postcards from nowhere

Greetings!

Actually, that sounds a little too cheerful for me today.  I'm feeling 
kind of sober.  Is 36 too young to be having my mid-life crisis?  

Have you ever had a sliver in your foot that was so small, like a cactus 
pricker or a piece of fiberglass, that you couldn't find it to take it 
out?  But you knew it was in there, because every time you put weight on 
your foot it hurt, and all you could do was wait for it to work itself 
out.  

It feels like I have had a figurative version of one of those kinds of 
splinters in my heart for the past 5 years.

This is embarrassing for me, because 5 years seems ridiculously long to 
still be healing, but there it is.  I suppose the wound can't heal until 
the sliver comes out.  And it's probably a good thing - to have it stay 
open - because I wouldn't want the source of the pain to have its escape 
route blocked.  Don't want it moving in and making itself too comfortable. 

I can tell that the heart sliver is surfacing, because for the first time
I'm getting a glimpse of it.  Looks like self-doubt.  Actually, that's 
not quite right.  It's more than self-doubt -- it's everything-doubt.  
I'll try to explain:

I'm going into murky waters, and I may not be up to the challenge of 
making them clear.  So please accept my apologies in advance if all 
I do is confuse you.  If that happens, just abandon ship, and I'll 
see you in the next postcard.

Somewhere pretty early on in life, like most of you I'd guess, I accepted 
the idea that one of the things people are supposed to do is be kind to 
each other.  Ever since then, I've been evaluating myself by the standard
of kindness in many obvious and subtle ways.  I'm a good person when I've 
been kind, and I need to do better when I haven't been kind.  

In my days of innocence, this was a pretty simple criterion.  Share your 
toys and you are good.  Hoard them and you aren't.  Even as a young adult
it was simple:  I felt good about myself when I recycled, wrote letters 
to my congressman, and served healthy meals to my family.  I became a 
vegan, because I was certain that it was wrong to damage or take the 
lives of animals for any reason.  

And then I read a book about the secret life of plants (by Peter Tompkins,
maybe?), and I learned that it is impossible for humans to exist without 
causing pain to other living beings.  Something as simple as pouring hot 
water down the drain takes the lives of bacteria, and with the right 
equipment their screams are audible.  Every time I walk on the grass 
I crush living things under my feet.  Despite my best efforts, I found 
that I simply could not lead a harmless life.

Marital problems only complicated things further.  I didn't mean to be 
cruel, but my innocent feelings and actions appeared to cause pain to 
a man I loved.  Even worse was when he lost faith in my intention to 
be kind, and started to accuse me of deliberately hurting him.  Not 
only was I a bacteria-killer, but it seemed as though every time I 
spoke my truth someone around me got hurt.

Suddenly I didn't know how to evaluate myself on the kindness continuum 
any more.  Was I still a good person if my intent was to be kind, even 
if the result was painful?  Or did only the outcome get weighed on the 
scale?  What if I killed a snake to save a child ...  would I be a hero 
or a villain?  Black and white merged into gray.

And that was how the splinter entered.  Splinter ... hmm, when wood 
splinters, it breaks into fragments.  That makes sense.  Because doubt 
has broken my heart into fragments.  I am no longer sure what is the 
right thing to do to earn my own respect, to score high by my own 
standard of worthiness.

Before the doubt entered my heart, I knew what was right.  I knew how 
to be good, so I could feel proud of myself and worthy of esteem in my 
own eyes.  The splinter fragmented that certainty, and left me without 
a scale to measure my value.

I've been trying to figure out a new scale for the past 5 years, and 
I must say I haven't been able to come up with anything.  Finally today 
it occurred to me that maybe my efforts have been fruitless because the 
best scale is no scale.  

