I have an aunt, one of whose many talents includes the uncanny ability to glance at a field of clover, even while standing upright, and pluck a four leaf one every single time. As a child, this feat always astounded me, and I would sit in the grass and sort carefully through all the ordinary clover, hoping to find a lucky one of my own. I never did, and in frustration I would beg her to tell me the secret. Without fail, her response was always to look only at those with four leaves. Although this sounds fantastic, like a slight of hand designed to impress a child but discernible to any adult, even now it is a riddle of the eye I cannot solve. What’s more, several years ago, when I was very ill, this aunt sent me one of these four leaf clovers for luck, and I keep it framed by my bed to this day.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this idea, this looking only at the four leaves, along with this post from my soul sister and fellow blogger. In particular, I have been thinking about the reference to the scene in Star Wars where Yoda explains to Luke how to use the force. Do, or do not. There is no try. Although it seems to me now that these ideas are the same, for years, such instructions seemed equally incomprehensible. How can I not see the three leaved ones? What do you mean, there is no try?
And yet now, I think there really is no other way. You either see the four leaves or you don’t. You either do or do not. The only way to have the life you want is to live it- without compromise, or stopping at the three leaf options. You are who you want to be or you are not. There is no other answer.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Thursday, August 7, 2008
On Compulsion and Science
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the dichotomy between instinct and science. When I say instinct, I don’t mean the kind of genetic breading that causes all animals to eat and breath, or even the kind that causes my well-bread hunting spaniel to stand at shaking attention and point whenever he sees a pigeon. Rather, I am referring instead to the mysteries that cause us to know things, deep in the core of ourselves, even though they may appear to defy everyday logic and seeming possibility. The kinds of things that tell us that if we do A, B will happen in the future- even though A and B seem unrelated, or even that B seems completely impossible, or even undefined.
To give you an example of what I mean, I recently went on a volunteer trip to Zambia. To say that it was the sort of thing I had wanted to do for a long time is sort of an understatement. More accurately, it was something I felt compelled to do. It was a compulsion in the deepest sense, a virtual propulsion forward toward the moment I would set foot on the airplane, where a mystery force in the marrow of my bones told me something both unknown and right would begin.
To understand this, it probably makes senses to explain that this trip came for me at the end of the hardest two years of my life. Without going into detail, the two years previous can only be described as an emotional free fall of grief that began with a hasty move across country and spiraled into the end of the decade-long relationship I had with my spouse. I had been in the desert, a hinterland of pain that left me, at times, feeling as though I was hurtling fast toward a landscape I could neither see, nor identify. I had to find a parachute, and for reasons I cannot fully explain, when I finally did, and the sunrise began to illuminate the ground, that soil, the earth I could finally see coming up beneath my feet was somewhere in Africa. I don’t know why this was the case. It simply was, and moreover, once the vision was revealed to me, it seemed that it was one I had known all along. Looking backwards I could see the hints and the nudges that had been telling me for years to go to Africa, waiting only for me to read them, listen, and act.
So it had to be. It was predetermined to be this trip. This country. This moment. And I was right. There were things that happened on this trip, people I met and things I experienced, which have proven already to be the beginning of new things that feel right. I don’t know all of what is next, but I can see the outline now, I can make out the pathway under the stars, and I am more certain than ever that going marked a beginning of things that will shape my forward going life in important ways.
And yet, that isn’t the end of the story, because I read all that over and I think, in some ways, I sound like a crazy person, a new age meshuge who probably spent a few too many years in California, going soft. After all, destiny, fatalism, and pre-ordination are about as far from who I have always been as the moon is from New York City. I am not religious, and I am not accustomed to thinking of myself as even spiritual. I am analytical and logical, and I believe wholeheartedly in science. I am a social scientist by and within training. I was raised by a scientist to be both skeptical and questioning. The things I know, and the places I put my faith can be seen through the methods of repeated observation, and replication. I believe in good data and better methodology. I believe in answers that I can see. I believe in Darwin and a definition of the word “theory” that is rooted in testable hypotheses, and not the imaginings of charlatans, preaching about geologic timelines that have anything less than at least six zeros. That is who I am. Or is it?
And so I come to the question of the day. How do I reconcile who I have always been with this new kind of data that has come to me from the deep inner workings of my heart? This new kind of knowledge that I cannot deny to be TRUTH in a way I feel is absolute and solid, but that I also cannot touch and examine and repeat?
