from BLACK BART BRIGADE #2
Almost inevitably, when we face the fearful, the difficult, the threatening, we fall back upon some kind of moral precept like responsibility or maturity to justify our cautions. We tell ourselves, and others, that regardless of our desires, 'reality' requires that we continue in the bind of non-fulfillment and futility. There is a certain basis of truth in the retreat -- there always is when we have to force some bitter pill down our throat. There are indeed such realities as mortgages and 'mouths to feed', but to let it stop there and use these as reasons, beyond any further point of discussion, for throwing the remainder of our lives into bottomless pits, is the sheerest kind of irrational rationalization. We might as well be advocating a prison sentence because it's raining outdoorsl
Many of us are aware that such reasoning is insubstantial, so we carry it one step closer to acceptability and tell ourselves 'one of these days' or 'maybe in a few years' when the kids are out of school or the economy is better. Thus, we preserve for ourselves the illusion that we can step off the treadmill at any time we choose. But year after year, the right time somehow never seems to arrive. Always something interferes, and we call that something 'reality' -- a kind of unmovable, intractable, absolute truth which cannot be argued because it is, after all, a fact.
Many years ago, and quite by accident, I learned that reality is a framework of vision, which is just as capable of deliberate structuring as any building or piece of writing may be. I answered a want-ad calling for "men of high ambition who want unlimited income". I was a callow youth at the time, as were the other half-dozen applicants who were gathared outside in front of the locked office door. In a spontaneous moment of fun, I strode briskly up to those others and in the most strident tone I could command, I asked, "Are you 'men of high ambition who want unlimited income?" Much to my surprise, because I'd only intended it as an ice-breaker, they all snapped to attentive attitudes and "yessir"ed me almost in unison. Quite suddenly, I was no longer a fellow job-seeker, but the one who held their immediate future in my hands. In that moment, I had fabricated a 'reality' which had no bearing in fact, but they were ready to follow my fabrication, had I chosen to pursue it.
So there is a large difference between fact and reality. Reality is a way of seeing things, an operational framework, and it is capable of infinite variation, even given the same substantial set of facts. We can allow it to govern us, we can ignore it -- thereby changing it -- or we can deliberately create it, out of whole cloth, as it were. The question which naturally follows is: "So what? How doos a make-believe reality alter the facts of mortgage payments, job scarcity, pension plans, etc.?" The answer is that it does not alter facts; it's not intended to -- it alters our vision of those facts, our evaluation of them, and our approach to resolving them. It breaks us out of a self-limiting viewpoint and permits us to deal creatively with situations which previously seemed to have no creative possibilities.
If we pause to think about it, each of us has a large amount of precedent in our own life in structuring and altering reality. We have all made transitions from child to spouse to parent, from student to occupational specialist, in many cases from supervised to supervisor. Natural transitions, yes, but in each instance we have assumed a different role, and to some large degree our life pattern was altered in the process; often our entire relationship to the world around us altered with it. None of these transitions was inevitable. We made choices, we moved toward goals, we pursued directions of our own free will, and the reality which exists today for the accountant with a large corporation is totally different from that of tho Peace Corps field worker in Guatemala, even though both of them may have derived from the same neighborhood, the same school, even the same family. What, then, is so strange about the concept that we can shape our own reality? The question is not 'if', but 'how'.
In our urgency to make the 'reality' argument as powerful a restraint as possible -- and by inference, a kind of proof that it is intentionally, if subconsciously, used as a restraint -- we invariably limit it to the single big 'key' reality: the obstacle which is, to all appearances, truly incontestable. We have to stay with the Dingbat Company because we've invested 15 years in their retirement plan (and who would dare challenge the wisdom of that?), or because we could never get that kind of salary anywhere else (and no prudent, 'realistic' person could question that), or because we are one step from department managership (and only a fool would throw that away, to begin again somewhere else!). This is called hard, cold reality, and it has been running (ruining!) lives for years. It is also hard, cold reality -- though we seldom give it equal billing -- that the daily pressure and tension is giving us ulcers (but: "you've gotta stand up to it, man"), that we've come to know little more about our family than their first names (but: "we're all in the same boat, friend"), and that we really wanted to be a writer in the first place (but: "that was only a 'phase'; grow up!"). Isn't it apparent that we deal with reality right now in whatever fashion we find convenient?
Making the 'so what' philosophy work for us
Since we are quite capable of applying the "So What" philosophy to those realities we choose to sweep under the rug, why shouldn't it work equally well with the Bogey Man realities? Fifteen years investment in a pension plan? So What! Can't get that kind of money anywhere else? So what, pal, you've gotta stand up to it! Does it sound so strange? Does it seem so impossible? It shouldn't, because that's the first real step to changing your reality. Once we are able to get behind that invisible barrier of impossibility, once we can seriously speculate upon the possibility of doing the unreasonable, the imprudent, the self-centered, if you will, then we can get down to the very realistic business of making it work because we know we can and we know we want to.
