A seedling pine

I've been thinking about death a lot lately.

A few weeks before my birthday this year, I made the mistake of attempting to imagine the cessation of my own consciousness, and its left me scarred ever since.

As I imagined my eyes closing in death, the blackness slowly swallowing me up... And then... ??? What was there to imagine if there is no one to imagine it? I ran up against an immovable barrier, and a horror took root at the base of my soul.

This renewed awareness of the impermanence of existence has suffused my life since that moment, at times torturing me in the dark of night, and at other times motivating me to put down my phone and spend time with my son instead.

However, I'm slowly learning to live with it, to befriend it.

It was with these transfigured eyes that I read this brief poem by my favorite poet, the Japanese monk Saigyo (1109-1190) –

A seedling pine in the garden
when I saw it long ago --
years have gone by
and now I hear the storm winds
roaring in its topmost branches–

I heard in Saigyo's brief but evocative words the reminiscence of this tree which was once young, but now having grown, stands tall, and in so doing comes to bear the brunt of what life throws its way. I imagined how the older taller trees had sheltered it from the blast when it was young, until its own time came for it to brace itself against the wind, and to become that bulwark for the seedlings growing up behind it.

I think it's the glory of a pine to put itself straight up into the tops of the trees, to contend with the elements in all their fury. But no tree can start out that way, although it certainly has as its aim that ancient and glorious presence which trees alone seem to exude. It takes time and thousands of hardships known only to the tree itself to eventually thrust itself into the heavens.

As I tarried with this image, I began to ask myself – are we raising our young people to throw themselves up against the storms which rage at the highest altitudes of our civilization? Are we letting too much of that wind through, and stunting their growth, or are we depriving them of the tribulation which would leave tree rings in their trunks? How will these seedlings become strong pines?

From my perspective as a man who is not yet even 30, I fear also that those who are growing old and dying in our society cannot even hear the cry of the battle at all. The hypnotic hum of their assets and their idle leisure drowns out the roaring wind which buffets the young saplings today. The elderly today exhibit a paradoxical habit of at once fleeing life's responsibilities while also refusing to pass the reigns of leadership to those who are coming up after them.

Do they even see the ones who are growing up to face the storm? How can we young ones grow strong and face the storm if the ones ahead of us have turned aside from the task themselves, leaving us to fend for ourselves? I have so many complicated emotions towards my elders, many of them ugly and unpleasant, and they leave me bewildered. This isn't how things should be.

I see men my father's age who are ready and able to lead, but they must wait their turn behind elders who continue to cling to power long past their usefulness. They have lived inside a delusion of perpetual growth for so long that they have become disconnected from the reality of their bodies, their minds, and their world. Instead of becoming wise sages as they were supposed to, many of them have opted to continue parading themselves as old fools.

The young and the old should be the glory of a people – the youth with their ambition and vitality, and the aged with their wisdom and virtue. However, both need each other in order to blossom into the fullness of their respective callings. The old must sense and act upon their duty to the young to lead them, to shield them, and to guide them. The young also must care for the old once the elderly cannot care for themselves, and to have compassion on them in their frailty.

However, there always remains an asymmetry in this relationship. The young can never repay their debt to the old, just as a parent will always love their child more than the child will return that love, although the young can show their gratitude by themselves becoming old and loving the young ones behind them in accordance with the example which was set for them by their elders.

All of this has broken down today. The old feel that they have paid their dues, put in their time, and now life is about them. They have earned the right to enjoy without limit. The young feel that they haven't been given the chance they deserve, that they've been deceived about how the world works, and that now is their time to do things differently. What can we do? Everywhere we are divided, man against woman, husband against wife, child against parent, people against leaders, race against race, and even self against self.

I think that much of the acrimony comes from everyone having a sense that no one will give them what they need, so they have to figure out how to get it for themselves. Our society's relations of interdependence and mutual aid have broken down, leaving us all having to fend for ourselves, and cultivating a sense of desperation which causes us to turn on one another.

Even if we do sometimes feel that we have a duty or obligation to others, we're afraid of being suckered by those arrangements because we've experienced time and again how our social arrangements have not kept their promises – if you work hard and get a good job, you'll be able to buy a house, or if your kids do well in school and go to college they can have a better life than you did, or if you budget and save you'll be able to retire comfortably. We withhold ourselves from each other out of fear that we will give ourselves away and not be cared for in return.

Most people who are not already retired understand that the social and economic deal which the elderly cashed in on will no longer function for future generations. After all, the material conditions which facilitated the United States' unbroken economic expansion starting after WWII was built on historically anomalous conditions, and thus was always unsustainable. Line cannot go up forever.

These things weigh heavy on my mind, as I too have realized that I feel cheated. Growing up, I didn't realize how much I would need to make to own a home or support a family with a basic middle class lifestyle. My parents never discussed money or costs with me – they wanted me to have a care-free childhood where I didn't have to worry about such things. I also know that my parents were raised by their parents with the same culture of secrecy around money, so it was likely the only way that they had known growing up.

I'm thankful for the way my parents raised me, but I do think that those good intentions left me ill equipped to think strategically about future plans and life decisions. It wasn't until senior year of college when I realized that the path I was heading for, a university professor in philosophy, would entail many years of poverty and debt, and ultimately offered only the slimmest of chances to land a job which would not even pay enough to support a family. Even my professors had not forced me to confront this harsh reality as they encouraged me to pursue this path.

But my wife and I are both determined to shake off these feelings of bitterness, to change our perspective, and to adapt to the world which is coming to be. Acceptance is the first step towards changing our world, so that's the project which we find set before us. We're beginning to re-think exactly what kind of life we really want, and whether the middle class lifestyle which we felt was promised to us by the life scripts we inherited from parents and institutions actually constitutes true wealth. As we've reflected, we've begun to notice the cracks in our old perspective.

I think a lot of people are experiencing this kind of reflection and shift in perspective, especially after the pandemic gave many people the opportunity to not be chained to a desk, to spend more time with their families, to not spend their money eating out or amusing themselves, to not sit in a soul-crushing commute all day, and so much more. The question is – what will each of us do with this growing realization? How much are we willing to change our lives in the wake of this shift in perspective?

This post is going on longer than I had expected, so I'm going to exercise some restraint and cut it off here. I will close with this though – I feel that I am that seedling pine, growing through the hardships of many summers and winters, preparing to reach up into the conflicts which rage in the heights of our civilization and the depths of our world. I'm looking for older and stronger pines who can shield me and guide me on that journey, because I want to stand tall someday too. I want to become the wise sage that this young fool needed.

My daughter is due to be born soon, so I'm probably going to be difficult to reach in July and August, but I'm currently lining up some scheduled pieces to keep the lights on here at Samsara Diagnostics. Right now I'm struggling with having too many half-begun ideas which I'm excited about, so we'll see how that shakes out.

I'm continually re-discovering how my writing here at Samsara Diagnostics gives me life. I find that when I'm wrapped up in other projects or deadlines, and consequently neglect regularly posting here, it really begins to affect my headspace. I feel most emotionally regulated and in my groove when I can explore the ideas which are on my mind, and post them here consistently.

Thank you for reading. As always, I'd love to hear from you about any thoughts you've been having lately. Just send me an email at matt[at]samsara.media