If you believe in a benevolent universe, which I do, at least for now, 
then something doesn't make sense here.  What kind of cosmic Prankster 
would require people to be nice to each other?  With great amounts of 
will and effort, I haven't been able to do it.  Have you?  Has anyone 
ever succeeded at being consistently kind?  Is it benevolent to make a 
rule knowing that no one will be able to avoid breaking it?

Or perhaps there is some law of Nature that requires kindness?  Except 
that I haven't seen evidence of one.  Bears eat fish - which probably 
looks pretty unkind to a salmon.  Cats catch mice and play with them 
until they die - cruel, yes?  Baby bunnies die in the jaws of coyotes.  
Bad, ugly events, unless you happen to be a bear, cat, or coyote.  
Kindness appears to be in the eye of the beholder.

So why should we, creatures of the earth no less than those bears and 
coyotes, base our value on some arbitrary standard of kindness?  Why 
would we expect that we should be able to live in peace and not harm 
each other?  Does that seem nuts to anyone else but me?  

Ok, ok, yes, I do see that it makes things easier for society when 
kindness is valued.  Entire empires have been built on religions 
that encourage kindness - it's a very effective opiate for the masses.  
I'm not saying we should all abandon kindness and go around raping and 
pillaging.  

I think maybe all I'm saying is that it could be time to question our 
assumption that in order to consider ourselves to be good people we 
must be kind.  Or gentle, for that matter, or clean, or communicate 
clearly, or share our toys.  These are certainly attractive goals, 
as goals go, but they can't be consistently achieved.  What should 
we do with ourselves and others when we fall short of them?

When my children aren't kind, I don't stop loving them.  But if I'm 
unkind, intentionally or not, I turn my back on myself.  At what age 
did I begin to punish myself for being wrong, or see myself as bad?  
And if this is a midlife crisis, does it mean that I get to stop 
doing that now?

Geez, this is a tough one.  How do I live if I give up trying to be kind?
How do I make decisions?  Will I become a hedonist - or maybe a savage?  
Join the Marines? (no offense intended to any Marines who read this)  
Or might I discover that there some kind of natural compassion 
hard-wired into me by virtue of my human status?

Even more interesting is this question:  how do I live if I give up 
trying to be good?  Because kind was just the road I took to Good, 
which was the destination I desired.  

That splinter looks more like judgment now.  The force that has 
divided my heart is the idea that some things are good, and 
some are bad, and that in order to be worthy of my own love 
I'd better make darn sure I'm on the good side.  

The idea of having 'no scale' is somewhat disconcerting, 
at least for now.  No rudder, no instruments to use for 
navigation.  I used to know that war was terrible, because 
it was clearly unkind.  Take away the scale and I can't 
be sure of that any more.  Freaky.  (a true moral crisis, 
is what a big announcer-type voice over my shoulder is 
saying to me.  We must teach our children right from wrong.  
This idea of subjective morality is dangerous and cannot be tolerated.  
It is the cause of every problem in our world today.)  

I hear that voice, and while I don't really know if there's truth 
in it or not, it doesn't seem to matter.  I haven't been able to 
find a way to make myself go back to seeing in black and white.  

I wonder if eventually even the shades of gray will even out, 
and I'll be left with this perspective:

Well, whatever's happening is whatever's happening.  Not much 
more to it - no need to classify it as good/bad, desireable/undesireable 
or right/wrong. 

And then it would follow that I, too, just am, with no need to 
be on 
the good side.  Might I be worthy simply because I exist?  Ooh, that's 
a big leap for me.  Big leap.  But I feel just unhappy enough where I 
am to risk making the jump. 

I'm thinking that when that splinter works its way out it's gonna 
leave a hole for a while.  And maybe I'll fill it with daisies, or 
popcorn, or sunshine.  Because maybe there won't be room in my heart 
anymore for splinters or sharp tools of division.  

yeah ... I like that idea.  

I know I'm way out in left field today.  Time to go for a walk and 
crunch through some leaves.  As always, I welcome your thoughts and 
comments.

Happy Autumn -

karen