#30 It’s Our Turn to Have Faith In the Future.
How are you feelin'?
I'm going lil' crazy. That’s why you haven’t heard from me for awhile.
And I guess you might be going lil’ crazy too. The clouds on the horizon of history seem thick black and what is right in front of my nose is still a mask I put on in the subway. I'm half tired, half scared, half angry, and half hopeful. My addition skills are suffering too. Anyway, I want to encourage you here as we enter this last stretch of election season.
In the last ten years, I have read several books by Allan Watts, an immigrant from England who become a beloved public figure here in New York City. This cigarette-smoking Zen monk was giving talks about Zen to both adults and children at Riverside Church, Harlem’s mecca of courageous spirituality.
Here's the twist in his story that's relevant to us. While he was here, Europe lost ground and plummeted into WWII, dragging the world into a moral and spiritual free fall.
In 1941, this twenty-five-year-old philosopher writes a letter to his parents starting with "Dear Mummy & Daddy."
He then links together our incongruent experiences, including the most terrifying, and makes human crazy more bearable.
He tells his mummy and daddy:
I have faith that something good will come out of this in the end like the phoenix out of the fire. But in the meantime it’s almost impossible to know how to plan for the future. Things here are as good as can be expected, but under such strains you never know when people are going to go crazy! Sometimes I get the queerest feeling that things going on in the world around one, are in some odd way reflections of things happening in the depths of one’s own mind. It is almost as if the world gets calm as you keep calm yourself, and vice versa. Yet it would be absurd to imagine that one could actually control the course of events in that way because this would imply the belief that oneself alone is real and all else a figment of thought. But it convinces me more and more that there is a universe inside one, which contains Hitler and all forms of human madness as well as love and beauty. (From: Collected Letters From Allan Watts)
So there you have it. Our ancestors have been there before. It's our turn to hope, and work, and pray, and curse, and cry, and say sorry, and put on a mask, and vote, and die, and make a thankful dinner tonight.
Peace, courage, and delight,
Samir
P.S. You can definitely encourage me by hitting reply to this email and dropping me a line about what keeps you sane these days.