Then it hit me that I have perhaps–likely–reached the end of the road with alcohol. It has proven a worthy friend, but this time may really be the end.
And then I felt a softness and a sadness. Alcohol is not just alcohol. It is the stand-in for, and symbol of, all the love I missed when I was growing up. To give up alcohol is to trigger a process of mourning, not just of this reliable friend, but of all that it replaced, or did a poor job of trying to replace. It was something, where there had been nothing. To give it up is to look farther, to see and to feel the nothing, and feel all that I lost, all that is gone, all that was, all that was not, and all that can never be again, never will be again. Everything I have to say good-bye to, in order to open up the present and the future.
And I feel mourning as a process of reassembly. It is dealing with pieces that have been broken. It is recognizing a whole that is no more, that never will be again, but that not all is lost. There are pieces. There are tools, and resources, fragments of a self, a coherent mind, a personality of sorts, and together all this can be put into a new form, resembling the old form, but hopefully wiser and larger.
And I feel that in our world coming across this need for mourning is a strange thing. We Americans, particularly, tend to view life as an endless series of positive experiences, of things we can buy, of improvement in our lives, of progress of all sorts. Progress, progress, progress. Everything is always moving forward, in a dynamic tide of optimistic gain for all, all the time.
But loss is a cessation. It is a halt. I was looking at the clock on a funeral home yesterday, and even though it was 6pm, it showed midnight (or noon). It is always midnight for the dead. But it can be midnight for the living too. We, too, can stop.
I am feeling increasingly like King Theodin in the Lord of the Rings, as he awakens from Sarumon’s spell. Some part of him knew he had lost his son, but could not feel the loss, could not mourn the loss. For my part, I am beginning to feel what I lost, and it is a strange thing. These things happened 30 years ago or more.
But how many of us are like this? I think of Tarkovsky’s postman, in the beginning of The Sacrifice, who tells his friend that he feels like he is just beginning to live, despite his advancing age.
Some flowers bloom in winter. It is sometimes the only way, the only time. And it is always good when what should be, is.
I do feel deep grief sometimes. I grieve for myself, and I grieve for all of us. Your problems are not my problems, and my path MUST go through healing myself before I can be the least reliable bit of good to anyone else.
We are all is such different places. Humankind is a patchwork of countless colors and hues. Some of us are dull and gray, or rust colored, some bright blue and orange and vermillion. And all of us are in larger or smaller processes of continual refinement, expansion, contraction, love, hate, anger, sadness, grief, malice, generosity, envy and love again. I can’t see it all. It is as large as the stars.
But we do need to break this spell of pretending that life is all sunshine and apples. Sometimes it is rotten. This is an inherent feature of it, and the more we all see this together, the deeper our bond, the deeper our possible sharing, and the more profound our possible joys and loves.
If you think about it, the notion that machines are better than life, because they are replicable in an exact way, can be disassembled and reassembled reliably, and never do anything surprising, is inherent to the positivistic mindself. If we are to make endless progress, then logically human beings, flawed as we are, must go.
But look at that idea. What is the point and purpose of “progress”? What do we really want, and is there anything shameful in wanting it?
Underlying this mania is sadness. Sadness that we must all go. Sadness that we are easily broken, easily damaged, weak, and profound in our ignorance. There is so much we do not know.
I feel and I think understand this sadness. I understand the drive towards both artificial intelligence–our replacement–and the Singularity, a world beyond death and stupidity.
These are deep feelings in our nation, in our people. They may drive us to the extinction of humankind.
What most people need is a deep seated and honest sense that things will be alright. A believe in the after-life helps with this immensely. That is why I have often made the very obvious point that this topic is of VAST scientific importance, and that immense resources should be devoted to it.
My mind boggles at certain points. This is why most spiritual traditions focus on the heart, on innate wisdom.
I hope one day to be able to say honestly that I love you and wish you well, no matter who you are. I am not there yet. I still live in a cold, confusing world, and I continue to try to be a little less of an asshole every day.