I think the answer is to accept that there is a region of human experience that is beyond science, that is un-measurable, even if it is not unknowable. To see that this is the missing link, the thing that slips beyond our grasp, out past the world of language, and into the supernova. This is not religion, but it is God, Faith, The Universe, and Namaste- all rolled into one. And the one thing I’ve learned is that the only way to get there is to let go and feel it below the level of the eyeballs. Silence the voices above the ears shouting, explaining, and analyzing. Feel it in the toes and the cells of the nails. Lean forward and tumble. If you do, even if you don’t know where or how, the parachute will open, and your feet will point safely toward land that is somewhere.
To give you an example of what I mean, I recently went on a volunteer trip to Zambia. To say that it was the sort of thing I had wanted to do for a long time is sort of an understatement. More accurately, it was something I felt compelled to do. It was a compulsion in the deepest sense, a virtual propulsion forward toward the moment I would set foot on the airplane, where a mystery force in the marrow of my bones told me something both unknown and right would begin.
To understand this, it probably makes senses to explain that this trip came for me at the end of the hardest two years of my life. Without going into detail, the two years previous can only be described as an emotional free fall of grief that began with a hasty move across country and spiraled into the end of the decade-long relationship I had with my spouse. I had been in the desert, a hinterland of pain that left me, at times, feeling as though I was hurtling fast toward a landscape I could neither see, nor identify. I had to find a parachute, and for reasons I cannot fully explain, when I finally did, and the sunrise began to illuminate the ground, that soil, the earth I could finally see coming up beneath my feet was somewhere in Africa. I don’t know why this was the case. It simply was, and moreover, once the vision was revealed to me, it seemed that it was one I had known all along. Looking backwards I could see the hints and the nudges that had been telling me for years to go to Africa, waiting only for me to read them, listen, and act.
So it had to be. It was predetermined to be this trip. This country. This moment. And I was right. There were things that happened on this trip, people I met and things I experienced, which have proven already to be the beginning of new things that feel right. I don’t know all of what is next, but I can see the outline now, I can make out the pathway under the stars, and I am more certain than ever that going marked a beginning of things that will shape my forward going life in important ways.
And yet, that isn’t the end of the story, because I read all that over and I think, in some ways, I sound like a crazy person, a new age meshuge who probably spent a few too many years in California, going soft. After all, destiny, fatalism, and pre-ordination are about as far from who I have always been as the moon is from New York City. I am not religious, and I am not accustomed to thinking of myself as even spiritual. I am analytical and logical, and I believe wholeheartedly in science. I am a social scientist by and within training. I was raised by a scientist to be both skeptical and questioning. The things I know, and the places I put my faith can be seen through the methods of repeated observation, and replication. I believe in good data and better methodology. I believe in answers that I can see. I believe in Darwin and a definition of the word “theory” that is rooted in testable hypotheses, and not the imaginings of charlatans, preaching about geologic timelines that have anything less than at least six zeros. That is who I am. Or is it?
And so I come to the question of the day. How do I reconcile who I have always been with this new kind of data that has come to me from the deep inner workings of my heart? This new kind of knowledge that I cannot deny to be TRUTH in a way I feel is absolute and solid, but that I also cannot touch and examine and repeat?
I think the answer is to accept that there is a region of human experience that is beyond science, that is un-measurable, even if it is not unknowable. To see that this is the missing link, the thing that slips beyond our grasp, out past the world of language, and into the supernova. This is not religion, but it is God, Faith, The Universe, and Namaste- all rolled into one. And the one thing I’ve learned is that the only way to get there is to let go and feel it below the level of the eyeballs. Silence the voices above the ears shouting, explaining, and analyzing. Feel it in the toes and the cells of the nails. Lean forward and tumble. If you do, even if you don’t know where or how, the parachute will open, and your feet will point safely toward land that is somewhere.
This is my brain....ON
Although this is the inaugural post, the beginning of this blog is actually the result of a culmination of events that have led me to want to incorporate some kind of public writing in my life.
When I was younger, I was the kind of girl who was always writing in some way. In a journal, poems, and for the student newspaper in college. For a long time, I wanted to be a writer, but once I graduated college, the idea that I had no other talent or skills quietly bothered me. I lacked ego, and instead wondered, "Who was I?" and "Who cared what I thought?". I was young, and humble enough to think that that fact alone was not enough to recommend me. I also did not want to be a part of what I saw as the burgeoning memoir genre, full of works by authors who seemed to have little to offer, except a naval-gazing story of their own life. The world, the people, and the issues that comprise it were always as interesting and important to me as my own life, and I just didn’t feel qualified to write, or to make commentary, without some other verifiable store of knowledge, some objective level of expertise that could be measured with a scale other than my own perception. So I set out to do more, and to know more than the contents of my own head.
