We're all narcissists...

We're all narcissists. Let's be honest. We are! Perhaps it's the sheer drive of life itself, the uncompromising will towards survival, reproduction, and propagation of our species that underlies the narcissism in all of us. And, in an "eat or be eaten" type of context, I guess it's a reasonably adaptive characteristic to possess. So for better or for worse, here we are, the way we are...narcissists! What's most interesting to me, however, is not the fact that I see this sort of self-interest as an inherent human quality, but the subtle and completely paradoxical ways it can manifest itself. We tend to think of narcissists as people who think very highly of themselves, people who think, or at least say loudly and often, that they are just about as awesome as it gets. Narcissism has another face though, far more seductive and hypnotic: that of self-loathing. In a society that for the most part frowns upon excessive pride and vanity (with notable exceptions), we tend to recognize the outspoken, excessively self-affirming behaviors that we might also call arrogance, and frown upon them also. We appreciate a reasonable level of self efficacy and confidence, but it's good not to think too highly of oneself. But what about thinking too lowly of oneself? What about the self-deprecating Yin to the overly-confident Yang?

Now, I'll admit, there are definitely instances where I finding myself thinking, "Man, I am just AWESOME!!! I bet everyone wishes they were me right now." Hopefully we all have these moments from time to time. Thus far though, I feel these moments occur with relatively "healthy" frequency. What I find myself continually wresting against lies on the other end of this spectrum, punctuated by phrases like:

"I'm not good enough"

"I'm not funny enough"

"I'm not smart enough"

"I'm not cool enough"

"I'm not confident enough"

"I'm not attractive enough"

"I'm not calm enough"

"I'm not talented enough"

"I'm not responsible enough"

etc. etc. etc. blah blah Blah BLah BLAH!!!!!

Now if we take a minute to think about it, what do all these phrases have in common? They all start with the word 'I'. That's right folks, even in the very act of telling ourselves how much we suck and how terribly we have failed and how numerous our shortcomings are, we are doing something quite interesting that easily evades us if we're not mindful. We are effectively saying, "I am so so SO IMPORTANT, which is why my faults merit such tedious and frequent mental scrutiny!" We must be pretty damn important for all our faults to matter so damn much. I am at the center of the universe. It's all--about--me. Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for thoughtful reflection and self examination. After all, I think we'd all agree that we are most of us trying, however imperfectly, to be the best people we can be. But I believe there is a stark difference, in fact a gaping abyss, between saying, "Here is something in myself I'm not particularly fond of. What can I do to grow?" and simply wallowing in how much we dislike ourselves and here's all the reasons why. At the end of the day, it's simple self-indulgance. Period. It's building ourselves up by breaking ourselves down.

Poor David...he's such a failure. Poor poor David, his life is so hard! If only he were funnier... If only he were more attractive... If only he were more confident... If only he were more charming... If only he were less awkward. Poor, poor, poor David. It's such a burden to the entire freaking universe having David around! He just brings everyone down. If only he could get his act together, the whole world would be a better place. He's just so terribly important. Poor, poor David Bergner.

I'm sorry David, but life is too beautiful and far too brief to waste time like this. And you know what else? You are far too beautiful, and not nearly important enough, to bear this terrible burden of having to be perfect, lest the cosmos collapse back in on themselves, making you responsible for the end of all life as we know it. And let's also remember what this kind of self-indulgent self-loathing does to those around us. It deprives them of that sacred right, that delicious dynamism that defines human life: fighting our own battles, celebrating our own joys, suffering our own defeats. In short, being a person! Because, after all, if everything is always about you, how could anything ever be about anyone else? Can't someone be sad just because they're sad? Or happy just because they're happy? Or be distant just because they're distant, for their own reasons? To assume the kind of epic responsibility that self-loathing mandates, you are in fact doing a disservice not only to yourself, but to your fellow people.

So what, you ask, do I propose as an alternative? I think it's quite simple, really. We need to get over ourselves! I propose a huge party in honor of all humanity everywhere, and everyone is invited! The theme of the party? Our faults, failures, and shortcomings. Our brokenness. Our humanness! This is not a time for mourning, friends. This is a time for the most boisterous of festivities, the most irreverent of spectacles, the most holy of celebrations. This is a party to affirm the peculiar miracle of life. This is a an occasion of being called upon to admit freely at last, that we are not perfect, nor will we ever be. What a relief! It feels so good just to say it, to get it out there in the open. I am not perfect! I can never be perfect! It's not all about me! What a relief....Phew.... Now turn up the music, and let's dance!!!

