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| Now, April 12, 2022, 2:10 PM: One Standard Moment in the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Steve Brown 2022 |
Lasting happiness comes primarily from finding peace of mind
and peace of mind does not fall from the sky.
We need to make concerted efforts to be kind to each other, to live in
harmony with each other and cultivate a deep sense of brotherhood and
sisterhood throughout the community. We
need to reflect on the oneness of humanity.
Early on in the creative process, I was extremely driven to write this book. I had been diagnosed with kidney disease, and because of my father, there was a small but genetically significant chance that that I might have amyloidosis, which is fairly fast and fatal. At the time of our vacation, our 25th anniversary trip, I believed it could well be one of the last vacations Marci and I took together.
Shortly after our return, I learned that although I have kidney disease, I have a very mild type, and as long as I eat reasonably well, I've got as much chance of living a long life as anyone does statistically-speaking. Other than restricting my diet, the disease turned out not to be a big deal.
Yet, I was still very driven to write this book. Although my kidney disease seems to make me very tired, the steroids I was taking gave me short bursts of energy daily. One of the side effects listed for the medication is "excessive happiness". Even knowing that, I didn't necessarily feel my new zest for life was drug-induced. The joy simply felt too real to be artificially induced. It was not the drugs speaking, I thought, but my evolved outlook on life. Facing death had changed me forever.
I woke up early, often three or four in the morning, usually from a dream that would provide me the perfect kernel of what I needed next in my writing. A few of those kernels were so aligned with what I would learn about Steinbeck's philosophy a day or two later during my research that I felt Steinbeck might be personally guiding my hand from beyond the veil.
And then it just stopped. And here I am with a book that I'm unsure about. I have thought about quitting, but until I finished my last and only book to date (which I haven't tried to publish), that's what I've always done: go from project to project, writing some passages I feel are meaningful but never really saying anything because I simply quit before the project comes together as a whole.
I've decided a writer can't do that. Like a good husband, a good father, a good friend, a good anything--one has to be committed to see it through to the end. One needs the endurance to push forward when one most believes there is absolutely no reason to do so. A writer learns to endure to the end, or he learns to not be a writer at all. That type of learning destroys us from the inside out--the slow erosion of our hopes and dreams. A man can survive not reaping the rewards of his efforts. A man cannot survive letting go of his dreams. He becomes half a man, a shell. Prophets are stoned, burned and shot, not fully listened to in their day, and still they remain prophets. But the minute a prophet believes What good will it do? and Why bother? a prophet is a prophet no more. The same is true for a painter, a musician, a parent. Or a writer.
A writer only remains a writer as long as he/she believes words matter and that he/she has a reason to put words down. That can be Oh so difficult to believe especially when one is of the age that statistically speaking your chance of making an impact on the world is very slight. Fame, which I care nothing about, and the power that comes with it to do good, which I care immensely about, begins while one is relatively young. Changing the world is the realm of youth. Having the wisdom appreciate life on its own terms is the realm of the elderly. Sadly though, so is that reluctant, loosening grasp on one's dreams, and with it, one's desire to live. A lot of elderly people slowly slope into death broken by the burden of carrying around dead dreams--totally alone under the weight of that huge question, what was it all for?
A belief in an afterlife helps for sure. The end is not so final. One is given a psychological extension, an eternity, to become who you want to be. I fully believe in that, and I don't believe it is merely a concept to ward off the fear of death. However, I don't think knowing that there is an afterlife saves one from the crushing weight of unfulfilled dreams. We are built to want to accomplish certain things in this life. A piano player will never die happily as a banker. He or she is wired to play. Play he or she must, or death will come long before the grave does.
However, I am just beginning to understand what keeps an old man young is how well he attends to the moment. The now, fully taken in, always sings with light, even on the darkest night, because our eyes are wired to see light, and light is there always. Sit in a dark room long enough and you will see shadows of light seeping in defining forms and giving the vagueness meaning. In the now, a writer doesn't worry about impact or legacy--only the beauty of the words themselves, and a power and truth that almost seems tangible as the next word tingles the senses, and points towards something not yet named.
I haven't lived my life that way, but I believe it is possible to do so. I can name people I believe have. The Dalai Lama is one of them. He isn't sloping towards death. He is alive each and every moment. He is constantly alive in the now that makes up the eternities.
The prophet of my church is pushing us to think celestially, which can be defined as eternity spent at the highest spiritual level possible. Nothing could be a grander goal, and it begins with now. How do I enter this moment fully enough that I know that glory of what it means to be alive?
A man who can do that willingly, whenever he wants, will only want good things for the world and will tire himself out in the joy of making the world a better place no matter the circumstances. Death will come sudden with no regrets because no matter whatever his condition, or the condition of the world around him, he is attentive to the details of now.
Say, for instance, he is bed-ridden and in some pain constantly. Instead of focusing on all he cannot do or all he wished he'd done but never seemed to get around to, what he could have done better in his life, those he abandoned, or those who abandoned him... Instead of worrying about all that stuff, he notices the little bird with the yellow chest on the bony, wet limb outside his window, and the clouds breaking up after an early morning rain. He hears the heater kick on and feels the warmth of the blanket tucked in tight around him. He stares at the wall, and watches a spider move across it. He notices the vase of flowers his daughter has brought him. He lets his mind wander, and when it comes to his own death, and he feels his body tighten up, rather than running away from that fear, he looks at it the same way he looks outside his window, at the same way he looks around his room, and he comes to know it, knowing full well it is impossible to hate something you know well because hate is just a less-scary name for fear. It is easier to hate something than admit it is something we fear.
To a man like that, death never comes until his heart stops beating and his brain goes cold, and his spirit is released into the next realm.
A man like that also only wants good for the world, because when totally immersed in the here and now, an active observer of everything around him, a sense of unity and connection is always present. The feeling of separateness is gone, and with it, the sense of competition and the need to win. Instead of viewing the world as resource-starved, one realizes that it is resource-rich, and instead of wanting to hoard everything to protect yourself, one wants to give abundantly, wanting the bugs to get their fill from your fruit tree.
I am not yet that man, nowhere close, by any means. But I know he exists in Christ. I know he exists in others too, like the Dalai Lama, who know a moment so well they can look deep down into it and see eternities.
I know that if the world were populated by such people, together we would solve all of our problems, from climate change to war.
This book, I think, is how to become that person. If not for you, for myself, because I believe if everyone could know all moments deeply, one would also know the eternities, and act appropriately.
It is a disconnected man who wants to burn the world, a disconnected man who wants to make me a foe. It is a disconnected man who needs to win, and once he's won, sits on a pile of ashes, wondering What was it all for?
A connected man already knows. He's experienced life moment by moment. His only goal is for others to know that same joy. Life is. Live it. Love it. Protect it. Enjoy.
I started to doubt the structure of this book. I started to doubt a lot of things. It felt like this book was morphing into something else, something beyond my initial conception, that it was growing wild, and beyond my control. It was. It is. And isn't that exactly what I should want? A book I have to run to catch up to. Something I can see grow moment by moment beyond my intentions. Something wild and free and striving to become.
Only in fear, do we want to clip the wings of things ready to soar.
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