"Look," said Mr. Chester, twisting his mustache in one hand and waving a cigarette wildly in the other. "The world might end tomorrow, and all you want to do is go bicycling?! I simply cannot abide such foolishness!" He pranced about in front of his eight-year-old daughter, heaving his broad belly as he moved, the monocle under his left eye flashing in the late afternoon light.
"But Father," squeaked the little girl, "no one knows when the world will end, you said so yourself." Her large brown eyes were full of mirth as she watched her father redden. He walked away from the love seat where she sat with a sour look on his face. So tempted was Ophelia to laugh that she stuck her head quickly down into the lap of her brilliant floral sundress.
"I may have said that once," her father huffed, leaning now against the grand piano in their Victorian parlor. "But that must have been quite some time ago, and must not have taken my recent discoveries into account! A man cannot be held accountable for words spoken in ignorance! You must understand Ophelia, I've done a considerable amount of calculating, and the chances that the world will end tomorrow are just shy of seventy-percent! Do you have any idea what this means?" At this, he gathered himself up to his full height for effect. He took a long drag from his cigarette and exhaled the smoke impressively from his nose.
Ophelia smiled broadly and looked out the enormous parlor window over her father's shoulder. "Father," she said, looking him in the eye once more. She took a very careful tone here, "If the world were to end tomorrow, I think that the best thing I could do, and simply must do at this very moment, is ride my bicycle."
Mr. Chester raised his eyebrows.
"Father, wait, let me explain. If it all ends tomorrow, then perhaps it's best if I live the equivalent of the next sixty years of my life in the next twenty-four hours. And if that's so, then I believe that I shall need to ride my bicycle at full tilt for the next six hours straight, if not longer! Because Father, can you imagine what we might become if the world were to end and we had left certain portions of our lives un-lived? We would end on a bad note, like an unfinished book or play. And really, who wants that?"
The sun was at the climax of its setting, streaming through the clear panes of the parlor window and bathing Ophelia and her father in warm light. Mr. Chester, his eyebrows still raised, came and sat beside his daughter on the love seat and joined her in looking out the window.
"Ophelia, my girl," he finally said, looking over at her with surprise still manifest on his face. "You really are the brightest eight-year-old that I know. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps everything will be fine. But, perhaps not. Anyhow, why don't you go ride your bicycle for, oh, say, thirty minutes? I believe your mother will want us both in for dinner, and I have quite a bit of smoking to do if I plan to live the next thirty years of my life in the next twenty-four hours. Off you go!"
The End.
===============
This post is part of a "synchroblog," wherein a number of persons blog bi-weekly on the same topic and release their posts at the same time. The topic for this time was 'what we might become if...'. To access the other blogs (which are well worth reading), follow this link:
Synchrobloggers
July 26, 2011
July 12, 2011
a thing is itself
My first thought about the concept of 'independence' is that it is a very limited idea. A person, place, or thing can be independent to a certain degree, but I would argue that this is a superficial, or even artificial, classification. Consider these examples: the USA, a person, and a flower.
The US can be said to be independent insofar as it has its own governing body, and perhaps insofar as it maintains its own artificial borders. But the US is far more dependent than independent. We rely on the Mid East for our fuels, on China for our imports, and on South America for our exotic fruits (the list could go on and on). At a deeper level, the US relies on centuries of Western philosophy and political successes/failures in Europe for the ideological framework upon which it was founded. Even when the US declared itself independent from Britain, its formerly British citizens were dependent upon British sensibilities about how to govern townships, how to distribute wealth and food, and how to deal with internal threats (think Native Americans). The US has never been independent of its heritage. Had we been, we might have been more sensible, and less violent, in our exploration and settlement of the vast parcel of land we call the USA. But we cannot escape history and tradition - we depend on it to make sense of life, flawed as it may be.
Moving on to an individual human being. A person might be said to be independent insofar as they are a unique entity - not unique in the superficial sense (their tastes, their clothing, etc.), but in the profound sense that they are a singular soul amidst billions of other singular souls. I will not argue that such a person cannot be independent, at least to some degree. But the problem remains - left alone, this person would soon die and be nothing. At the most basic level, an individual person cannot reproduce. An individual person cannot teach her or himself to speak; an individual person, without any cultural education, cannot teach her or himself what is appropriate to eat (it took centuries of communities making mistakes to figure this out!). We are entirely dependent upon cultures, histories, and traditions. We depend upon one another to build the infrastructures that make our lives tick. It is within the relative safety of these structures and cultures that we even begin to conceive of the notion that we are 'unique' or 'independent' persons. This seems rather strange to me.
