The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--55. Now, Space, and Walking Things Back

Walkabout the Rock, Steve Brown 2025

Writing this book has been an active discovery, not only as a project, but as a saner way to live my life.  It has been less about sharing what I know and more about recording how my approach to life is changing, and at least for me, in a manner that is easily identifiable as better.  Whether or not others have noticed the change or not, I do not know.  I do have my days when I seem to forget everything I've learned and behave as if I'd never began this journey.  However, overall, I spend less and less time reacting to world as I once did, and more and more time being curious and open to now.  None of the ideas are my own.  However, one moment of realization clearly was my own.  Learning doesn't occur simply by receiving new information.  It occurs when you absorb it and it becomes one with who you are.  That usually involves some experience that can be tested-out in your own mind.  Learning is active, verifiable, tangible, and changes the learner forever in ways big or small.  Writing this book has changed me.  I am not who I was previously.  This is how it generally progressed up until now:  

First, in January of 2022 I found out I had kidney disease, which for several months, Marci and I didn't know how serious it might be.  Furthermore, because of genetics, there was a small chance it could be Amyloidosis, which is very serious indeed.  The greater than usual possibility of my impending death made me acutely aware of time, especially the time spent with Marci.  As our 25th anniversary was coming up, we decided to redo our honeymoon trip, which had been to Monterey because of my love of Steinbeck's work in general and specifically the book Cannery Row. 

Second, our car broke down in Salinas, which I now believe was no accident.  This provided me the opportunity to literally walk back through Steinbeck's work on our visit to The National Steinbeck Center.   And as luck (or providence) would have it, all the research books on Steinbeck's life and writing were half-off, allowing me ample resources to read while writing this book. 

Third, in the early stages of writing, I honestly felt Steinbeck was guiding the process, including the theme, which came to me the second day of working on the book: We are all connected, and what we choose to do now will impact our individual and shared realities through the eternities.

Fourth, while writing on September 14, 2023, I had the realization that although I'd been unhappy for a good chunk of my life, I'd never been unhappy while in the now--that whenever I was fully present, I was happy regardless of circumstances.  In that moment, I realized all my unhappiness was in my head and that if I'd spent all my life in the now, I would have happy my entire life.  I even had the sense that except in rare traumatic events such as war, rape, abuse, etc., that it actually is impossible to be unhappy if one is intensely in the moment because being fully present brings an openness, understanding and empathy towards life and everyone around you that allows one to transcend things like a loss of a loved one, going through a divorce, or losing a child.  I had a sense that there is a type of joy that included deep sorrow and that type of joy was accessible through being fully present in the now, whatever that might entail.  All this I felt I knew in one moment, while looking out my sliding glass door at a single sunflower glazed with late afternoon light.  However, I only felt I knew it.  That is close but not the same as knowing it.  I would need to experiment on it to know it more solidly.

So, I began to practice now-living.   It was and is still a struggle.  I don't always do it well.  My ego takes over, and I slip back into old ways of worry and living in my head and comparing myself to others and imagining crazy scenarios that don't even exist.  But overall, I do keep getting better and better at living in the moment, and sometimes I do it absolutely splendidly.  And when I do, I notice something very significant:  

Living in the now opens up space.  Space to observe, space to be still.  But most significantly, space to walk things back.  One day, I was talking to Marci, and we were heading towards an argument, and in that present moment I noticed how beautiful she is and how much I love her, and I had this thought I had never had before:  I can walk this back right now, in this very moment, and end this argument instantly.  I don't need to be right.  And I did do that, and it worked.  I don't even know if she knows it occurred, but I do.  All I had to do is give up my need to be right in exchange for something greater, that moment we were sharing together.  I didn't even have to admit I was wrong, which I didn't think I was.  I just didn't need to prove I was right.  The ego is all surface.  It cares nothing about integrity, morality, truth, especially not reality.  All it cares is about is perception--what others think. 

There is something about entering the now that totally obliterates the need to put on a show.  Mindfulness eradicates selfishness.  When we observe something acutely, we become one with it on some level.  I knew that well in sixth grade when I observed closely the cute freckles on Kelly's nose.  There was such a connection that it felt like love.  It always does.  I now feel that same connection to the bees in my garden and the small but great oaks in my front yard.  Living in the now connects us to life and opens up space--space to just enjoy but also space to revise our lives instantly, without any regrets.   For where there is no ego, there are no regrets.  Empathy for the feelings of others, yes.  But regret, no.  When you're fully in the present, you know all that matters is the choice you're making right now.  The past is gone, and the future will take care of itself, but based on this moment.  All life and all accountability is reduced to now.  It doesn't matter if you've needed to apologize to your son for ten years.  You can't do anything about that.  All you have to do is decide what you're going to do now.  And then do it.  And you don't even have to worry about how he'll receive it.  You can't do anything about that either.  But that apology will feel oh so good no matter the outcome because it has been weighing on you for ten years and because regardless of how it is received you will know it was needed.  Now obliterates guilt because when you're truly in the present you take care of whatever you can right now and don't worry about anything outside what you can do here, now, this moment.

Recently, I had a couple weeks where I let my ego take over again.  This led to worry, defensiveness, and ultimately some very bad behavior by me at a meeting at work where I could have severely damaged the relationship with my boss.  The old me would have just sat in that moment of regret and piled on the doom for a couple of weeks.  What have I done?   

But because I’ve spent enough time consciously in the now to know that ample space exists to walk back the ego at any time, once I came to my senses, I did just that. I set up a time with my boss to formally apologize. 

Apologize.  I can do that; you can do that; we can all do that. And each time one of us chooses to do that, the world becomes a little less broken, a little less fragmented, and a little more one—which it already is whether we like it that way or not.   That illusion of isolation, of separateness, of superiority and inferiority causes so much stress, pain and heartache, personally and globally because we act out the illusion as if it were real.  And so, the consequences are real even if based on a misinterpretation of reality.

