So it's July again, the month when the Internet takes a vacation and I can post stuff that's just cool and not necessarily about enlightenment.
Except this kind of is, if you want it to be.
Anybody my age or older was raised on Warner Brothers cartoons; among other things, their vaudeville tropes are almost entirely responsible for our knowing anything about that art form, whose popularity peaked when our grandparents were in high school. Yet somehow, a very important facet of those gems of animation's golden age remains occult, in spite of the fact that it's been right in our faces for decades.
I found this video fascinating, and if Looney Tunes was a cherished part of your childhood, you will, too. One thing is certain: I'll never look at them the same way again.
Oh, and the Zen angle? It's about clear-seeing. And being present. And appreciating the fulness of unrequested blessings.
(When outfitting my bike for trekking seven years ago, I gave the lugs on the seat tube and down tube to water bottles. With none on the top tube, there was no obvious place to mount the pump. Since I'm loathe to cram one more thing into my rack trunk, and not currently mounting paniers, I just bolted it to the front fork.
Sounds pretty boring, eh? I thought so too, until it got so much commentary from other bikers. Now I can't instal any paniers up there, or I'll miss out on all those conversations.)
Alan Watts once said, "Now I’m a grandfather, and so I am no longer in awe of grandfathers." If I liked this 20 years ago, when I first heard it, today it teases a secret I feel obligated to share with my young brothers and sisters.
Old people like to say we've gained wisdom. We have better judgment; a longer view. Our superior familiarity has brought us perception and patience. We're slower to inflame, whether with anger or passion.
But the truth is, we're just tired.
Reviewing my twenties, I'm astonished by the heat of my prejudices, my penchant for assigning the role of villain to so many in my environment, my disrespectful impatience.
But I also remember how instinctively willing I was to break eggs, confront hypocrisy, power over and through impediments. Get crap done.
That irritated authority. And that brought pain. And, in surprisingly short order, that produced dread.
Eventually I slipped into idle middle-aged cowardice. AKA that "philosophical perspective" old people are so proud of.
Which is why humanity remains mired to the shoulders in solvable problems. Because our seniority gave us the power to hamstring those younger, and our terror of consequences, the motivation.
So now old people peeve me a lot more than they did before I was one. In my youth I took it for granted that their self-vaunted wisdom must be grounded at a least a little in reality.
And it is, a little.
But mostly it's just self-serving fear and laziness.
Let us meditate upon this uncomfortable truth:
When age brings humility, that's probably wisdom.
When it brings self-satisfaction, that's probably a learning disability.
Old age is an excellent time to practice don't-know-mind. You know, that thing we seldom embrace in our rhetoric and voting record. Because our task is to accept that we had our chance, and that the courage, vision, determination, and primal strength of the young is what we need now. Their willingness to rise to a challenge, even if they get a few things wrong. Even if – nightmare of senescence – they incur some personal damage.
This is their evolutionary role, their responsibility, their crucial contribution. Worry not, unproductive ones: they too will stumble into their day of wan platitudes; their age of weary wisdom.
But for now, they must bring – and we must honour – the dauntless insight of their youth.
Because someone has to actually do something around here.
(Classic meme courtesy of Alex Leo and Wikimedia Commons.)
(The age of this robin's nest, blown out of the tree in a recent windstorm, can be estimated by the strand of baling twine incorporated in its construction. It's been at least 2 decades, maybe more, since the area where I found it was agricultural.)
Insight from a sangha-mate on Mastodon (appropriately enough):
One of the most important ideas to sit with – amid the convulsion of climate change – is that Earth was not made for us.
That idea flies against many religions, but also appears in secular settings, with even activists thinking of Earth as a sort of organic machine, a spaceship, a system that’s carefully balanced in absolute ways.
Those metaphors have power, but they’re ultimately unhelpful. Our place here is precarious because we don’t 'belong' in any cosmic sense.
We’re just here.
(Photo of a well-worn dinosaur path in Colorado courtesy of James St. John and Wikimedia Commons.)
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