Finally, a flower - and this is where 'independence' breaks down at even the biological level. Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist teacher, writes: "When we look into the heart of a flower, we see clouds, sunshine, minerals, time, the earth, and everything else in the cosmos in it... In fact, the flower is made entirely of non-flower elements; it is has no individual, independent existence. It 'inter-is' with everything else in the universe" (Living Buddha, Living Christ; 11). The flower is made of non-flower elements; its entire existence depends upon the generosity of the universe, of the structures and systems we know as rain, sunshine, and soil. And we too are dependent upon these things. Without the sun, we would have nothing to eat. There would be no living, breathing planet.
And so my final point. I find the notion of 'independence' unhelpful. At a superficial level, things are independent from one another; but when you look at their roots, all persons, places, and things are dependent, grounded in the same good earth. Perhaps the most that can be said about our being unique, or independent, is this truth: a thing is itself, and no other thing. Things are differentiable; differentiable things are special things. But all things depend upon all other things for life.
____________
This post is part of a synchroblog; this week's topic is "independence." To read the other blogs, follow these links:
nightsbrightdays
Karma's Fool
Rebel I
art, et cetera
iwritetoberidofthings
wordshepherd
The US can be said to be independent insofar as it has its own governing body, and perhaps insofar as it maintains its own artificial borders. But the US is far more dependent than independent. We rely on the Mid East for our fuels, on China for our imports, and on South America for our exotic fruits (the list could go on and on). At a deeper level, the US relies on centuries of Western philosophy and political successes/failures in Europe for the ideological framework upon which it was founded. Even when the US declared itself independent from Britain, its formerly British citizens were dependent upon British sensibilities about how to govern townships, how to distribute wealth and food, and how to deal with internal threats (think Native Americans). The US has never been independent of its heritage. Had we been, we might have been more sensible, and less violent, in our exploration and settlement of the vast parcel of land we call the USA. But we cannot escape history and tradition - we depend on it to make sense of life, flawed as it may be.
Moving on to an individual human being. A person might be said to be independent insofar as they are a unique entity - not unique in the superficial sense (their tastes, their clothing, etc.), but in the profound sense that they are a singular soul amidst billions of other singular souls. I will not argue that such a person cannot be independent, at least to some degree. But the problem remains - left alone, this person would soon die and be nothing. At the most basic level, an individual person cannot reproduce. An individual person cannot teach her or himself to speak; an individual person, without any cultural education, cannot teach her or himself what is appropriate to eat (it took centuries of communities making mistakes to figure this out!). We are entirely dependent upon cultures, histories, and traditions. We depend upon one another to build the infrastructures that make our lives tick. It is within the relative safety of these structures and cultures that we even begin to conceive of the notion that we are 'unique' or 'independent' persons. This seems rather strange to me.
Finally, a flower - and this is where 'independence' breaks down at even the biological level. Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist teacher, writes: "When we look into the heart of a flower, we see clouds, sunshine, minerals, time, the earth, and everything else in the cosmos in it... In fact, the flower is made entirely of non-flower elements; it is has no individual, independent existence. It 'inter-is' with everything else in the universe" (Living Buddha, Living Christ; 11). The flower is made of non-flower elements; its entire existence depends upon the generosity of the universe, of the structures and systems we know as rain, sunshine, and soil. And we too are dependent upon these things. Without the sun, we would have nothing to eat. There would be no living, breathing planet.
And so my final point. I find the notion of 'independence' unhelpful. At a superficial level, things are independent from one another; but when you look at their roots, all persons, places, and things are dependent, grounded in the same good earth. Perhaps the most that can be said about our being unique, or independent, is this truth: a thing is itself, and no other thing. Things are differentiable; differentiable things are special things. But all things depend upon all other things for life.
____________
This post is part of a synchroblog; this week's topic is "independence." To read the other blogs, follow these links:
nightsbrightdays
Karma's Fool
Rebel I
art, et cetera
iwritetoberidofthings
wordshepherd
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