Technology to Get to the Primitive

“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity”― John Muir

I always feel particular close to nature when my wife and I hike the Pictured Rocks Lake shore, an annual endeavor of ours each summer. Even though this wilderness area has vast stretches of primitive trails, it still takes technology to get close to the trail heads we hike. Technology such as roads and the cars that travel them. However, even smaller technology plays a closer role on the primitive parts of the trail during hiking. Water bottles take the place of an animal skin to carry our water. Yet an animal skin water container was to primitive man advanced water-carrying technology, necessary to survival between water sources.

Being alone is less important to me on the trail for me to experience the wilderness, than is having silence. My wife and I are of similar nature and appreciate silent moments filled with wilderness sounds. We have stood and listened to what surrounds us: birds, bubbling brooks, waves, storms, and whispering trees. We find joy in silent, observant, and appreciation of what surrounds us on a trail snaking through the wilderness. How my body feels on the trail—fatigue, invigorated, refreshed. However, even the hiking shoes that are technology over our ancestor’s bare-footedness leave the occasional blister or hot spot on my feet.

Perhaps if I never had shoes I would not miss them on the trail. That is how the human mind seems to work at times, seeks solutions to what it sees as a problem. How to make it easier to hike a trail? Invent footwear.

Letting the "Real Work" Begin

"It may be when we no longer know what we have to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we know which way to go, we have begun our real journey." -- Wendell Berry

It takes existential skills to thrive in the present. People with existential learning styles tend to be highly introspective and find themselves deeply attuned and have a profound connectiveness to their inner selves. Connected internally in just this way, I have begun to have a firm understanding of my personal beliefs, preferences, and convictions.

For most of my life, I followed a safe path, but when I look back I was surrounded by uncertainty, avoided the unfamiliar, traded the unknown for what I knew. I did this to somehow safeguard what I felt was a reasonable attempt to failure-proof my life. I look back and I see what I was doing at the time and that it never occurred to me to go ahead and discard stability and try to understand the impossible, the unrealistic, or the unattainable.

I believe I have reached a point where I need to be doing the "real work" as Berry so well illustrates with the previous quote. I have begun to learn to thrive with the ambiguity I encounter as a part of my everyday life. "Learn to" being the operative part of the previous sentence, for it is an ongoing exercise to reach a comfortable existence with the beast that is ambiguity.

Creativity as Uncertainty

"Keeping your mind open in the face of uncertainty is the single most powerful secret of unleashing your creative potential." ─ Michael Gelb

Keeping your mind open when you are uncertain sounds simple enough, but for me, it seems to be the opposite of what is my brains default setting. Most of the time there seems to be a set idea or viewpoint that my brain tries to paint the answer to the problem with, regardless if it is a problem that requires a broad brush, a fine brush, or a big sloppy roller for that matter. 

People are often expected to be able to quickly respond to situations, and there is where the concept of an open mind seems most difficult. A trained, disciplined mind─say a mind like a soldier would possess─needs to react instantly at times, ignoring the uncertainty that would surround it. The "open mind" needs time to take in more than a simple, quick viewpoint. Hyman G. Rickover, a U.S. Navy Adm. who was a rare military man of conscience said the following: "Sit down before a fact with an open mind. Be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and whatever abyss Nature leads or you learn nothing. Don't push out figures when facts are going in the opposite direction."

Seems like wise advice in these hurried times, especially if we want to reach the creativity that we are offered with our lives.

Worry Spoils the Jolly Rancher

"Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength." -- Corrie ten Boom

This thought of ten Boom's seems relevant to me as all around me there seems to be contained in every molecule some form of worry.  Worry about transitions that are occurring, worry about what the future holds, worry about one's health and well-being. Worry. And all that worry truly saps you of your strength, the strength that is needed to keep moving forward, even if that forward movement can be headed to unknown sorrows hiding in tomorrows shadows.

The unknown sorrows of tomorrow that we envision may actually be pleasant surprises, filled with joy and possibilities. Unless you have the ability to foresee the future you could never know what lies ahead. I try to take a measure of what tomorrow was in reality by reflecting on my remembered history of how things turned out, and in most of the cases, life has surprised me in a positive way. Though I personally believe life is pretty equally balanced between "good" and "bad" occurrences during a lifetime, having them both is the only way to appreciate and enjoy this gift of life.

Misfortunes along our path could be the only road to personal salvation. I know that I learned a lot from troubles. No doubt if you truly live and are wholly engaged in this world, you will be part of and witness that people hurt, they will hurt you, bring you incredible joy, die, and be born. We will have bad hair days and good hair days. One day we get a perfect dental check-up and a few days later celebrating it you pull off a crown on a Jolly Rancher. That Jolly Rancher was giving you green apple, mouthwatering joy and then "boom," dental disaster.