I have a sneaking suspicion that if we can bring ourselves to this type of openness, this style of honesty, this place of total vulnerability, total surrender, total openness, we might, just might, be opening ourselves up to a richer, realer, and far more blessed life than we could ever have imagined before. Perhaps I'm wrong, and I'm all for experimentation and alternative hypotheses, but my short time on this earth seems to be nudging me strongly, despite fortress-like resistance and stoic stubbornness, in this general direction. What do you think?

Benevolence

There are a lot of things I could and perhaps should be doing right now. There are those moments though when it is indubitably time to set everything else aside -- and write. Tonight is one of those nights. I'd like to start with a video clip from one of my all-time favorite movies: American Beauty. Unfortunately, embedding of this particular clip has been disabled on YouTube, so please click HERE to view it.

We humans are such curious animals. Our capacity to think and reason, to weigh facts against one another, to tease apart the details and reveal such splendid subtlety, it boggles the mind. To think that this life, this capacity for thought, this consciousness could emerge over billions of years from utter lifelessness seems all but unfathomable, and if science hadn't revealed such a compelling case for it, I'd certainly be inclined to question such a hypothesis. But here we are, and our story, life's story, is ultimately one of patient perseverance, one of process and not of product, one of journey and not of destination. Think of life literally eking along, embodying what must be the grandest experiment in trial and error this universe has ever seen, as the subtlest of changes over time yield sets of either adaptive or maladaptive characteristics, and ultimately result in survival and propagation of a species, or extinction. Our story is one steeped in majesty, wonder, and the most profound commitment to existence, to being.

This sense of grandeur, however, is quickly usurped by the business of living our modern lives, and often times rightfully so. Were one to sit on the couch all day dreaming of billions of years and the universe's ever expanding nature, it's entirely possible that we wouldn't be of much good to anyone, least of all ourselves. There is a present, practical reality that demands our attention if we wish to live. If we want food and shelter, we need money. If we want money, we need a job. If we want a job, we need an education or marketable skill (and these days a good bit of luck). These are just the basic facts of life, and we have little choice in acknowledging them.

However, I think there is a danger in never taking time to step back and really remind ourselves of the bigger, vaster context in which our lives are operating. After all, we are stardust! Literally! "Every atom of carbon inside our bodies was once inside a star. We are all made from the ashes of dead stars." (Polkinghorne, "Quarks, Chaos & Christianity", p. 40.) It doesn't get much more miraculous than that, and I think it's important every now and again to remind ourselves of our history, by which I mean our macro-history, our meta-history, the history of all histories, the history of life itself. And when we do, an amazing story reveals itself, a story of epic determination and fierce will, a story of profound commitment and sacrifice, and yes, a story of benevolence and grace. By whatever means, we have been given a gift that needn't have been given us. The gift of joy, friendship, pain, love, tragedy, touch, laughter, sex, tears, spontaneity, loss, romance, confusion, anger, thought, ecstasy and on and on and on. It is all a gift. It is the opportunity to compose, or at the very least take part in, a story of our own, chock full of drama and plot twists, humor and heartbreak, cliff-hangers and surprise endings. And our stories inevitably intersect and interact with the stories of those around us. The story of life itself is being spun out before our very eyes, a breathtaking amalgam of our individual and collective stories. What a gift to be given. If this is not the embodiment of benevolence, I don't know what is.

The storyteller's claim, I believe, is that life has meaning--that the things that happen to people happen not just by accident like leaves being blown off a tree by the wind but that there is order and purpose deep down behind them or inside them and that they are leading us not just anywhere but somewhere. The power of stories is that they are telling us that life adds up somehow, that life itself is like a story. And this grips us and fascinates us because of the feeling it gives us that if there is meaning in any life--in Hamlet's, in Mary's, in Christ's--then there is meaning also in our lives. And if this is true, it is of enormous significance in itself, and it makes us listen to the storyteller with great intensity because in this way all his stories are about us and because it is always possible that he may give us some clue as to what the meaning of our lives is.

Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat, pp. 58-60.

Home

For the past week I've had no cell phone reception, no text messaging, no credit card transactions, no facebook status updates, no car, no electronic toothbrush, and minimal internet access. I've never felt more alive. Words cannot describe the feeling of wholeness and peace that now envelops me. I only hope I can retain it.

