I know a woman I wish I had heard play in her band. I could be wrong but I like to think heavy metal with a real edge.

 

I feel like the telling of stories is an important part of understanding this bizarre and confusing experience of being human. (I guess this comes as no surprise given the nature of the blog, huh?) It’s like the stories help to mark edges in the constantly flowing stream that is our life, and are a way for us to say, “Hello, fellow monkey-creature, I share with you a tale from my stream that hopefully you will recognize from your stream and will help us to understand and relate to each other.”  A platform for expressing what can be hard to directly state, whether a joy or a deep-water sadness. Sometimes though there are pressures from within us that contort the stories such that the only ones we tell are those where we are always the good guy, even though shared history suggests these stories are…… not necessarily an accurate portrayal of events. Let’s face it, the stories where we are the good guy are the easiest to tell (And then I saved the babies from the burning building. That’s where I got this scar), but sometimes telling the truth where we weren’t so awesome, even a modified version of the truth where we were only 60% awesome, becomes impossible.  I think those types of stories leave us feeling more alone, more isolated, more like no one knows who we really are.  

 

 

 

 

 

I recently performed a random act of kindness that involved listening to a string of stories told by someone I know quite well.  This person was the good guy in all her stories. Our shared history suggests none of the stories were “necessarily an accurate portrayal of events.” I don’t think the accurate portrayal of events was the important piece of that interaction, but there was a cost to her.  Yes, she left feeling heard and cared for, and she left with the same fears and sadness and aloneness that she came in with.

 

 

 

 

For me a core piece of RAK, with good & bad elements, is about wanting to be meaningful in people’s lives (in some cases wanting to be far more meaningful than I currently am, but that is another issue).  Working hard to be fully present no matter what the moment brings. Sometimes those moments bring a lot that is difficult to stick around for, and, on our best days, we do stick around. There are times when those “I would rather have a cookie than be here for this” moments stack up. After awhile you may find that you are swimming hard in heavy seas without a solid place to grab hold of and rest.  You can get tired in those heavy seas. You can struggle to keep your head above water. You can start to ask why the hell you are doing this, being supportive and fully present for others and their pain?  Why feel all the feels that arise within you? Wasn’t life better when those feels were locked up under the stairs? The news that most catchs your eye is about violence, random and targeted, to the most vulnerable and innocent.  Perhaps you despair at the size of the waves, the pull of the current, the intensity of the gale.  You can forget.

 

And so, for those of us out in the waves, here is a story to share.  It is from the Field Museum so you know it is sciencey, and not just some Damn Hippie tale: A tale from archeology in the American Southwest in the mid-1200s-1300. A bit of background, starting ~700CE the civilization of the Ancestral Puebloans expanded across the Four Corners region of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, building cities, roads, trade and sophisticated art.  Ultimately this all collapsed as the result of a 300 year cycle of drought, which you could see would pretty much take you down, no matter how glorious you were civilization-wise.  When the environment changed and crops began to fail as the region entered into the drought cycle which became increasingly severe, people’s first response was to cooperate. The 2nd response was to cooperate even more. Next they developed complex systems to expand their ability to cooperate on larger scales. It was only when the pressures from the crop failures were severe with wide spread starvation that the humans went to war….. and even then, humans sought ways to cooperate in response to raiding parties and escalating violence.   Violence is not inevitable. It is certainly not the first option most humans choose to pursue. That nasty shit on the news is on the news because it is not what most of us do. Remember this is science, not Damn Hippies…..well, it might be Damn Hippie science but still. Go, Humans! 

Being human means being covered in goop, not just covered but gooped into the marrow, gooped between the synapses.  I am not really sure why we aren’t called Goops instead of Humans….but maybe the original meaning of “human” was goop. Maybe our pets do call us Goops. Maybe that is why they are nice to us, “There, there, Goop, I will stay with you even when other Goops leave, because, even though you are a Goop, you are my Goop.”  

The truth, for me, is that goop is often hard, and painful, and scary, and is something we have in common, something that helps us to find ways to be meaningful in each other’s lives, strangely maybe it is something we can hold onto in heavy seas and find a quiet harbor within which to rest.  I would rather not have the hard, painful, scary, but I am guessing then it wouldn’t be goop, would it? Well, fuck it. I’m in. Let’s go, Goops!  Viva la Goop!! 

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