When I was a small kid, I was the butt of a lot of laughter because I was the only one on the block who could not leapfrog over a certain fire hydrant. It seemed that I would pull up short each time I came to it, because I was afraid that I couldn't make it. One day I resolved to do or die, and I threw all of my effort into it and sailed clear over the thing. All it had taken was the assumption that I could do it.
Making a dream work does not mean changing the facts, it means deciding to cope with them. If it is a fact, as it invariably is, that dropping a job, a career, an entire background of experience, will result in a sizeable loss of income, then that becomes not an insurmountable obstacle, but one that we will find ways of coping with. If it is a fact that we are discarding some planned old-age security (if there is such a thing), then we are going to find ways or concepts that will replace it, These things are all possible once we begin to approach them as possibilities,
Even at this point we have not disposed o£ the problem of 'reality', for reality is not only a set of mind, it is a total framework of reference. Many millions of Americans are living in a state of abject poverty, in the midst of affluence, because they are compelled to survive on incomes in the area of $3600 per year. They live it as poverty, and they feel it as poverty because their framework of reference is that of a deprived minority which has always been denied the basic comforts that most of us take for granted. We, in turn, see it as poverty because we cannot conceive of a pleasurable life at that level, having accustomed ourselves to much more, Yet, I and many others like me have adopted a framework of reality which focuses on a sense of internal well-being as the point of reference, rather than material or external well-being. Thus fortified, we are living, most of us, on less than $3600 per year and experiencing no sense of poverty whatsoever.
How does money relate to freedom?
If this seems unreal to you, let me recount another incident which took place just a few weeks ago. A friend and I were discussing the idea of personal freedom -- I from my own standpoint, and he as a fairly well-paid systems analyst with a local bank He expressed the common wish that he could be earning enough so that he would be able to work or not, as he chose. I replied that the more he earned, the less likely that could be. Naturally, that didn't make any sense from his framework of reference. Aren't all of us, after all, working with that very hope, of 'buying' our way out of the system? But consider this: The person in the really upper income bracket has a lifestyle adjusted to income, and has monthly obligations in the thousands of dollars. That person cannot afford to let go of whatever source of income covers those obligations. On the other hand, the one who lives on relatively little has few obligations, little income requirement, and can afford to move almost at will, Even if reduced to occasional charity or unemployment insurance, there is no threat to survival, nor certainly to standard of living, So who, in reality, has the greater freedom?
Reality is a framework of reference which governs the way we experience our own lives. Wealth or poverty, excitement or dreariness, even the sense of freedom or slavery -- these are all personal perceptions of reality, and they bear little relation to facts, sometimes none at all. They are the essence of experience as it is filtered through personal value structures. This should be readily apparent to all of us who have lived through the recent upheaval in our national value structure and have observed the alteration of national reality, but we have difficulty applying the principle to our personal lives. Very simply put: as our value structure becomes more oriented toward the intangibles of freedom, wholeness and fulfillment, we have less and less concern for the material things which formerly comprised our value structure. And that is no delusion; it is a very real and liberating manifestation of a basic truth.
It should really not be so difficult to accept. We have unconsciously employed the phenomenon of value-oriented reality all our lives in denying ourselves the many things that have been made to seem unreasonable by commitment to a material value structure, We have accepted, graciously and almost willingly, patterns of existence which tie us down to scheduled, repetitious, pressured lives because we have experienced material things as wealth, Now, we confront the possibility that wealth may consist of other things, but we cannot rid ourselves of the hangup that poverty is yet an economic thing. It is not; it is solely a state of perception, just as wealth is. When we enter that stage of awareness which truly values intangible wealth more than material wealth, there is no difficulty at all in removing the chains that bind us to a high level of income.
There are yet other ways of altering reality as a framework of reference. We are a very chameleon-like kind of creature, and we can use that circumstance to deliberately structure whatever kind of life we would like to lead. This is one potential of the dropout experience which is seldom seen in its fullest context of possibility because of the fear and hesitancy which normally accompany any effort to break out of the mold. We try to change our lives by bits and pieces, clinging as much as possible to our prior security patterns, which is understandable and often necessary. But by so doing, we also dissipate much of the potentially rewarding impact of the change.
The potential that is there is almost incredible. Each of our lives, however it is currently structured, is a complex of predictabilities. We know this to be true in the sense of activities, time patterns and spending habits, These concerns alone offer almost unlimited possibilities of change. But what we don't often think about is predictabillty in terms of our own personalities -- the ways in which we respond to people, the assessment that other people make of us, which in turn is reflected in our assessment of ourselves, and the ways in which those assessments quite literally limit our range of activity and interest. How many times have we wished we could be or do something that our status in life, whatever it may be, clearly does not support; or that no one would understand, and hence would be considerably out of character and subject to all manner of ridicule? How many of us put the burden of our dreams on those short periods of life that are 'out of bounds' by mutual consent -- vacations, business trips, even the once-yearly Christmas party or company picnic -- simply because we can't risk being ourselves in the normal course of activity?