You just never can anticipate what is around the bend. You don't see disaster as it approaches or celebratory events that surprise us. Until you arrive at those moments. And to refer back to ten Boom's quote, had you been worrying in anticipation of what might happen, would you have the strength to overcome or enjoy the arrived tomorrow?

I try to tell myself that worry would be like eating that Jolly Rancher candy for fear that I might dislodge a dental crown. As you were eating it, you could not appreciate that sweet, sticky joy of the moment.

And I remind myself all the times I enjoy that candy without disaster.

Take a Chance

"I will study and get ready, and perhaps my chance will come."─Abraham Lincoln

Chance. When I think of chance as a part of human actions it applies poignantly when someone trusts someone else or their ability on purely intuitive assumptions. "I'll take a chance on you" or "there is a good chance your idea will work out" would be two statements that could illustrate actions based on "chance."

Recognizing the "chance" factor is crucial in developing powerful personal characteristics such as self-esteem or personal confidence. The old adage that you can give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day but if you teach a man to fish you will feed him for a lifetime" is in essence, taking a chance. Taking a chance that the person will take what you are offering and use it for betterment. Taking what you offer and planting it's seed to grow into a harvest that can be appreciated down the road.

Chance also goes hand-in-hand with trust. A level of trust needs to often be established before a chance will be granted. We tend to evaluate and judge who will be granted our "chances based on appearances, dispositions,  or other frankly personal preferences. I often think about how it seems to me that it is much easier to trust someone who is similar to me in ways that are applicable to the circumstances. They work in the same area, they have similar economic backgrounds, share my political or religious beliefs. A level of trust needs to be assumed to ask another to take a chance on "Me" as well. Haven't we all experienced those moments where something was offered to us but we were somehow unsure of the intentions behind the offer?

I am glad that people took a chance with me. I think of those moments before I make my decisions about people these days. It makes it far easier to exercise a generous and loving support of my fellow human. Maybe someday you or I will give a chance to someone as great as Mr. Lincoln. I like to think of that as a true possibility.

Impossibilities Lost

"Practice only impossibilities."
--John Lily

Impossibilities. How could you practice such things? They must be closely related to imagination. They are those things, those wonders, that lie outside the borders of what we know and understand.

There seems to be fewer of them--those things that are in the category of impossibilities--as we humans become more and more civilized and inoculated against wonder of any sort. Human beings have seem to have grown up, so to speak. We have went from living around a fire burning at the mouth of a cave surrounded by mysteries of the surrounding terrain, to what living is now. The noises, sights, and textures of being alive have become predictable and have been explained to us by wise and foolish men. Jean de La Fontaine summed up how mysteries are vanquished from the human experience when he explained that "Man is so made that when anything fires his soul, impossibilities vanish. We sail oceans, travel at the speed of sound, dive in the deepest ocean, and travel across the vacuum of space. All things that would have seemed miraculous acts to the ancients. Especially those that sat around the ancient fires. Even fire to them of the past was an impossibility made possible. Trying to understand all this is what makes my weak soul stronger somehow.

But there remains many, many tiny fragments of wonder--and I would put forth impossibilities--that when you look closely at this world that we exist in, you can still find them. I was cleaning out a birdhouse and I came across what I thought was a bumble bee and upon closer examination I discovered it was a moth. It seems impossible to understand the evolutionary marvels of nature. Creation is a delightfully wondrous place. I am trying very hard to hold back trying to explain to myself everything and just to delight in it.

Below is the hummingbird moth. My lovely bride captured it magnificently on her phone's camera.
 

Words Written and the Ash that Remains

"If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry."--Emily Dickinson

Someone like Miss Emily Dickinson writing about how brutal writing can seem is profound. She was able to write the most beautiful verse that has been imagined and to think that it made her feel that way makes me wonder why I try to write. Writing does feel that way to me at times. But then other things in my life can make it seem like the top of my head was taken off. Not only has it been taken off but it has been muddled with by meanness, touched by kindness, blessed with friendship, filled with surprise and wonder, stirred with desire, mixed with confusion and other universal tribulations that are part of the human experience. But I seem to always find laughter and love that repairs the soul that resides in my skull.

Leonard Cohen, one of my favorite singer/songwriters said "Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash." Leonard is "write" about poetry, and art of any type that has that certain daemon inside of us wishing to express itself to others. A daemon that wants to burn our artistry to a beautiful ash. And I know also that what I write is just graffiti of my muddled mind, and writing it is a way to free my thoughts. Send them into the ether to dissolve among the other verses of the many, many other poets.

My poem for today:

I am fermenting

My mind, my spirit,

To try to hear the

Difference between

The sounds of

Trees and stones.