is, we have a lot in common with gorillas. We have even more in common with other human beings, no matter where they come from, no matter what they look like, and no matter what political party they belong to. If we can get along with gorillas, chances are pretty good that we can get along with each other.
To continue with the animal metaphor, gorillas are actually pretty easy to get along with. They are gentle, and they are sort of like bees. They just go about their business, and they won’t bother you unless you really get up in their face, or you scare them or something. Lately, humans are not so much like gorillas. We’re more like bears — and not just any bears. Hungry mother bears who have just woken up from hibernation and have two cubs to protect. Almost everyone I know is edgy and irritable. No one has a clue what the future will be like. All we know is it’s easier to imagine it dark than bright. We don’t know if we’ll ever get back to the “normal” of pre-Covid days. We don’t know what the weather will be like. We don’t know who will move into the vacant house, if anyone. We wonder if there will be riots. We wonder if anyone will stop the riots. We worry that we’ll lose our jobs to intelligent robots. We worry that we’ll die…that our children will die…
The common denominator — the thing we are all feeling — is loss. We’ve lost friends and family members to a disease whose origins are unknown. We might lose our own lives. We’ve lost faith in the experts and leaders who are supposed to know what to do. We’ve lost our certainty about the future. Some of us have lost our jobs, our homes, our communities, our sense of ourselves as capable people. We’ve lost our dreams. Remember what the Buddhists say about suffering? It is caused by craving — and one form of craving is the craving for something we’ve lost and can’t get back. Another word for this type of craving is grief. We are grieving, not just as individuals, but as a society.
Next time, more about grief as a kind of alchemy for turning the lead of our anger and loss into the gold of common ground and new beginnings. Here’s a parting poem I wrote some years ago, about the loss of a favorite tree.
SALT SPOON
I need to tell you
about the tree that grew here once,
a tall pine.
All year it sheltered us
from sun, from rain,
needles combing the wind
out of tangled roar
into fragrant sigh
outside the bedroom window.
Everything lived in those boughs --
squirrels, opossums, raccoons,
a thousand birds,
the beetles that, in time,
killed it.
Here is the little spoon
our friend carved
from a twig I saved.
See how it’s filled with stars
and dreams, how every day
we draw up the salt with it
and are mindful
of songs sung in storms,
of mockingbirds and forests,
and the long line of treasures
given and left behind.