I am indebted to Larry Pearson who inspired this conversation.
What are some examples of "This is it!"? - you know, some examples of
the way it's s'posed to be. Here are some of them:
There's enough food to go 'round (there always was, except now we know
it). Crime down (or non-existent). Education available for all.
Financial equity and balance restored.
Integrity
exercised as essential not as optional. Disease as unerringly targeted
as a landing spot on the surface of the moon. A magnificent sunset.
The perfect wave.
A nice
pinot noir
by a log fire with old friends. The birth of a child (the birth of
anything, actually). The obvious possibility of it all working with
no-one and nothing left out. Tchaikovsky's Symphony #6 in B-minor. The
Beatles Abbey Road. The perfect, messy hamburger. Starry nights.
OK, and what are some examples of "This isn't it!"? - you
know, some examples of the way it's not s'posed to be.
Here are some of those:
Obvious ones: climate change, global warming, the political landscape.
Unrequited love.
From Werner: a thwarted
intention, an unfulfilled expectation, an undelivered
communication.
Segregation.
Wildfires.
Mass shootings. Rising sea levels. Fentanyl. Being made wrong.
Making wrong.
All those species on the
endangered list.
All the people in homeless shelters. Painful divorce. Lying. Being
lied to. Narcissistic megalomaniacs with enough power to impact the
world. Men and women of good will everywhere with not enough power to
impact the world. Arbitrarily drawn lines between "us" and "them".
Drought. Pollution.
There you have it, some examples of "This is it!" and of "This isn't
it", some examples of the way it's s'posed to be and of the way it's
not s'posed to be.
Now the thing about filtering what "This is it!" evokes for us, is as
long as we hold it as what we prefer, what's good, what's
right etc, it obfuscates the greater connotation of "This
is it!" entirely. And the thing about filtering what "This isn't it"
evokes for us, is as long as we hold it as what we don't want,
what's bad, what's wrong etc, it also obfuscates the
greater connotation of "This is it!" entirely. To get its greater
connotation is to get something profound that's almost always ignored
about life. Look: it's causing us
big trouble
to hold them both the way we do, yet with only a cursory look at how we
hold them.
Here's
the big trouble
caused by those collections of the "This is it!" and "This isn't it"
examples, and with the "This isn't it" examples in particular: it's
all "This is it!". There's no "This isn't it.". Real life
isn't limited by what we arbitrarily determine to be good and right,
and nor does it exclude what we arbitrarily determine to be bad and
wrong. And as for "the way it's s'posed to be" and "the way it's not
s'posed to be", both are irrelevant. It's always and only "the way it
is" and it's always never "the way it isn't"
(how can the light be off
when it's on?).
"S'posed to be" and "not s'posed to be"'s got nothing to do with it.
Wake up! It's all "This is it!". And each of those "This isn't it"
examples in the collection? This is it too. Each of them.
They're all "This is it!". There's no "This isn't it.".
Transformation
calls to us to live as if "This is it!". Because this is
it. All of it. "This is it!". Whatever isn't it, whether we want it or
not, this is it too.
