Don't Just Do Something, Sit There.
..the importance of rest and the need for thinking differently..
*Can we hospice modernity and guide its decay in such a way that it supports the terraforming of an altogether never before seen way?
*Can we muster up the courage to believe another way is even possible?
*Can we remember that it wasn’t that long ago that many, many other ways already were available to us? That there are many alternative options still available to us now??
*Can we act on this knowing?
These are some of the questions that have been distracting me lately as I attempt to force myself to fit into the post-modern version of America that I have chosen to return to after so many years elsewhere. Unless you come from a line of generational financial wealth, you know all too well how difficult it can be to find time to do anything in the U.S. other than work. Which is why most people eat frozen dinners or fast food take out, opt to munch on cereal or pasta from a tidy box or whatever other packaged convenience that can quickly get us out the door so we can promptly drive our gas guzzling orbs towards a job that will make us just enough money to cover the basic expenses required by modernity’s curious Garden of Earthly Delights. And this uniquely American process of overtaxing ourselves, grinding, and rushing results in the majority of us inevitably becoming forgetful that their even are other ways of being.
In the three months I have been back stateside, I too have fallen into the cycle of work, work and more work that has come to define life in The States. I have noticed how receiving a paycheck gives me an odd since of accomplishment in a way I did not experience back in Thailand. In the far east I made no money but worked even harder than I do here, with the land, in community, growing food to sustain ourselves instead of working for money with which to buy food. Work in the village made me tired for sure, but it was a different kind of tired, like the kind mentioned occasionally by the late Edward Abbey, which is experienced by peoples who are engaging intimately with land all day, a tiredness that is fulfilling, ensconced with meaning and even a since of awe. Yet missing from that purpose-driven, land centered, communally oriented work was a paycheck. And, being a child of empire, I was raised to equate my self-worth with an ability to “bring home the bacon” i.e., bring home cold hard cash. Old habits die hard. So, though I am feeling less meaning here, less relationship with the greater world around me, less spiritual inspiration, and the type of community support I knew in the village, the paycheck magically makes me feel more like I am a man, like I am finally doing something truly substantial for my family.
Up valley from us is the Aspenized town of Crested Butte. Once a delightfully humble town filled with a small number of simple people who loved the mountains and were there because of this love it has now become a playground for an elite handful of billionaires. The little ramshackle homes that my peers and I once crammed into in a joyous effort to live communally have all been torn down and in their place multi-million-dollar homes now stand, blocking the views of some of the most pristine mountain landscapes in North America. The few homes that still stand from those precious early years I remember well are now being rented out as Air B and B’s. There is very little left of what could resemble a true community there. And wouldn’t ya know, there is a part of me that regrets that I didn’t have the foresight back then to cash in, to purchase an apartment when I had the opportunity. For if I had done so, now I would be a millionaire! I would be somebody!
Where does this view come from? This mad belief that suggests someone who works all day in the field nourishing plants not for pay but for the well being of their village is poor, somehow unworthy in the eyes of modernity to be recognized as a contributing member of society? What type of education teaches us that one’s value is ultimately determined by the amount of capital one can earn anyway? (even if that money is gained while doing little other than literally sitting on one’s ass?) What is the moral condition of a nation who determines its success not by the amount of people who come home to a warm house filled with well-fed happy children able to rest well each day, not by the amount of rich soil it has been blessed with, not by the amount of clean water and air it is able share, not by its ability to invite foreigners across its borders and provide them a place to feel safe but only by the growth of the almighty Gross Domestic Product? Hmm.
I am exhausted. All week I have returned home grumpy, unable to play with my daughter. Last night I went to bed without eating my supper. I didn’t even know I did this until waking up the next morning, angry at myself for not being able to spend time with my wife. America tells me what I am doing is noble. That to work as hard as I am now doing or even harder is a good thing, it means I am a good father. We are told to be strong. And strong in the capitalist west is defined as being able to produce more, to consume more, to do our part to keep the economy pumping. As a father, now residing in the heart of empire, I am falling dangerously deeper into the belief that money is in fact what makes the world go round, so I find myself fighting this monstrous view less and less. I wake up earlier, not to meditate and make offerings to the rising sun but to quickly gather my things and rush to work. I take on as much work as I can. I kiss my daughter on the cheek, throw a granola bar in my bag and head to the construction site. My body aches. My creative impulse fades. I talk less. I think less. I fall into a routine.