That desire led me to a socially and intellectually conscious career, and ultimately to doctoral level study, where I am now. I am still not an expert in my field, but I can say with confidence that I have a solid base of knowledge in an area that is of the world, and beyond the space between my own ears.
What I didn’t bet on was that the process of learning, seeing and ultimately knowing would completely shut down the written word for me. For more than a decade, I wrote next to nothing professional, personal, or otherwise. There are literally gaps of years in the journal I kept from August 1996 to July 2008. But by not indulging in the process of writing, I have realized that I was also living partially obscured from myself, because the mirror of the written word was missing.
Writing has always been the way I make sense of the world. For me it is truth serum, and the way I know my own heart. And although it was necessary to take the time to do all that evidence gathering in my study of life and subjects within, I have found that the time has come for me to stop researching, and start vetting. Start sorting and organizing the data of what I have seen, and what I have come to know. In writing. In solid, well-formed words on a page.
But why publicly? Why blog? I guess because although writing is an intensely personally act, for me it is also a craft. An art in which the pleasure of crystallization and refinement come only with the polish of creative license and the tantalization of an audience, real or imagined. Only then does it move from a mind purge or a rant to a performance- something of me, and created by me, and yet separate and apart from me at the same time.
So I’ve come to this blog. To write. To sense make. To know. And maybe even to be read. Besides, I have to stop emailing my friends beautifully written treatises and guest-posts for their blogs. Although it gives me pleasure to write them, I think it only makes people feel guilty for not responding in kind, when what I really want is an outlet, and a dress rehearsal. But now I find that it is time for my own opening night, to put my own performance piece on stage.
Lights! Camera! This is my brain….ON.
When I was younger, I was the kind of girl who was always writing in some way. In a journal, poems, and for the student newspaper in college. For a long time, I wanted to be a writer, but once I graduated college, the idea that I had no other talent or skills quietly bothered me. I lacked ego, and instead wondered, "Who was I?" and "Who cared what I thought?". I was young, and humble enough to think that that fact alone was not enough to recommend me. I also did not want to be a part of what I saw as the burgeoning memoir genre, full of works by authors who seemed to have little to offer, except a naval-gazing story of their own life. The world, the people, and the issues that comprise it were always as interesting and important to me as my own life, and I just didn’t feel qualified to write, or to make commentary, without some other verifiable store of knowledge, some objective level of expertise that could be measured with a scale other than my own perception. So I set out to do more, and to know more than the contents of my own head.
That desire led me to a socially and intellectually conscious career, and ultimately to doctoral level study, where I am now. I am still not an expert in my field, but I can say with confidence that I have a solid base of knowledge in an area that is of the world, and beyond the space between my own ears.
What I didn’t bet on was that the process of learning, seeing and ultimately knowing would completely shut down the written word for me. For more than a decade, I wrote next to nothing professional, personal, or otherwise. There are literally gaps of years in the journal I kept from August 1996 to July 2008. But by not indulging in the process of writing, I have realized that I was also living partially obscured from myself, because the mirror of the written word was missing.
Writing has always been the way I make sense of the world. For me it is truth serum, and the way I know my own heart. And although it was necessary to take the time to do all that evidence gathering in my study of life and subjects within, I have found that the time has come for me to stop researching, and start vetting. Start sorting and organizing the data of what I have seen, and what I have come to know. In writing. In solid, well-formed words on a page.
But why publicly? Why blog? I guess because although writing is an intensely personally act, for me it is also a craft. An art in which the pleasure of crystallization and refinement come only with the polish of creative license and the tantalization of an audience, real or imagined. Only then does it move from a mind purge or a rant to a performance- something of me, and created by me, and yet separate and apart from me at the same time.
So I’ve come to this blog. To write. To sense make. To know. And maybe even to be read. Besides, I have to stop emailing my friends beautifully written treatises and guest-posts for their blogs. Although it gives me pleasure to write them, I think it only makes people feel guilty for not responding in kind, when what I really want is an outlet, and a dress rehearsal. But now I find that it is time for my own opening night, to put my own performance piece on stage.
Lights! Camera! This is my brain….ON.
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