Now makes us all equals in this moment, all just trying to get along the best we can based on the information we've gathered and experiences we've had.  Nothing I've written here is original, but it wasn't original for my sources either.   What made it original for them is the same thing that made it original for me.  They had one moment, or more likely a series of moments, where they had this realization:  I finally understand.   Currently, I practice living in the now very imperfectly.  But I have the sneaky suspicion that is true for my sources also.  Great ideas only get lived grandly one moment at a time.  I've read enough about John Steinbeck to know he could be a real jerk at times.  I assume the same about Wayne Dyer, and Gandhi, perhaps even the Buddha.  Christ may have been exempt from imperfection in this life, but I think even he must have been a novice once upon a time for evolution and growth seem to be universal laws. But flawed teachers don't change the universal truth: We are all connected, and what we choose to do now will impact our individual and shared realities through the eternities.

My hope is that just like when the first Steinbeck book fell into my hands, the many times I heard Doctor Daniel Sanderson speak at work, or after I rediscovered Wayne Dyer after almost 30 years, and I'd get these small ah-ha moments, I hope something said here will touch you as an original experience although I'm well aware there is nothing original here at all.  

The Tao, God, Love they are eternal but only when witnessed from right here, right now.  And the moment we let our ego back in, they vanish until we once again enter that space where we are free to walk around, observe, just be.  Even if that mindfulness only lasts ten seconds, it can totally derail an entire drawn-out argument.

Look for those spaces.  Try it out.  See if it's not so for yourself.  There is so much space in a second if you just look for it.

That just maybe how we find eternity when we're finally ready.  Right Now.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--54. The Void Between H.V. Eastman Lake and Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks

Palm and Orchard Near McFarland, Steve Brown 2022

Somehow, the next morning, it felt like the trip was over even though we still had Sequoia and King's Canyon National Parks on our itinerary, as well as a second swing through Death Valley National Park.  It may have been our decision to skip Yosemite due to weather that gave the trip its premature feel of finality.  Perhaps it was just because we were tired.  But, for me, I think, it was that my soul knew the real reason for the journey was for me to visit The National Steinbeck Center even though I hadn't put that on the itinerary.  It took a well-timed death of an alternator and the perfect geographical location for the garage to make that happen, but sometimes the soul needs what it needs, and the universe complies.  In the moment, it feels like the universe is blocking all of our plans, but in hindsight, we realize we really would have missed out had things gone our way.

That morning, looking at the sky, I felt that way.  We agreed that we both felt tired, satisfied, and ready to head home. 

However, I was still excited to see more of the Central Valley.  I wanted to see more of California's agricultural empire.  I didn't yet know what I was going to get out of revisiting Steinbeck, but as I knew how central the farm field is to most of his work, I figured it was important to get that feeling down even if the cropland I was observing was outside the Salinas Valley.  There is no story of California without its fields.  You can say the same for America, as well as most of the world.  Even deep within the concrete jungles of civilization, humanity is still deeply tied to soil, not only physically by still needing that nutrition, but also spiritually.  We have all farmed for so long we are all farmers whether or not we've even grown a tomato.  Drive by an orchard and just see if you can keep your heart strings from being tugged.  The trees don't even have to be in bloom or be glazed with low light and casting long shadows between the long rows.  Even midday there is a pull towards the apple, the orange, the pistachio orchard.    And the same is true of a field of cows.

We may be revolted by an enormous industrial dairy with cows dotted among the mountain tops of dung and thousands more roaming around the squishy valley below, a thin green haze obscuring everything under the bending, twisting and tortured green light, but that's because our ancestors never knew of such agriculture.  We are not tied to such monstrosities.   I assume laboratories that grow meat will also have no such pull.  But the orchard, the field, the average-sized barn and farmhouse--they will always whisper Remember me?  They speak of our parents or at least our grandparents and every generation going back thousands of years.  And our genes know that even if we don't. A farm says to a person:  This is you, this is your story, and this is how you carried on.  It can be no other way because for thousands and thousands of years there was no other way.  We are all farmers deep in our souls.  There is no way to truly find yourself without at some point finding your way back to the farm.  Up until the 1970s pretty much every suburban yard also had a large garden in the back.  Canning was still a common thing.  There is a reason even people in high rises have the urge to grow things in pots on their balcony.  We are just born to have our hands in the soil.

Steinbeck knew that.  And I knew he knew it.  So, this journey needed to be as much about the field as the sea.

And yet, it really wasn't.  I was done.  I'd lost my focus for the day, if not for the rest of the trip.  And a void then is a void now.  I really don't know how we got to the tall trees of Kings Canyon and Seqouia. I just know we did.  

What little I captured of that irrigated empire I caught further south, on the other side of the high, high hills and passes and mammoth trees, and then back down in hotter, much dryer places, like McFarland, USA.

I had planned to go back, to feel that dirt, to know that space.  Yet, every journey is left incomplete.  Even one's life.  Perhaps the best attitude is to absorb all that you can in the moment and don't judge yourself too harshly for all the amazing life you let slide right on by.  We are, by design, creatures pulled oh so easily from purpose.  If an unfocused life can't be appreciated, there can be no real appreciation of life.  I am distracted because I am.  That distraction, that milky white blur where there should be pulsating pigment and stone solid experience, are in the end, part of the journey.  If you ain't ever been lost, you also ain't never been found.  You ain't even is.   You ain't anything.  Incomplete is complete.  The journey just ends when it ends, that time being known only by someone greater than us.  And my belief is, then the journey just starts right back up.  The trick is to be in the moment more often than not, and quick to self-forgive for the moments when you're not.