I am forever changed. I am more myself than I have been in a long time, maybe ever. I feel connected to life, to humanity in a tangible way. I was getting some food during my layover in the Atlanta airport today, and, without even thinking about it, I practically sat down at a table with a complete stranger and started a conversation, as if it were an entirely common thing to do. This is the kind of openness that has grown in me over the last week. I've learned that all we silly humans (or maybe it's just me...) really need to live a joyful life is food, shelter, genuine human connection, and a meaningful goal or three. It is a wonder that we can be so advanced in so many ways and still so poverty stricken with basic matters of the soul, of living a life of wonder, imagination, and significance. I feel so intensely drawn to go on the upcoming clown trip to Costa Rica (not Peru). If I can figure out how to pay for it, I am going to go. This work is just too rich to miss.

It is of course wonderful to be home, and there are many things here I've been missing and looking forward to. My whole view of my current life here in Boulder is suddenly reframed in a strange and beautiful way. I am curious to see how I reorient over the next few days. This concludes coverage of my journey to Gesundheit.

The last night

Tonight is our last night at Gesundheit. We had a campfire sing-along extravaganza of epic proportions. I cannot believe the week is over. It has gone by so fast, but in a way it also feels like it has stretched on far longer than an average week. I think it's mostly because I've grown so incredibly much while being here, so the person I was when I arrived seems so far away from who I am now, and somehow this translates into a feeling of expanded time. I will miss this place and these people immensely, but I know this is just the beginning. It is now 4:12 AM and I've just had a wonderful first conversation with someone who I haven't really had the chance to get to talk to yet. I sometimes feel as if I'm living in a dream, a life so richly blessed it can't be true. If I am, I hope to sleep forever.

Penultimate

Tomorrow is our last full day here, and I cannot believe how quickly the time has passed. In just one short week, I have grown to love the spirit of this place and all the wonderful people I've met here. We just got back from our second-to-last marshmallow-roasting, smore-making, song-singing, silly-exploding campfire sessions. It is a well established tradition now, and it's only appropriate that our last full day here will be concluded with one more campfire extravaganza. I plan to stay up late.

Today was another challenging, stimulating, and rich day. Our group compositions are coming along slowly but surely, and we will present them tomorrow evening. I am seeing more and more how unbridled joy, spontaneity, imagination, and creativity can be modes of activism, and incredibly powerful ones at that. People always talk about the power of laughter, so much so that it has become a cliche of sorts. But I am seeing, living, tasting, feeling, touching, smelling how laughter and joy are some of the most powerful weapons known to the human species. They are potentially radical tools that can be used in radical ways. At the heart of laughter and joy is a profound and penetrating openness, a total disarmament of the mechanisms we silly humans employ in an effort to keep our lives safe and predictable. When we laugh with one another, we invite life, real life, to come in and take up residence within us. When we practice radical joy, we make ourselves vulnerable, open ourselves up to possibility and potential. It is so inspiring to be in a place rooted so firmly in the celebration of life.

I am giving serious consideration to going on a clowning trip in the near future, especially since I didn't get to meet Patch this time around. Gesundheit hosts many clown trips, but I'm told that Patch and several others I've met here will be going on one to, I believe, Peru in a few months. We did a clowning workshop the other night where we all got dressed up in crazy clown costumes and red noses and all. One of our exercises was to take an ordinary object that we have with us all the time and act out 5 completely new "uses" of that object. I used my belt (it was literally the only thing I had on me at the time besides clothes), and treated it as a fishing line, a "gut-bucket" style bass, a razor blade sharpener, a snake, and a whip. Each person performed these imaginings in front of the whole group. I was so surprised how many people came up to me afterwards and said something to the effect of, "I really enjoyed your clowning tonight." I really enjoyed it too, as a matter of fact, and I feel strongly inclined to go on a clown trip. I am seeing that clowning is a medium with incredible potential for human transformation, and I want to be a part of it. Until tomorrow...

Wow.

I'm up far far too late, but this day was just too rich to post nothing. We had our first convergence of the respective "Activism" and "Composition" groups tonight. After some discussion, we were given our assignment which we have two days to complete. We were assigned to groups of four, with each group containing two members from the "Activism" group, and two members from the "Composition" group. Our assignment is as follows:

Compose in social action and sound a perturbation towards a society we want.

