a poem on discouragement

Lurking at the bottom of a breath you don’t want to take

a leaden stone knows you’re only half awake.

It rolls around and pulls your eyelids closed

as your voice sinks into false repose

Aborted prematurely, it has you in its grip

You feel a catch in your throat, a quiver on your lip

but you don’t remember— can’t recall—

Your soul slows from a run to a crawl.

You scream silently on the doorstep awaiting phantom children

But their ghosts were swallowed yesterday, snatched by stony hands

ground into phantom dust and tossed to the wind.

There’s nothing here, neither seeds nor ashes

but you’re heavier today and your muscles ache.

Springtime Poem

I gladly noticed the approaching Spring

when my ears first heard a chickadee sing.

My mind went straight to you, my love

as I walked amidst the mourning doves.

My heart desired a morning stroll

to shed the Winter’s heavy toll.

I had to see the birds take flight

to forget about my present plight.

I look adoringly at all the flowers,

and admire the trees like ancient towers;

I tread gently on the sacred moss

and listen to the brook before I cross.

I feel the sun kiss my naked face

As I lie in this majestic place;

I smell the scent of moments past

knowing this one, too, will never last.

I see birds fly from East to West

and let the beauty fill up my chest.

I remember the feeling of your skin

as I laid a kiss upon your chin.

I’d like to feel each blade of grass,

to breathe this air and let it pass

out of me, leaving me renewed

before the falling of tomorrow’s dew.

Being in this place alone feels wrong;

I want you here where you belong.

But this is not to be, you see,

or at least so says the chickadee--

Moments past no longer are

and yet somehow are never far.

Ambition: Poem & Reflections

I am not ambitious,

nor have I ever been.

I only wish to live my life

with grace and love serene.

I do not wish to change the world,

to fix and mend and clean,

to ascend the endless ranks of power

just to be and to have been.

I am but small; the world is vast,

yet this has never troubled me—

I’m only here for a wee little while,

and this shall pass too fast.

Stop dreaming of the stars

and end your mighty toil.

Gaze instead upon these flowers

growing in the soil.

Breathe the sweet air of summer evenings,

feel your cheeks blush pink,

for the sweetest, strongest, tenderest pleasures

are much smaller than we think.

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I wrote this poem a short while ago. I hardly remember what was going through my mind to provoke it, but I revisited it today and thought it might be interesting to discuss.

It sounds peculiarly passive and vapid to declare that one is simply not ambitious. It would seem to characterize a person devoid of any sense of a mission to fulfill or motive for action in this life. And, free of such motivation, what is man but a rightful object of pity who stays alive purely for the sake of continuing to exist and for no other, more meaningful reason? It can certainly be argued that ambition and achievement are what set humans apart from other living beings: we are unique in possessing the capacity to plan for the future, to act on decided goals, and to formulate a sense of self that is stable through time. Ambition is that force which compels us to behave in manifold uniquely human ways: to form relationships, to pursue meaningful work, to cultivate our abilities and manifest our potential, to make ourselves useful to others and to society. Absent this driving force, what separates a human being from a lion in the wild or a tulip in the garden; a tree in the forest or a bacterium in a colony?

There is merit to the view that to be human is to strive effortfully toward challenging goals, and that meaning is found in the pursuit and attainment of these ends. Plants and animals and other forms of life appear to simply act with an eye to survival and reproduction, at least insofar as we adopt an evolutionary point of view with respect to them. We might be inclined to frown upon such a narrowly defined mode of existence aimed solely at self-preservation in a literal sense. Surely it is somewhat less than ideal to simply exist and leave nothing of oneself behind. The person who strives, achieves, and adapts is praiseworthy, while one who never sets their sights outside of themselves and is content with a humble existence may appear somewhat lackluster. The Epicureans of the Hellenistic Period touched on this point, but with the opposite position on the matter: they claim that being content with what is and acquiring a disposition of “freedom from disturbance” (ataraxia) is the highest end, a psychological goal of sorts encouraging profound mental tranquillity, deeming this the highest pleasure and thus the highest good. This perspective involves refusing to place absolute value in anything external such as accolades or wealth. It is not desirable to have ambition because this necessarily speaks to being less than perfectly content with what is; it indicates a disturbance in that we desire something other than what we have. As such, the Epicureans encourage a lifestyle of humble means, claiming that ambition and accomplishment are not necessary in order to achieve ataraxia. This may be deeply counterintuitive in the cultural context of today, but it is an interesting philosophy to consider.

