What Are We Here For?

Good day, friends, fellow creatures, crony inquirers into the realms of Truth and Beauty and Wow and Huh. This post is a little bit of a winding one, a rough brush at some of the questions I’m deepening into and seeing the world deepen into. Writing it has held some gems for me. In the best of circumstances, perhaps it will for you, too.

This week, I’ve found myself on a few occasions sitting in silence in the kitchen, mindful of the stillness underlying all forms, and also very aware of the kinetic energy rapidly unfolding all that beyond my awareness. If you’ve seen the movie Big Fish, you might remember the scene in which the protagonist, Edward Bloom, sets eyes on Sandra, the love of his life, for the first time. All movement stops and Edward, transfixed, navigates his way through the suspended hula-hoops and airborne popcorn of a colorful circus and towards her luminous face. “They say when you meet the love of your life, time stops, and that’s true,” narrates Edward’s voice-over. “What they don’t tell you is that once time starts again, it moves extra fast to catch up.” Time rapidly sucks Sandra and the bright lights from view, and Edward is left lonely and none-the-wiser about how to find his beloved.

I’m all for the romance of Edward’s inexorable draw towards Sandra, but in the frozenness of a circus, of all places, I wonder if I also might request a little bit more time to, say, look inside the tiger’s mouth, or get up close and personal examining in intricate detail the posture of all the people I usually only get to glance in passing. Obtain a little more insight into the ways they hold their muscles, the way they wear their suits. Touch a tender finger to a chest to better glean, “Oh, this is how you hurt.” Finally, a 360 degree study of a thing with no time constraints. The familiar paralysis at the recognition that anything one can possibly say is just a sliver of what one also sees - or, more hauntingly, is the entirety of what one does see, leaving much in the shadows - momentarily evaporated.

In the pause, the specters that it is easy to gloss over come forth for individual inventorying. Forgive the heavy handedness, but with prolonged inquiry we might even better be able to trace how phone addiction and species extinction (as just two examples), when investigated in depth and held up to the microscope, each snowball into constitutional failure. And what then, upon interfacing meaningfully with the facts, is our next move? What makes anyone do anything at all? What is it about an individual’s particular soul and signature and socialization that veers them in one direction over another?

All this to say, I’m interfacing with the reality that we’re only ever where we’re at while we’re there, until we’re propelled into the next movement. I’m witnessing my own dancing in the developmental passage from writing about authenticity, into what a meaningful application of authenticity means regarding participation in/up-leveling of systems that impact our collective. What’s the difference of fulfilling a perceived need vs. responding to a true need? How might the center of gravity shift from activity focused on being authentic to the authenticity of simply being? What’s the role of stillness, of simplicity in all this?

Bear with me here.

My favorite piece of performance art I’ve ever seen was, I imagine, not meant as such. I wish I remembered the details more precisely, but, to my memory, the gist is that every year at summer camp, without fail, the same person would take the stage at the closing camp-wide talent show and recite, not sing, but simply recite, in spoken word, the lyrics to Yusuf/Cat Steven’s “Moonshadow.”

Why, you ask, does this hit so hard, half a lifetime and then some later? I think my adolescent self grokked this performance as a powerful teaching about enacting what is ours to do, about committing to a bit. It was not, on the one hand, a good or skillful performance of artistic mastery. I couldn’t tell if the person was so vibrantly unaware to their flagrant bending of the rules of how a performance “should go” according to my own standards, or staunchly self-aware and owning the meta-context of this recitation with each projected syllable. Or maybe neither, maybe somewhere in-between, maybe something beyond what my own eyes towards performance or art or truth or gender can understand. On another hand, it was an excellent performance in its unflinching commitment to itself, to the exposure of standing tall and instrument-less and lacking in the musical talent I’d introjected was necessary to take a stand performing a song before a crowd. It set the tone for a way I’ve since gotten off on the genius of people being themselves, simply as they are. I have numerous teachers to thank for helping me truly feel in my bones how the tiniest and most subtly subversive of actions have the most important of functions in sustaining the universe in a balance that I want to hang in. This person is among those teachers. Their performance was a yearly hit of highness of watching an ethos I didn’t feel the confidence to perform outwardly, but which I related to deeply in my soul.

I am fortunate to spend time around a lot of smart people with big ideas and big words who are well studied in theory and systems change and are playing some part in bringing to bear the regenerative and relational systems up-level/overhaul/deepening that I care about. I find myself liminal to the liminal web, and it’s fun to play in the proverbial playground (think Chuck E. Cheese-type pits with balls made out of the oft-referred to mycelial matter, to really drive the point home) of words like “memetic” and “noospheric” and ”heterodox.” I watch myself gain in knowledge and know-how of certain (valuable!) theories and practices with the intention of bringing to bear a more connected, equitable life on this planet. There are times, though, when I stumble upon a pocket of stillness and wonder, in a time of so much proliferation of complexity and ideas: is it not the best medicine for me, at least, to, I don’t know, cut the fluff?

I want to be around more people who deliver Moonshadow. Who stand visible and without accouterment and walk through the circus without pretense. I want to be among them.

What’s my version of Moonshadow? Yours? In some way, I’m starting to comprehend that Moonshadow is really about turning up to what the truest need is of the moment. That might be hands in the garden, or dancing, or protesting, or subtle embodiments that plant a stake in fertile soil, even if no one else can see it. I feel like every post I write these days is just some slightly different experimental rhythm of banging on the dinner pot in the street, seeing what calls myself home. I’m swirling around some kind of theme and voice that is trying to find its way to a solid offering at the table from which I and others might reliably eat, might reliably apprehend a current of truth that doesn’t require peeling back layers to get at some kind of nourishment.

The penultimate scene of Big Fish features a dying Edward Bloom carried by his son down and into the river, cheered into the next great mystery by everyone Edward has ever known and loved. His physical body lies hooked up to a monitor in a hospital, while his etheric and imaginal body submerges in clear water penetrated by sunlight. This is not an escape from the stark realities of this life, but a living into the dreaming. It is a congruence with Edward’s own essence, until the very last.

Bless that person who recited Moonshadow, and whatever they’re up to in their lives. Bless the tales that amplify our dreaming, our creativity, our ability to turn every moment into a piece of art or story or teaching to be passed down. Bless this mess. Bless the generativity of complexity, and the grace of stillness in which all forms breathe.

I shall now bow myself off-stage. Thanks for playing.

Hannah