These compositions are to be presented in ten minutes or less on Thursday evening. I am absolutely delighted with the members of my group. There is Dario (a wonderful man from Italy), Andrew (hailing from Urbana, Illinois), and Judy, a totally sweet woman who is here with her husband Ted. Instead of jumping straight into brainstorming, Andrew had the brilliant idea to have an "icebreaker" session first, and for each of us to share a little bit about what activism means to us and what our goals are in regard to it. It was so amazing to hear all three of them speak, and also to share my own thoughts. I have always had highly ambivalent feelings about "activism", more with how it is so often practiced than with the concept itself. In my view, activist groups all too often fall prey to the sort of rigid, black and white thinking that they are criticizing. They are usually quite zealous, but without knowing exactly why.

The kind of activism I have encountered here, however, has been so delightfully refreshing, as its distinctions are nuanced and its methods carefully composed. Tonight, Dario was sharing his ideas about imagining, creating, and storytelling being potential modes of activism, with the ultimate goal being to cultivate connections between and among apparently disparate ideas, practices, fields of study, etc. This was so exciting for me to hear. Finally a group of people with an elegant approach to activism that involves more than simply getting up on a soapbox and trying to cram "facts" down people's throats, or worse yet, simply complaining loudly. I feel that art, creativity, imagining, and storytelling offer a "back door" into these issues and are in a way a forms of non-violence. When you fight violence with violence, you simply breed more violence. When you fight violence with non-violence, you disempower the fundamental mechanism that violent action relies upon, and it destroys itself. It is the difference between two people standing face-to-face, pushing harder and harder and harder, thereby creating an impass, and one person simply stepping to the side, at which point the other falls flat on its face and destroys itself of its own agency. This is the kind of activism that excites and inspires me, and I can't wait to see what we come up with for our assignment. I am in an incredibly special place, and I am so blessed to be here.

I've never had so much fun failing at something!

Tonight, like every night, we headed down to the fire pit to start a fire and sing songs and tell jokes and act utterly silly. The problem with West Virginia though, is that pretty much everything is wet pretty much all the time, no matter how hot the day or how brightly the sun is shining (I have a pair of socks that got wet on the first day. They are still wet...) One can imagine the various ways that such an environment would not be conducive to starting a big bonfire, especially when the list of wet things includes the firewood you intend to start the fire with. However, somehow we go down there every night, convinced that this night is going to be different and we'll have a roaring fire in just a few minutes. This inevitably results in us singing ridiculous, made-up songs to the fire for a solid hour before it actually gets going (and even when it does, it's only a little baby fire). But, like I said, I've never had so much fun failing at something! Other songs on the list tonight included American Pie by Don McLean, Tiny Dancer by Elton John, Piano Man by Billy Joel, and Knockin' on Heaven's Door by Bob Dylan. It was pretty great. There are these two guys here from Mexico who are volunteering on the land, Armando and Rodrigo, and they are just the funniest two guys you have ever met. There are lots of great jokes about gringos and the like. Crackin' me up!

Speaking of guys, I'm so impressed with the quality of all the people here. I generally get along better with girls than guys, but I'm actually getting close to a lot of the guys here. It's a nice change.

I feel like I'm learning almost more just in the basic experience of being here than I am in the classes themselves, which I guess is often the case in life. Not that the classes aren't good. They are very good and we're asking a lot of great questions and having some really good discussions. But I feel for me, the greatest thing I'm going to take away from this experience is just the overall spirit of this place, which is one of overwhelming joy. Nothing here is a "chore" or "work". Even the simplest tasks and moments are infused with humor, spontaneity, creativity, openness, and improvisation. And it's in no way that phony "Oh look at us, we're always happy and always have smiles plastered on our faces because everything in life is just SO GREAT!" kind of way. It all comes from a very deep, real place, and that is so refreshing to see in a world where boredom, apathy, malcontent, and cynicism are all too often the norm. There is a basic joy of living which permeates every inch of this place. I took a short 40 minute nap today, and I was dreaming the funniest dreams! I was literally laughing in my sleep. I would sort of drift in and out of sleep, waking up as I was laughing every now and again. Maybe this all sounds a bit too utopian, but really, the spirit of this place is something quite special.

When I first arrived here, during the first full day especially, I was a bit worried to be feeling so uncomfortable and so out of place at moments. It took me by surprise, and I was afraid that the personal progress I felt I had made over the last few months had not been progress at all, and that I was back to square one. Now that I've adjusted however, I feel that this place is only bolstering the progress I have made, and I am becoming more 'me' than ever, which makes me extremely happy. There is so much more to write and share, but there simply aren't enough hours in the day! I'll try to post again tomorrow. I'm off to bed.