Every once in a while I reread something I wrote a while ago - last month, last year, last decade. Sure, it's an ego trip. I have more than enough frequent flyer miles for those trips. But it's also a journey back into deeper spiritual realm I can take no credit or responsibility for.
You may have experienced this too - rereading something from long ago and saying, "Did I really write that?" Sometimes you say it because what you wrote was good or clever. Sometimes you say it because what you wrote had a meaning beyond your original intentions. It's as though the piece had been written by somebody else. It's as though some other hand had been guiding your hand, and you couldn't see the deeper meanings until you went back later for another look. When you were writing the piece originally, you could see only your own thoughts.
Sometimes this will happen if someone comments on something I've written: "I really like the way you expressed X." My response is often "X? What X?" I had had something entirely different in mind. But the new view deepens my understanding of myself and of the impulse that put the words down in the first place.
I encourage you to look at that old letter, that old story, that old poem of yours, and see if you recognize the author. I you don't, maybe it was a deeper, spiritual Self that was trying to tell you something but realized you weren't ready yet.
Upside-Down and Backwards
We're all looking at life in a fun-house mirror, except for the fun part. There's so much that we've got backwards.
Take consciousness. We all think that we're "conscious" during our waking hours of ordinary life. But what is conscious about the largely automatic things we do and think? We get up, drink coffee, go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch a little TV, go to bed. We may be dimly monitoring the process, but does it rate as consciousness? It takes a flash of true consciousness - in deep meditation, in the presence of great beauty, in the moments after a brush with death - to show us that we're asleep most of the time.
Success is good, failure is bad. Right. Nobody I can think of has ever achieved any psychological or spiritual growth through success. Jesus was a minor Jewish rabble-rouser who was murdered for his efforts. Siddhartha was a rich prince who became an ascetic monk and teacher but couldn't "find" enlightenment until he gave up and sat under a tree for a week doing nothing - and is known today as the Buddha.
Even secular success is built on a foundation of failure. Most of Thomas Edison's experiments failed. The Wright brothers damn near killed themselves learning to fly. You want to be successful like, say, Ken Lay? George Bush (either one)? Please.
Everything is understood as distinctions - opposites or contrasts. There's success and failure, as above, but also good and evil, truth and falsehood, life and death, with maybe shades of distinction in between. Here's where even upside-down and backwards are upside-down and backwards.
Take the Fall of Man. The serpent offered Adam and Eve fruit - not from the tree of evil, or from the tree of good and evil, but from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve could stayed forever in paradise - perfect union with The One - had they not discovered a way to make a distinction, to divide and fracture The One.
Maybe Adam and Eve are the mythological source of the misery of distinction: mine versus yours, us versus them, love versus hate, rich versus poor, white versus black, young versus old, male versus female, and on and on.
All of these differences - and more - are real. But what if some magic, some divinity, some Reality, could erase the distinctions - could change "versus" everywhere to "and"? A few humans among us who've managed this erasure are called enlightened. A few are called saints. But that's just another distinction. The enlightened ones, I think, are simply failures who ultimately surrendered to a reality in which the difference are real but the distinctions simply don't matter. We may be different from those people. But the distinction between us and them may be only because we haven't failed yet.
Men are hierarchical, competitive loners; and women are cooperative and into relationships, right? That's at least the traditional definition I've heard.
But have you ever watched a crew of men building something? This summer and fall I've been watching a road crew dig up and re-lay a major sewer system. Each man seems to have a role, and the coordination and teamwork are inspiring to watch. I saw another crew build a new dock on the river during the summer. Same thing on a smaller scale: five or six men carrying lumber, measuring, holding boards in place while someone else nailed them down.
I can't see these kinds of things and conclude that men aren't into cooperation and relationships. They simply express them differently.
It's a matter of bringing a positive view of men into the definition.
We also might want to have a second look at how we define some other things, like men's nurturing, feelings, communication, and commitment. If we see only the traditional definitions of how we do these things, we come up short. I think we should know better.
If we nurture - by providing for our families, for instance, or maintaining our families' homes - are we lacking as nurturing men - or are we nurturing in a different but valuable way? (If we do the cooking, care for a sick pet, sit all night at the bedside of a sick child, are we showing our feminine side - or just being nurturing men?)
If we have deep feelings but act on them and don't talk about them, are we lacking in emotion - or just being contained?
If we communicate through body language, a few well-chosen words, and an occasional grunt, are we uncommunicative - or just being brilliantly concise and efficient?
If we keep our promises, show up at work every day, and use the money we earn to pay the family's mortgage and groceries, are we afraid of commitment - or showing commitment in a different way?
You can probably think of more and better examples and definitions. We don't have to accept traditional notions about men. We can start our own traditions.
A final thought: Let's not be shy about celebrating our good qualities on our own terms. I'd be willing to bet that women prefer men in this order: 1. assertive and good, 2. assertive and bad, 3. wishy-washy (dead last!). I really am not advocating the second option. Just remember the words to the old song: Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, and don't mess with Mister In-Between.
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