I knew this marimba player once named Bruce. He had grown up in South Africa. He was one of those guys who just put you at ease to hang out with. He told me that he had a friend from South Africa who had lost his family and everything he owned in a fire, but who carried on. This man said that he only needed four things to be satisfied with life: Fresh food, a place to sleep at night, friends and faith. Bruce said he took this set and added his own two: Family and something to look forward to every week.
I wonder if sailors understand life better than landlubbers. I mean, theres the classic motif of the poverty-striken sailor who can't give up the peril for want of food to put on the table, but we know there's also the money-hungry men who we see on “world's deadliest catch” and moreover, those who just love the ocean- peril and all. They talk about being at peace on the water. Somehow it makes sence, drifting on the great indifference, that you'd feel your place in the universe. Also with the imminence of death. Fishing is apparently by far the most regressive Canadian Industry in terms of worker safety. I wonder if the closeness to death, like Bruce's friend in South Africa, makes the sailor appreciate and even enjoy life more.
Why is it sailors in that parable? You know, the one where the man goes down to the pier to find two sailors smoking and playing chess. He asks why they aren't working. They answer that the fish will be there tomorrow. He insists that they could be catching them today. They ask why they would. He says so they could make more money. They ask why. He says, so they could put some away. They ask what for. So you can retire early, he answers. Well what would we do then, they ask. Whatever you want, he exclaims. One of the men spits and moves his knight. Doin' it a'ready. Of course the story isn't about laziness, its about being alive.
We live in a society that respects the self-made person, the steady worker and the empire-builder, but we envy the person who is happy. Scoff at him if it means he's sitting on a beach waiting for the surf. But we envy him all the same.
I had a long talk with Philosopher Robert recently. Got to talking about how we are all on a journey, how none of us- in any religion or doctrine have a monopoly on knowing God. We are perhaps privy to enough, but encouraged to pursue more. At the end of the day we are a mortal looking into the night sky and wondering, and I wonder, if that's not as good as anyone can do. To be. To sit on that beach and recognize one's place in relationship to their creator. I've made fun of the Yoga freaks, as I jokingly call many friends of mine, but more and more I think they are practicing a discipline which seekers of truth and life, of God, of all kinds have been practicing for millenia. The Bible teachers get uncomfortable now, but I offer Mary who sat at Jesus' feet as preferable to Martha running around trying to make things right. I think about Jesus' teaching on worrying and wonder if he wasn't getting our perspective back in order. Thinking about tomorrow isn't going to change it, but being here, now, is good. Personally, this is what I think the idea of a Sabbath is about. We have a week to be agents of productivity, but on the seventh we should, if we can, relax into who we are as human beings, as creations of the devine. I'm not going to say I'm very good at this, because I really don't think I am. I am the guy who will put my desires to do something “great” before relationships. I am the guy who will forfiet the feast before me by banking it on some pipe dream. Another of Jesus' parables was about the man who stored up food for many years and then died before he could do anything with it and maybe this is about the frailty of life or the importance of sharing or of not being lazy, but maybe if the man had thrown a party with his excess he might have been happier about dying. I don't know. How do we live the good life?
Over the years I've fallen back on that verse from Micah which simply tells us “I have shown ye, oh man, what is good and what the LORD requires of thee. To do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.”
It could be simple.
I've got to make a TV show recommendation. I really do. Its called “Derek” and its available as an exclusive on that movie streaming service everyone uses. Just seven short episodes, but if you have any appreciation for British humour, watch it. The main character is named Derek, who is described by his roommate as not having “a lot going on up there, but what is, its all good”. In the last episode different characters reveal their boiled down life philosophies, deciding that Derek had hit upon a way to live the good life, even if he was a bit simple. He had figured out that being kind to others made his life have meaning and made him feel good. It was simple, but something that no-one else seemed to get. It was like a boulder in the middle of the road which everyone walked around but if you were to climb atop it you would have found a sign that said wait here for the bus.
One of my teachers in high school, i remember, advised my class to not be caught up with getting life all lined up. “First it was finish high school for me,” she said, “Then finish university, then meet a man and get married, then have a child. It was always the next thing, but I don't think it needs to be.” I guess i took her words to heart because i did about eighteen different things between the time i graduated high school and decided to get a university degree, and none of them was get married or have a child. But now even those sound like they could be great adventures. Peter pan thought that even death could be a great adventure.
“Our daily bread” Jesus said. In our society we might be lucky enough to live one that's not entirely “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” as Hobbes put it, but all things in perspective. We don't live forever in this life, and that informs our perspective. We live with the immediacy of temporality. Beauty becomes sacred. Enjoy it before it sets behind the city lights.
