Every Day Carry

Every Day Carry

Old coot wisdom is seldom easily imparted. In fact, it is often downright unkind. But it has value, nonetheless.

Originally shared by Alvin Stearns

Think like water

It is the most Buddha thing my Grandfather ever said to me.  It blew my small young mind.  Think like a thing that is not me, that does not even have a mind.  OK!  I was in.  Hesitantly.  Fearfully.

I was under my grandparents' mobile home in the clearing in the old growth pine forest.  I was about ten years old.  He'd sent me in because I was ten, small, and could get to the pipe needing attention.  
I protested.  I had no idea why he was sending me into the spider-infested dankness.  Did I do something wrong?  He talked to me about water.  Water?  What?  I was ten, what did I know about pipes and basic domestic functions?  I needed context!

All my life, all I've ever need is context.  Why is our civilization so bad at that?

"What am I looking for?" I begged as I kicked my legs to push myself into shadows and surely-monster-filled awfulness.  He drawled, taking the cigarette from his mouth, "The pipe, boy!  The leak!"

I stopped.  Listened.  I heard--something.  But, this was not my environment.  I was scared of this environment.  Why am I here?!  "I don't know..." I think I said, or something like that.

I could hear my Grandfather's consternation.  He'd grown up on a Southern farm only miles from our then-location.  Poor.  He'd battled Nazis from North Africa to Berlin.  He was God.  To me.  I didn't want to appear weak.  I was just, simply, lost.

"Think like water!" he bellowed.

Think like water.  I breathed.  In the dark.  Think like water.  I let my senses reach out.  I'd heard it.  There.  The sound.  Water.  Dripping.

"I think I hear it," I said.  A grunt from outside, in the light, in the world.

Think like water.  I followed the sound.  Drip.  Drip.  I pushed out my hand.  Wetness.

"I found it!" I called.

Together, my Grandfather and I fixed a leaking pipe under his mobile home that day.  It was a lesson in fear and trust.  Mostly, it was a lesson in getting outside of myself and becoming the thing that I must find, must diagnosis, must make right.  Even in my fear.

Fear is a constant.  It is there to keep you alive.  But, it fixes nothing.

Fear is a moment.  Fight or flight.  Not a lifestyle or a remedy.

You can get hurt, yes.  You might even die.  But, harm and death don't matter.  You'll always get hurt, even if you take every precaution.  You will surely die, no matter your diet, habits, image or celebrity.

So.  Relax.

Think like water.

Or fire.

Or pain.

Or insanity.

Get outside of yourself and empathize with the thing that's creating the problem.  If you can't feel it on some level, yourself, you'll never be an effective problem solver.  At best you'll be useless, at worst you'll be a mindless destroyer.

Also, you don't ever want your Grandfather to believe you're too afraid to crawl into the spider-infested darkness when he tells you to. 

Today I checked the gas lines to the heater in the garage.  I baby that old gas furnace.  It's needed, it keeps the garage at a constant 50 degrees Fahrenheit, making the husband's morning commute more comfortable, but mostly keeping the water pipes for the apartment above freezing.  I need that heater to work.  To do its job.

Today, it's perfect.  Hopefully, perfection continues through another winter.  Maine winters are long.  Often brutally cold.  I need the fire to burn.

Soon I'll go outside to think like water.  Where will water do what it must not this winter?  How do I convince water to do otherwise?  I mean, besides the usual offerings.

My Grandfather, a god of my childhood, was a poor son of Southern farmers.  He had little education.  He smoked.  He made moonshine.  He drank that moonshine.  He was a racist of the American variety.  He spit upon the Christian god, but he adored the old ways and old stories, told them to me, showed me.  He was, I suppose, an archaic form of a redneck cracker.  But, to me, he was man and magic and divine.  

I don't know why I hold so many of his meaningful beliefs and have easily brushed aside his divisive beliefs.  I'm not sure that that even matters.  If I'd become more like him, I'd be just one more drip-drip of water upon the foundations of our world, a world that scorns the old ways, unless those ways involve dividing us.  What's one more drip?  I'd probably be more confident, feel happier, have more money, have so much less to think about.  if it came to courage and bravery, I don't think I'd ever be his equal.  He was astonishingly strong.  He'd faced horrors I can only imagine.  He was not the great at providing context, but in his lapses he gave me a hunger to find them.

He gave me a knife for my seventh birthday, telling me that a man must always have a knife.  Again, no context, but I keep the knife close to this day.  It's tiny, I smile to hold it.  It seemed so big and terrible, then.  I have a better knife now.  But, I keep the one he gave me.  I kind of get it now.  Not like he got it, his context.  He knew.  I just intuit.

He taught me to think like water.

No Christian sermon ever gave me more than my Grandfather gave to me.  He made me afraid.  He told me wonderful stories.  He made me keep going.  He put me outside of myself, helped me realize that there is a universe outside out of my own head.  He showed me that taking care of home is the greatest thing a man can ever do.  We are limited.  But, in our limitations there is much we can claim, and do, and make better.

Even if it's just fixing a leaking pipe.  In the dark.  In the spider-infested dark where you never imagined yourself going.  When the water is leaking, yes, you belong there.  Deal with it.  Make it better.

Fear is constant.  Fear fixes nothing.

So, be afraid.  Then, breathe.  Relax.  Think like (fill in the blank).  Then?  Act.  With intelligence and purpose.  Do something.  Make it better.

There is always a context.  If you don't know it after the events?  Hell, make up something, then share it for others so they can start to assemble the scary, shocking pieces and make sense of it all.

You are, after all, the creator.  You take care of people and things.  And when you have to, you make it up as you go along.  That is the duty of a creator.  Spin meaning out of experience.  Lie if you have to.  Don't ever leave part of somebody else in that dark place.  Home is what you make.

Finally.  It's OK to be afraid.  Fear is constant.  It helps keep you alive.  But, it's never where you should stop or end.  There's always something beyond your fear.  A problem.  Something that probably isn't even part of your fear.  But something that needs you to deal with it.  Think.  Feel.  Become the problem.  Then?  Act.  Make it better.

And choose your knife.  Keep it close.  Know where it is.  A man or woman must have his or her knife.  It hardly matters that you may never use it.  Context?  It's the symbol of your power.  So. Claim it.  Keep it close.

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