Attached and Detached

「非寧靜無以致遠; 非淡泊無以明志」 

"Without serenity, there is no way to get far.  Without detachment, there is no way to clarify the will."

From Zhuge Liang’s advice to his son by letter

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Dear Alex,

I have had enough.  Dense in calories, comfort and complaints.  Heavier in ego, ingratitude.  A mouse mighty in gutter, obese with greed, famished for a slab of higher calling.  The New Year calls for change.  

Among the many C-dramas viewed, I seem to remember most about Zhuge Liang, the military strategist and advisor nicknamed Kong Ming in the era of Three Kingdoms 220-280 AD.  My reasons are as plain as my intellect.  He had it all - fans, fame, flame.

Fans and fame.  Still not enough to qualify his merits.  He was more than a chrome horse on the winning brigade or a mogul in discerning.  There was more!  He understood people, decoded their intent, seized the soul in submission, pinpointed my innards.

Kong Ming had flaming flamboyance. There would not be enough writing space here to imagine.  His poetry on battlefield was ablaze with surprise.  He spurred movement towards creative change, sparked the engine to dream.  My father, my sun.  I slid into his image.

Out in image came the words of Rowan Williams from his book, “Open to Judgement” for me tonight:

“I do not know myself.  I don’t know what I want or where I am.  I thought I knew the paths I wanted, but look where it’s led.  Here in the unforgiving hour before dawn, I watch my desires stripped down to the one great longing to stay alive the way I am, to hold on to me...

And is that all?  Did I deceive myself when I thought I wanted something more... I can’t believe that was just illusion... how I would clutch my life, my ego... If I do not know him, I do not understand myself. I shall not know who I am until I know whether I dare be with him or not.”

Much of Kong Ming’s narrative have been historically deluded.  I don’t know the man.  I live in a hologram.

No stretch of serene or disciplined living can speak enough of self-deceiving aspirations.  No matter how high I rise, I am bound for a downfall or more.  They will eventually come one fine day - the pink slip, the prognosis, the prodromal signs of stroke, poison from the hold-on-to-me syndrome.  Merely maddening.  Blood coagulated.  Tumor in throttle.  Their coming cannot be barred by ambition or will.  

At the epicenter of universal and private chaos, I am entitled to resolutely, astonishingly nothing.  Whatever combustion remains in my life halved or less, the preservation of self will in turn consume me, gobble up effort, desire, talent, drama as whole grain desecrated in wholeness.  

The heart needs meddling of the gravest kind, in epileptic and epic agony, through thornbushes and scathing doubts, denying self in blisters and bites from subzero temp, to muddle and wobble in silence and scream through real change in this New Year that recedes instantaneously to an obsolete past deleting whatever more or less than Kong Ming.

Yours, Kate 

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Dear Kate,

Everyday I walk about an hour and a half to work.  I do plan to do that until I can walk no more.

People asked me, "But...what do you do with yourself?"

That's an interesting question.  If we allow its assumptions to speak to us we shall see it's because we are interesting beings living in an interesting time with interesting ways to make sense of our own being.

The question was not "Were you not bored?" or "Would you get tired?" or "How about the unpleasant elements like rain and chill and scorching sun?"

Instead the question went for the jugular to seize the day, carpe diem, "to attack the day's efforts with vigor and purpose": Come clean, Alex, what is the rhyme and reason of your being this way?

If I say I am going to Costco this afternoon no one is going to question what I will be doing there with my Self.  If I say I am getting excited about an upcoming vacation a fine dining experience yet another superhero movie no one is going to say the excitement is questionable.  Hitting the gym is intrinsically good, sending kids to Chinese school admirable to volunteer noble to church eternally laudable.  What we choose to justify our existence needs no justification.

I want to share with you a long excerpt from Walker Percy's "Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book."  I don't want to trim down his sustained note:

“The peculiar predicament of the present-day self surely came to pass as a consequence of the disappointment of the high expectations of the self as it entered the age of science and technology. Dazzled by the overwhelming credentials of science, the beauty and elegance of the scientific method, the triumph of modern medicine over physical ailments, and the technological transformation of the very world itself, the self finds itself in the end disappointed by the failure of science and technique in those very sectors of life which had been its main source of ordinary satisfaction in past ages.

As John Cheever said, the main emotion of the adult Northeastern American who has had all the advantages of wealth, education, and culture is disappointment.

Work is disappointing. In spite of all the talk about making work more creative and self-fulfilling, most people hate their jobs, and with good reason. Most work in modern technological societies is intolerably dull and repetitive.

Marriage and family life are disappointing. Even among defenders of traditional family values, e.g., Christians and Jews, a certain dreariness must be inferred, if only from the average time of TV viewing. Dreary as TV is, it is evidently not as dreary as Mom talking to Dad or the kids talking to either.

School is disappointing. If science is exciting and art is exhilarating, the schools and universities have achieved the not inconsiderable feat of rendering both dull. As every scientist and poet knows, one discovers both vocations in spite of, not because of, school. It takes years to recover from the stupor of being taught Shakespeare in English Lit and Wheatstone's bridge in Physics.

Politics is disappointing. Most young people turn their backs on politics, not because of the lack of excitement of politics as it is practiced, but because of the shallowness, venality, and image-making as these are perceived through the media--one of the technology's greatest achievements.

The churches are disappointing, even for most believers. If Christ brings us new life, it is all the more remarkable that the church, the bearer of this good news, should be among the most dispirited institutions of the age. The alternatives to the institutional churches are even more grossly disappointing, from TV evangelists with their blown-dry hairdos to California cults led by prosperous gurus ignored in India but embraced in La Jolla.

Social life is disappointing. The very franticness of attempts to reestablish community and festival, by partying, by groups, by club, by touristy Mardi Gras, is the best evidence of the loss of true community and festival and of the loneliness of self, stranded as it is as an unspeakable consciousness in a world from which it perceives itself as somehow estranged, stranded even within its own body, with which it sees no clear connection.

But there remains the one unquestioned benefit of science: the longer and healthier life made possible by modern medicine, the shorter work-hours made possible by technology, hence what is perceived as the one certain reward of dreary life of home and the marketplace: recreation.

Recreation and good physical health appear to be the only ambivalent benefits of the technological revolution.”

I say the question should be "What are we doing to ourselves?"  It takes a certain serenity and detachment to answer this one.

Yours, Alex