This quote always comes to my mind when, after a great tragedy in this country, the conversation turns to finger-pointing blame and assumptions that "if we just did this one thing, nothing like this would ever happen again."
This country has puzzled me since 1960, when I belatedly began to think. Where did we get the idea that we are entitled to be pain free and worry free, that accidents must always be someone's fault, that all cancers should be gotten in time, that babies should be born flawless, and that death could be relegated to the back burner? What is the implicit idea about being human here?... Under the rock of every fear is the refusal to accept the contractual conditions of being human. I don't know why I came into the world or where I will go when I boil over on the back burner, but I know that I was born into a condition of radical instability...The only way to overcome fear is to accept without equivocation the worst it can propose, belay your ropes, and step across the next crevasse. We have no choice, anyway, about stepping.
- The Love of Impermanent Things by Mary Rose O'Reilley
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of things I think could be done to improve our current situation. But the idea that we can somehow take all the risk out of life (which is destined to end in death no matter what we do) feels like starting the conversation with a lie.
And yet, I lived for decades without accepting impermanence, fighting it tooth and nail, at great cost to my well-being. Not a shrewd approach.
ReplyDeleteWe are moving forward, whatever meaning one gives it.
To me the danger lies in thinking we can smooth out the rough edges of "radical instability."
Deletesometime standing still is the best forward move.
DeleteI usually like to think that everything happens for a reason and a purpose, even if right now I don't have a damned clue. But sometimes I am reminded that no, sometimes stuff just happens.
ReplyDeleteWell--this is not my line--"causes and conditions never fail." The point then is to understand what causes and conditions are here, and also to produce beneficial causes and conditions for later effects, which are themselves causes and conditions.
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