What more beautiful gift of life, then, could we achieve, than a total severance of our social framework? It is like walking out upon a stage where we have performed the same identical characterization day after day, year in, year out, and suddenly finding no audience. We don't have to act! We can do handsprings or sing at the top of our lungs, and no one is there to put us down! Or -- and what is far more to the point -- we can begin to structure an ontirely new characterization. Anyone we come in contact with, from here on out, will know only the new portrayal, and we will get neither raised eyebrows nor incredulous stares because there is no precedont to be contrasted with.
The prime limitation, of course, is the contrast we make with our own past, in our own heads. It is a real personal challenge to change our own self-image, even though we know for a fact that no one else can be wise to the change. But here is where the chameleon-like quality comes to the rescue. If we walk the streets of Rome, dress like Romans, and begin to talk like Romans, we become Romans, And the process has limitless applications. We can become scholars, hippies, artists, revolutionaries, adventurers, cultists -- you name it,
No, the basic person does not change. It merely emerges. No one has the desire to become a revolutionary or an artist without also having long-standing, long-buried impulses and attitudes in those directions. We simply become what has always been there in us. We discard a layer of self which has been schooled and groomed, patterned and particularized down to the kind of shoes we wear, and let loose the unique and real person who has been confined underneath. The course of life then becomes one of following impulse, reacting without restraint, associating with those to whom we are naturally attracted and finding a lifestyle in which we can be comfortable, relaxed and happy.
This is not to suggest that it can be an immediate thing. It is a search, which may take months or years. Most of us will not even consciously know the direction we want to travel as we begin the journey. Some will have a point of beginning in mind, but even that can be misleading. After all, how easy is it to see behind a lifelong frame of reference? Achievement in school, selection of a career based on some combination of status and income possibilities, competitive jockeying to make the right impression on the right people -- how long has it been since we have known just who we really are? The only thing of which we can be fairly sure is the framework we want to leave behind, and that tells us almost nothing of where we want to go.
For that reason, and many others, there can be no such thing as the career we want to pursue, or the life we want to lead. This is a concept which hangs up many, many people who are willing and thirsting for change, but who are waiting for the right inspiration or opportunity to come along -- the one they can be certain of. To begin with, it's an unnecessarily limiting concept. Why should we have only one more chance at life? Why not two, four, or as many as we can cram into our remaining years? Simply because we have already spent half a lifetime, or thereabouts, going in only one direction? Beautiful! -- we are now aware of the complete frustration of that kind of dedication. Because 'success' takes time? Only in terms of money or reputation does it take time. Awareness, pleasure, even status, are instantaneous with the act of doing. If the income is small to begin with, we are simply back to our first point of reality -- it's a problem that can be coped with in a hundred creative ways.
But before we throw the Monday-morning uniform into the garbage can, there is one very real and very powerful obstacle we have to consider. Totally outside the usual range of realities by which we structure our lives, is a deceptively quiescent one called emotional security, It is the sum product of all the realities rolled into one, and it operates on a gut level in each of us. It literally demands of us some familiar anchor points, be they large or small; some constant point or points of reference. The extent of that demand varies considerably for each of us, but it might well include a family, a home, a familiar activity, a single close friend, or even the environmental security of a known and friendly community. It may require only one of these or several, but once denied its sufficient level, it is capable of making our life a living hell of anxiety for as long as the deficiency exists.
Just as with other problems, howevor, there are ways of coping with it. The first is to expect it; it is not nearly as powerful or potent as it might be, if we know it's going to happen and are able to understand it. The second is to meet it halfway by maintaining, to whatever extent possible within our design for change, a structure of former security; just enough by which to keep our bearings. The third is to accomodate it by establishing new patterns of familiarity, in people,places and activity, just as quickly as we can. The fourth is to keep deliberately busy each day; occupied with a specific and planned program of activity, even (and especially) if it only consists of things like walking in the woods or going fishing, the objective being to go where the head feels good. The fifth is to let our feelings come out, in whatever form is most easily accessible -- writing, talking, singing (yes, there are sad and lonely songs, when you need them) -- permitting real emotional awareness to guide our choice of activity and movement. That last may sound strange to people who have spent most of their lives doing scheduled and 'rational' things, but it is the most effective weapon of all against the strange sense of unreality and confusion which comes from a loss of emotional security,
The hazard is mainly for those who attempt a complete break with the past. Less drastic change is more easily controlled, and not likely to encounter that point at which freedom becomes anxiety. The thing to note, however, is that each of us does have that point of balance, and it is a danger point that should bo carefully respected, for it's capable of wrecking the most carefully laid plan of change if it is not handled properly. Unfortunately, its exact location is an empirical piece of knowledge that can only be gained by reaching or passing it. And it may not even be found at the same place in successive encounters -- it can appear to stretch or recede, although it is fairly fixed at any one moment in our lives,
What this means, in practical terms, is that we should be prepared for some rough going and maybe even some retrenchment, before finding a level at which we can stabilize It is a bridge to cross, and -- let's face it -- a difficult and uncompromising bridge, but not by any means impassable. Once safely across it, there is no desire and seldom any later need to return. You might somehow find it worthwhile to cross the bridge again someday, but if you do, the route has been learned, and there is never again any real threat or hazard in doing it, except perhaps overconfidence.
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