(this is the first in a series of essays which will carry the same title so that you can follow along easily if you should so choose.)
People familiar with my work have probably read or heard me state that “everything of importance, I learned at the movies.” A bit of an exaggeration, yes, but essentially true. When Dorothy asks how she gets to the City of Oz, Glinda advises her to “It's always best to start at the beginning.” And so I shall, for if one starts too far down the road, too many assumptions have already been made that close off possibilities for understanding and/or action. Along the way, I hope to explain why this series of reflections began, how it took shape, and what they mean as a way of informing action for change in our politics and society.
This “road to Oz” begins on the morning of November 9, 2016. I work in the communications school of a private college in the Northeast. I supervise a student staff of about 35 undergraduate students. They come from all backgrounds and demographic groups. When I arrived at work on the morning of the ninth, I had no idea what I was walking into. First, there was the lesbian student who was extremely distraught because two of her transgendered friends from “back home” had committed suicide in the wee hours of the morning after the result of the election was known. Her emotions ran deep, fired by hosts of questions about herself and the society that she lived in that could allow this to happen. I did my best over the course of the next two hours to “right her ship,” and had her take out her phone in front of me and make an appointment with her counselor before I would let her go off to class. Next came a student who was in fear of a “crazy man who had nuclear weapons,” and she asked, “Is it really possible that one person could end life on earth?” And so we talked of the days of my youth, with duck and cover drills, the Cuban missile crisis, Barry Goldwater and the assassination of President Kennedy. The others that day had fewer immediate needs to be met, but the day was spent in conversation that was dark and cynical at best. But it was the student the following day that struck me to the core.
The “morning after the morning after,” one of the young women who works for me came to me with the toughest problem of all. She told me that she really loved and respected all of her very diverse co-workers, but she didn’t know what to say in answer to the distress they were exhibiting. She comes from a very traditional Italian Catholic family that she loves dearly, and that they are extremely conservative on social issues. Her love for them is her anchor, but she sees the hurt that their convictions can cause to others she cares about. The conflict she was dealing with was how to continue to love the people she does while some believe things that she cannot agree with. I had to take pause before answering. The emotional distress that this conflict caused in her was obvious. My need to satisfy myself with adherence to political and social principle would have to take backseat to her immediate needs. And yet, if I were not true to myself, I would not be able to help her as I would lose all standing with her. I have always been pretty much an open book to my student staff. Any statement that I made that was not consistent with prior expressions of social or political philosophy would have immediately been seen as inauthentic, and the opportunity to help would have disappeared. I was able to navigate the waters, and help her find some reconciliation with the immediate conflict. But I was left with my own, summed up in the question, “How did we ever get here?”
I decided to “start at the beginning anew” and pull from some of my studies of Taoist philosophy, as that philosophy was itself born in a time of social and political distress. One of my favorite modern Taoist writers is a man by the name of Deng Ming-Dao. One of his pieces from “365 Tao: Daily Meditations” is a favorite of mine, and is the motive for my DKos avatar:
Heron stands in the blue estuary,
Solitary, white, unmoving for hours.
A fish! Quick avian darting;
The prey is captured.
People always ask how to follow Tao. It is as easy and natural as the heron standing in the water. The bird moves when it must; it does not move when stillness is appropriate.
The secret of its serenity is a type of vigilance, a contemplative state. The heron is not in mere dumbness or sleep. It knows a lucid stillness. It stands unmoving in the flow of the water. It gazes unperturbed and is aware. When Tao brings it something that it needs, it seizes the opportunity without hesitation or deliberation. Then it goes back to its quiescence without disturbing itself or its surroundings. Unless it found the right position in the water's flow and remained patient, it would not have succeeded.
Actions in life can be reduced to two factors; positioning and timing. If we are not in the right place at the right time, we cannot possibly take advantage of what life has to offer us.
Almost anything is appropriate if an action is in accord with the time and place. But we must be vigilant and prepared. Even if the time and the place are right, we can still miss our chance if we do not notice the moment, if we act inadequately, or if we hamper ourselves with doubts and second thoughts.
When life presents an opportunity, we must be ready to sieze it without hesitation or inhibition. Position is useless without awareness. If we have both, we make no mistakes.
Because I could not answer the question of how we arrived at this moment in time, I did not know what course of action to take. I had no sense of where to begin as I had no sense of where that “beginning” was. And so I decided, like the heron in the meditation, to position myself in the current, and watch it flow, trusting it would bring what I needed to find a beginning and a course of action to take. I remained pretty much silent and watched and listened and read, hoping to find out how we got here, knowing that I might then know where to begin.
The next installment is titled, “Where to From Here: Reflections on the Nature of Change (Standing in the Stream)”
(please feel free to suggest tags in the comments, I am not sure how many interrelationships with ongoing discussions there might be as I go forward.)