This is to say that there is a compelling case to be made that we are really not so different from the lion or the tulip, the tree or the bacterium. We exist, we are alive, we grow and develop between the punctuation marks of birth and death, and these latter two events are omnipresent inevitabilities. These may seem like uselessly vague commonalities to point out. One might argue that the features setting humans apart from other creatures are more important to focus on than the uniting features of all living things. But this would be an error. While we humans make our intentions and experiences explicit in language, allowing us to create far more intricate and profound structures of meaning than other animals do, the fundamental facts of life belonging to every living thing are what lay the groundwork for all of these subsequent and more elaborate meanings. So, while I have no desire to cast aside the necessity of goals and ambitions in human life (I, too, have goals; the statement "I am not ambitious" is intended as a statement about the simplicity and inherent limitedness of my own goals, whereas many set more lofty aims for themselves), I think there is value to be found in the observation that "just" being alive - breathing, sensing, perceiving, thinking, feeling, and acting - is quite a miraculous and beautiful thing. As such, it is a worthy aim to simply continue to exist. To sit in the sunlight, to be touched by the cadences of soulful music, to experience laughter, to appreciate the finitude of our being alive at all, is a worthy object of our attention in and of itself. Things that are particular to humans occupy much of this list, of course: we are only privy to a particular mode of being alive, both in the sense of our species and our specific individuality. A wild lion likely does not have reflective moments of self-appreciation as he goes about his day (although what do we know?). A tulip isn't aware of itself as a living thing in the same way that we are. And humans are surely the only ones who plan their lives decades into the future. But ambition, understood as goals external to mere self-perpetuation, need not take hold before we can appreciate the basic miracle of aliveness common to all of our fellow creatures.

This notion might be difficult to accept for some due to the pervasive tendency to place our personal value in external things - particularly in various forms of doing or having - rather than in the more deeply grounded sense of being. One who finds nothing particularly amazing or gratifying in being alive, let alone healthy, safe, educated, and surrounded by people to love and be loved by, is especially vulnerable to self-hatred and despair in my opinion. When value is placed wholly in elements of circumstance that reside perpetually in the future, love of self and of life is put off like something that is inherently conditional, only permitted when a certain state of affairs is achieved. But love of life really ought to be unconditional, something embraced in each moment as we live it. What’s more, it is noteworthy that individuals who adopt a spiritual practise of some kind often have a greater appreciation for the quality I am getting at, this enamorment with simply being alive. It is difficult to ignore the profundity of love that Christians, for example, feel for their fellow human beings, viewing them each as a child of God and, consequently, as the rightful recipients of unconditional love. Regular meditators may encounter a heightening of consciousness and detachment from self, bringing them in touch with a more expansive awareness that transcends the individual perspective and comes to encompass all things. Moreover, the intuitive sense of empathy that is ubiquitous amongst humans is grounded in a recognition of sameness with the other, and constitutes a re-enactment of the other's being in my own being based on our underlying likeness. Forgiveness, too, stems from this recognition: I come from the same originating material as the other, and as such could have acted as they did. I forgive from the recognition that I am not superior to the other because of my victimization, but rather never cease to be equal to the person who has wronged me. This is true even while my pain at being wronged is real. All of these are examples of an expanded self of sorts, and are tightly linked to a present awareness of the self for what it is. And what it is is something deeply intriguing, complex, and beautiful. The word ‘self’ in this context denotes not the individual human being as such, but the life-giving essence that is common to all people, and even extends beyond this to all living things. We have a natural feeling of respect for this critical essence of being alive, but this feeling of respect or awe is frequently drowned out when our minds are directed elsewhere, valuing objects over subjects. Overbearing ambition is a good example of this phenomenon.