Yet I am one of the lucky ones. The people I work for are generous and kind. I enjoy working with them. We have meaningful conversations and the work we do is beautiful. Like so many inspiring entrepreneurs throughout modern America who seek to formulate more loving work environments that are mindful of their ecological and social footprints (think “B” corps, universities with LEAD certified buildings, etc.), it is not that people aren’t trying their best. There is only so much one can do in a country whose underlying infrastructure simply will not allow for the kind of relationship based immersion with life our souls desperately long for. And because we all inter-are, even if one has the privilege of miraculously managing to escape a life of meaningless, monotonous daily grind, they will no doubt feel the collectives weighted hearts and as such still feel somehow unfulfilled too because, again, we all inter-are. We cannot escape this. We need each other. We are each other.
How different is the approach to “work” here in America than elsewhere around the world. Here, we have an exaggerated view of what resources are available to us. We simply point and click and get what we need shipped to us immediately, with little thought given to where these resources actually come from, of what the true cost is of acquiring such things. Back in Asia, where I call home half the year, we eat what we grow, we build with what materials are gifted to us by The Land we walk upon. And beyond this, we take very little. We don’t take more than we need. We replant what we harvest assuring the land won’t suffer. We work without pay for each other and take long naps at midday in little huts dotting the fields specifically designed for resting, after sharing of course, a substantial homegrown, freshly made meal together. We aren’t extremists. We aren’t an intentional community or cult. We are just simple, normal people living as humans in villages have for millennia. We live well, with dignity, in abundance. Yet as defined by the world’s elite, we are poor. We do not work for money, we work for life, building relations, constructing community, intergenerationally. This view doesn’t register well in the eyes of say, The World Bank.
As it currently stands in modern America, to live like my family and I do in Thailand is essentially impossible. It would, for all intense and purposes, require an entire overhaul of the monocultured, top-down, pseudo-Christian, human-centered infrastructures we have all become, either by inheritance or force, so accustomed to. It would demand a return to the commons, to downsized communities built on scale. Most of the friends I work for and with here in Colorado dream of a such a world. In fact, that is why they are doing what they do. I have been doing construction for a man building a retreat center he hopes to make available for people should the Climate Catastrophe become so severe that people have nowhere else to go. I work too for an organic bakery that sources virtually all its grain locally, nearly single handedly keeping alive the dying local grain industry. Indeed, it is THIS dream that has resulted in why I too have recently chosen to work as hard as I am because I also want to see the world I have been so blessed to witness in other regions of the so-called “underdeveloped” world manifest once more here in America somehow and I don’t see how it is possible to create such a world here without working hard, in the way it is here defined. So, with big hearts we do what we can. Yet ultimately, we are still playing the same game. We are all grinding. Day in, day out. Few among us truly resting for even one full day (*scrolling on phones while lying on the couch doesn’t count as rest, dear friends!).
I, like so many of my countrymen have also taken on a third job (I use the term “job” loosely here. We all know how little teachers are paid!) here in Colorado teaching at a school that attempts to offer glimpses at alternative ways of being. Groundwork, as it is aptly named, is a land-based farm school that offers courses in deep ecology, ethnobotany and the like. Yet even for an institution like this with such high ideals we face still the same infrastructural challenges as any other mainstream organization which may ultimately lead to our school’s demise. How challenging it is to escape the cycles of capitalisms vicious appetites and desire to stronghold the narrative in this curious era of post-truth!
No one is to blame. That isn’t what this about. We all inter-are. Many among us truly are doing the best we can. Yet here we are, together, fumbling awkwardly into a curious stream now inching closer to a world designed and modified by Artificial Intelligence. And it makes since. How, in an age where we have more old people than ever before but fewer genuine elders among us to guide the youth (and nowadays youth extends well into our 40’s and beyond) than ever before, where initiations into mature adolescence have all but been abandoned and, in their place, the glorification of the powers of military, the rise of the individual and the cleverness of corporate takeovers is now centered instead of slow, disciplined, communally-supported progression into true humanness, could we expect anything less?
