I watched the movie Hostiles a few nights ago, a western about the relationship between settlers and Indians. It was excellent but not uplifting. Man’s inhumanity to man. The only hopeful aspect was about how individually we can do the right thing even if as a race we are horribly wrong.
I couldn’t go straight to bed after that but I made the mistake of going on Facebook. There was a video of an ex-Amazon employee talking about how it’s like slavery. They penalize you for bathroom breaks and keep wages low so you buy stuff from them because they’re inexpensive and that’s all the employees can afford. Maybe it’s not true but I didn’t need to see that video to know that big corporations treat most employees like machinery instead of humans. Then another post was a letter from a local nurses’ union about the shit their employer was trying to pull during their strike. My mood was not improved.
That movie was about horrible shit in the 1800s. I was thinking how things are somewhat better now. These two women in the movie were alone by a creek washing dishes and some guys came across them and just took them to rape them. We are more orderly and less in danger of being attacked or killed now. But then those two Facebook stories…the powerful are still grinding the rest of us under their heels and holding onto their money and power with a ruthlessness and immorality that is shocking.
What can any of us do other than just trying to do the best we can with our lives? And then I think that if everyone did live in a thoughtful, caring way then the big stuff would take care of itself but everyone doesn’t and then I’m back to the beginning of the circle again.
It really has always been like this. Certainly there are improvements in little ways but the big picture is the same. The powerful have always been interested in consolidating and adding to their power at the expense of others. Humans as a collective are short-sighted, selfish, and can’t use self control in the present to make the future better for everyone.
It may feel like things are bad now. But are they really any worse than any other time? We are more aware, more connected and have more information sources. We can see the misery that’s happening and bound to happen more clearly. I’m not sure that there’s a way to do the math to add up how our lives have improved over time and subtract the ways things have gotten worse and come up with some answer about whether humans are better off or worse off. Whether we’re destroying this place and each other any more than we ever have.
That’s the backdrop, the world in which we find ourselves. Maybe humans are worse than ever or maybe not but either way there’s plenty going on to be concerned about. But there’s plenty of more personal worries to keep us on edge too. In middle age there are so many things to feel a little anxious about. The everyday concerns about money, health, preparing for our future, raising our kids. We have all those personal concerns in the foreground and in the background we have the big stuff.
Back to living in the moment. If we are living in the moment then we are living. If we are not living in the moment then we are worrying. The answer is to be in the moment; to focus on our actions and to keep a clear picture in our minds of who we are and who we want to become. To keep true to that quest to be that person. To live these moments with our kids now and not worry about the what ifs around the corner. Yes be aware and when possible try to steer the course but know that it’s a really big thing and we are really small. We can care and try but need not worry. Just live. Be present in the moment. Be there for your people.
My current struggle is the direction of my gaze. All those big picture humanity sucks worries are distracting enough plus more immediately in my mind are the personal worries. Lots of distractions to keep me from being present in this moment. For some years I was really living in the moment pretty well. That was mostly fun. But I also didn’t have many immediate personal worries. Eventually I needed to shift my gaze forward. I got more serious about making and implementing a plan for the future. This was necessary because I didn’t want to end up living on a sidewalk. But it’s been hard to shift my gaze back to the moment I’m in. And over the past few years there’s been a number of illnesses, injuries and deaths. My gaze is now often in the past reliving sadnesses. Too often I’m looking back or looking forward. Not enough of my attention is focused on my present moment. Is this the challenge of middle age? Being old enough to have a pile of sorrows to haunt us, to get stuck reliving these sorrows or to get stuck in memories of easier times while at the same time knowing that the future will unfold before us whether we’re ready or not. We know we need to have a plan to continue to survive. In middle age we have enough past memories to get stuck in but we’ve also lived enough to know we must look to the future. The past and the future turn my gaze in opposite directions and pull my attention away from the only thing that’s real: the moment I’m actually living in.
These things pulling us backward and forward away from this moment are not going away. If we could learn to use our memories not as a way to get stuck but as a tool to appreciate what is happening now… Learn to peak at the future to keep our plans on track without keeping our eyes on the horizon. The plan for the future is just a means, it’s not an end. We must find a way to be grounded and shake off the noise and distractions and not get swallowed up by the big worries or the personal concerns. The big worries don’t change by worrying about them but they might change if we do our best to be decent in our individual lives. We can only control our own actions and try to be appreciative of what we have now.
Being able to let go and accept that so much of this is out of our control is a way to get there. We are aware of all these big issues but we are not in control of the outcomes. Being aware and doing what we think we should and can do to influence these outcomes is one thing. But worrying and caring about how it all plays out is different. We can be aware and try without the worrying. We can exchange the worrying with focusing on our present moment. To be aware and to put forth effort is not the same as being attached to something we can not actually control.
It’s difficult to appreciate what we have in the present when we are reliving the past or worrying about the future. If we really could accept the mess we’re in would we be able to calmly stand in the middle of this chaos and smile?
Dude, enjoyed reading this and encourage you to continue to write because you are right – the present moment is the be all, end all, there is nothing else, it all happens in the present. Our task is to lose all the shit that’s been piled on us thru living in a materialistic, violent, selfish culture. I appreciate your thoughtful musing, I think you would really enjoy the zen group I have been involved with for the past 4 yrs. Thanks for sharing your inner world, peace – Sonny