It is not that the sense of wonderment I am advocating is easy to come by and that one who lacks it is unusual or failing in some way. Quite the contrary: it seems that we are all too prone to setting our sights on lofty ideals at the expense of appreciating what is. The life of the mind likes to orient itself toward the past and the future, but a grounding in the present must underlie all else. This immanent perspective necessarily draws our focus away from the ambitions we hold for ourselves. My distant desire to become qualified for a certain profession, to earn a particular degree, to have a certain number of children, or to solve world hunger are all worthy aims yet are completely irrelevant to my ability to choose joy and to adopt an attitude of awe and wonder at the living being I am and the world around me which vibrates with similar life. One who adopts a more flattened attitude toward humanity than the one just described may believe that life is utterly devoid of value unless we make something of ourselves in the realm of achievement, whether this be through social progress, self-development, or relationship. This position is a tempting one. It is not obvious that life has any inherent meaning or that living out a life wherein nothing significant is achieved is worthwhile at all. In fact, this is a question most people probably grapple with at some point, particularly in light of the agony of certain inescapable experiences that befall us all too often. It is nearly impossible to deny that setting goals and achieving them adds value to our lives, not least in the form of giving us a foundation for self-respect. Having ambition and being driven to act by this force is, in a way, a drive to self-expansion and self-strengthening that fits within the simpler model of 'survival and reproduction' that evolutionary theory gives us. If staying healthy through conscious choices, becoming smarter by being a lifelong learner, forming a profound and long-lasting relationship, and having children expands and strengthens my Self in both the limited and expansive senses, then ambition is undoubtedly a vital part of the human experience without which we would be completely lost. Nonetheless, it remains possible to overlook the innate reason for these things being valuable, namely that they are means to the grander end of expanding and strengthening the self. Their value is not inherent, so to speak - or at least not entirely inherent - because it derives at least in part from their role in promoting another, more primary goal, namely that of Self-perpetuation.

This represents a shift in what I have being arguing, I think: ambition is necessary as an element of the human life cycle, but this is only the case because it catalyzes our growth and development. The sense of ‘ambition’ used in the poem perhaps ought to be designated as a recognition that extending oneself far and wide without having the primary understanding that life itself is a beautiful, awe-inspiring thing, is worthless. We might imagine a person who is fundamentally cynical and nihilistic, believing life is ultimately meaningless, but who is nonetheless ‘ambitious’ in the way we would ordinarily use the word. This person may have a flourishing career, a happy family, and seem completely successful. But ambition without a substantial grounding in the inherent value of being is misdirected. This person doesn’t live their life or achieve their goals as an exercise of Self-expansion, but as a detached and somewhat empty expansion of their narrow, individual self. Their goals might take the form of self-development that stops at the limits of their particular individuality, never going beyond this to add to the power of the deeper Self I have spoken of. Further, it seems very likely to be the case that a simple life of humble means like that praised by the Epicureans would foster a greater connection with the right kind of ambition, the kind that leads one to a connection with the sheer beauty of being alive, than a life of busy greatness.

So I suppose the point is rather a simple one: try to appreciate time as it comes and goes, inhabiting the present fully, as they say, rather than continually setting your sights on distant ideals. These have their place, undoubtedly, and occupy rather an important one for many of us. But we ought to remember that these aims are not to be conflated with the true source of joy. They may certainly bring us joy when we achieve them, but insofar as they remain objects of ambition and not material realities, a grounding in what is, in what we are now and what we can experience in the present must remain. Being alive between two eternal darknesses is rather an incredible thing that ought to inspire us at every turn. I suppose I wrote the above poem lest we forget this amazing fact.