Many of us are concerned by this, but who amongst us has the time to rest long enough, to but sit by a fire, ponder under the stars for an extended period of time or lie beside a flowing stream with enough attention and presence to focus deeply enough to hear the Voice of the Greater Than Human Mind that is able to whisper wise hints into our over-worked hearts clear suggestions of where our efforts might now best be placed? Who amongst us now has the courage to truly think differently, not simply in terms of right or left, republican or democrat, petrol or hybrid, solar or gas, but with a thinking more akin to the mycelial pathways of timeless co-existing interspecies intelligence that veers far beyond the incessant hum of modernity’s numbing daily grind? If we aren’t careful, we eventually become so numb, so tired, so habitualized, overworked and exhausted that we forget other ways are even possible. We begin to believe that this is simply “the way it is.”
My brother is a librarian in Springfield, Illinois. Springfield, like many other towns in the era of Trumpism now has elected a Trump-like mayor who, like most so-called “leaders” of the world today is clearly an uninitiated, brokenhearted soul whose spirit has gone unfed for too long and now seeks fulfillment by merging with the misguided narratives that suggest certain books are to blame for the reason “America” is “no longer great”. Thus, she is hoping to ban books in the Land of Lincoln. She learned from the previous POTUS that democratic reasoning is a waste of time and real strength comes from scaring people and, if needed, firing them from there jobs. As such, very few in that city, other than my brother, have publicly come forward to criticize the mayor’s draconian efforts due to an understandable fear of losing their jobs. My brother has now become a local celebrity of sorts there merely because he is the only one speaking up. Aside from public officials’ silence, the townspeople are eerily quiet as well. My brave younger brother has been asking the public many questions regarding why this is. Most people have in one way or another voiced that the reason they are not engaging is because they have seen this all play out before many times. Engage or not, nothing changes. They don’t see that there can be any other way. They believe now that this is just the way it is. What to do? Kiss the kids on the cheek, throw a granola bar in the bag and get to work.
We are rapidly approaching yet another uninspiring election season. I, like most of us, would prefer to simply ignore the whole thing. I’d like to remain in my bubble and pretend politics doesn’t matter. After a lifetime of letdowns, I find myself increasingly feeling that the capitalist driven tyrannical rise in our world is just the way it is. Even the smartest of my friends increasingly only have the creative ability to muster up an effort to try and encourage people to vote for the so-called “lesser of two evils”. Yet by doing this again and again, we too are participating, conscious of it or not, in the solidification of a single, globalized monocultured mind. The truth is, we do have other options! Is it risky to leap from the norm? Of course it is. Might we fail? Certainly. But to remain in the designated lanes presented to us by empires hell bent on sacrificing all the Truffula trees in exchange for thneeds is to deny the possibility of anything else but what is occurring now from ever even being dreamed of. It is crucial that we begin thinking differently, actively support those who think differently and recognize when certain talking heads who claim to be thinking differently aren’t thinking differently at all. We must take chances. And, we must rest…
I decided this morning to reach out to my boss and inform him of my need to step back. He is a good man. He understood and recognized my need for rest. Many amongst us, because of all kinds of wicked systemic intentions deliberately built into capitalisms soulless infrastructure are not nearly as lucky as me in this regard, forced as they are to work as slaves for real assholes, doing monotonous, truly meaningless work at companies who make profits by deliberately destroying Mother Earth. If they ask for time off, they get fired. End of story (unionize!!). Yet, even if the boss is kind, if the societies overall big infrastructures which underlie the little infrastructures we currently work within cannot transform into more life-serving, communally focused, regenerative, living organisms intensely aware of all the little micro-details we in the modern world so conveniently overlook that can, by design, feed and regenerate That Which Allows Us To Live than it’s still, as my mentor Martin Prechtel often reminds us, “business as usual, baby.” And on we go.
Americas obsession with cash-driven work is maddening and for those who have not seen other ways of living, felt the peace of not needing to grind, of living poorly but being rich in health and community, possessing an abundance of space and time, knowing the power of regular creative output, knowing what its like to live off the land and not a paycheck, of walking regularly into wild spaces, etc. it may all seem impossible, as if such a vision is but a utopian hippie ideal, at best a luxury only afforded to the wealthiest among us. Yet I assure you, from decades of direct experience living within such communities around the world, there are very different ways of living occurring around us here and now of which we seldom hear tell of that we could learn from and potentially emulate ourselves right here in the land of the free. It behooves us to pay attention to these places and people and listen from what they share. The world is filled with brilliance. It takes on many forms.
It has been said that it is easier to envision the end of the world than it is to envision a world beyond capitalism. Yet living outside of capitalism is not a far-fetched pipe dream. There are countless brilliant models beyond the single story being told by modernity now that offer myriad options for better ways to create culture, community, refashion economies (hell, refashion fashion!), reform politics, build better business models, transform transportation, regenerate healthy food systems, family units, societal dreams, languages, hope. But we have to stop and listen. We have to pay attention and actively make space for and invite in other stories.
Recently the bakery I work for, Mountain Oven opted to do the unthinkable. For years they had held one of the most lucrative spots at the world famous Aspen Farmers Market. The income being generated at this weekly summer market provided a significant amount of income, accounting for virtually a third of the companies overall sales, assuring all employees of good pay, a comfortable financial cushion to grind upon. Yet, the amount of work that was required to get all those masterfully crafted baked goods over the mountains and into the elite town of Aspen was taking its toll on everyone. Peoples spirits were beginning to fade. So the owners began to search for the cracks. Not the cracks that were keeping the company from making more money, but the cracks that prevented employees from having more rest, from feeling more alive again, more human. So contrary to what the lords of capitalism would have suggested, that they ought in fact do more (they surely could have done so considering how successful the business has become) they opted instead to end doing the Aspen market altogether and offer time and space for all to… rest.
By taking time away from my second (I mean third, er, uh…fourth??) job I am taking a risk. I am unsure how I will now be able to afford properly the kind of care my family has recently become accustomed to. It will require some sacrifices to be sure. Indeed, if affluent countries like the U.S. are going to live at scale, we are all going to have to make some big sacrifices. Yet it is in making these strange choices, the kinds of choices that confuse business-as-usual, that our souls find ways to return home to us. Just as I am certain Mountain Oven is going to thrive like never before, I know too in my own heART that as my body heals from stepping away from so much intense overwork, as my spirit returns to me due to returned spaciousness, and my creative voice regains its strength, etc. the World Herself will show me how to move forward. In a good way. At scale.
It has always been like this. Remember, when you were a child? How you ran into the unknown new day fearlessly, when rays of delicate sunshine and butterflies tended to your every need? Remember, before your view narrowed and you, understandably, in sheer exhaustion, gave in, justifying a lifestyle you once loathed, when it seemed like we mattered, like we could change things? Breathe deeply, dear friend. Listen again. To that Still, Small Voice… We still matter. More than empire would like for us to know.
The grind is not just the way it is. The limited view of how business’ can be run, how governments can organize, how land can be managed, dare I say… shared?? Indeed, the select few options we are sold now limit gravely our capacity for evolutionary co-creation. But lucky for us, there are already other ways available to us now. We are a creative people who were made to think differently, not like tech companies but like trees, collectively, regeneratively, selflessly, lovingly, empathetically, and patiently with much zest and zeal. We just need to pause long enough to see it, be courageous enough to seek it, open enough to feel it, and then cultivate the greatly needed capacity to walk away from business as usual… and rest.
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All blessings.
-Gregory Pettys
* The title of this weeks offering comes from one of Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh’s calligraphies.
*As always, very little of what I or any of us share comes merely from our own genius. We are who we are and think what we think because of the good hearted generosity and/or trauma of others. Much of this weeks thought stream was inspired by the great works of Thích Nhất Hạnh Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, Martin Prechtel, Joshua Michael Schrei, Tricia Hersey, Bayo Akomolafe, Chris Hedges, Cornel West, Timothy Snyder and many others. Please click the following links to begin exploring in deeper detail new terrains that can aid in leading us away from the bland monocultured world of late stage capitalism back to a colorful world of good rest and right relations:
Song of the Week:
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Rest well!