Jan 9, 2021

And, God said, "Let there be dance."

Let’s get the serious stuff out of the way, early in the year.

2020 put our fears and anxieties on the center stage. Normally, we push them to the background. We are forever discovering new ways to keep them from surfacing. Then comes along a year like 2020, rudely interjecting unreality into the reality of usual distractions. At some point, each of us went, “Goddang. This is unreal. Entire nations shutting down. Machinery cranking to a halt. I’ve never seen this before. And yet, somehow everything appears normal on the surface. What really is real?”

Much of 2020 played out in the mental dimension. While Covid-19’s death toll was and is devastating, its mental toll, I fear, is ten-fold. Our bodies are fairly robust things. They are used to being knocked around, getting up and carrying on. They will stay reasonably fit if we walk them around a few miles in a week. Our minds, on the other hand, are fragile and poorly equipped. This beautifully organized central nervous system that we have come to consider The Mind is a feedback control system. Its job is to create Loops so life may continue to thrive. Believe it or not, this is Bad News for those of us with minds, which is nearly all of us. We are prisoners entangled in Loops, even as we confidently proceed with the assumption that Free Will, Individualism, Reason and Thoughtful Control can come together to produce coherence and help us prevail. And, something like 2020 happens to upend that assumption.

What’s startling is, we’ve spent our whole lives on setting ourselves up for this fiasco. From day one, we have trained ourselves to Control, rather than to Trust. To believe that Control leads to Life and Anarchy leads to Death. It is not surprising that the mighty human race was brought swiftly to its knees by an invisible, microscopic speck, smaller than the smallest predator, and more insidious than the largest one. While the virus preyed on some of our bodies, it seized all of our minds.

We humans are peculiar for our awareness of Time. We are capable of predicting things. The price we pay for our predictive powers is Anxiety. The good news, we learned last year, is that we can resist anxiety. Other than creating loops, our minds can do two things well: Self-Awareness and Self-Control. Those of us who reached into the toolbox for them were the better for it in 2020. There were extraordinary acts of courage, kindness, generosity, and compassion amidst the gloom. There was an amazing outpouring of creativity on Insta, Youtube and Tiktok. Robots danced. People sang, drew, spoke and wrote. They learned languages. Thanks to Duolingo, you could learn to say, “I have a thousand cat photos on my phone” in Mandarin if the situation ever called for it. There were some beautiful moments. We even had an Alpaca from a farm in upstate New York on one of our work Zoom calls to relieve the tedium.

We like to think of Life as a Journey, like going on a train or a bus. We get on the train, and it goes from place to place. When death comes, we get off it . This is the story we tell ourselves. In times like these, it fails us. I was on this lovely train, headed somewhere nice. I was told there’d be a goody waiting for me at the end, if I followed some basic rules. And, someone, something.. rudely yanked the chain and brought the train to a screeching halt. “Hey, am I still getting my goody?”

Life-as-a-Journey implies a start and a destination, a today and a tomorrow, a purpose, reasons, maps, plans, tracks, stations, flags waving, and other such things. Tomorrow never comes. When we realize that there never was and is no goody waiting for us, we feel vaguely that we are about to be cheated. Instead, how about Life as a Dance? A movement that follows music. Music and dance have no purpose. Music and dance don’t exist so they can start, or finish, or anything in between. They are all of it. There’s the Dance of Creation. There’s the Music in our Hearts. And, there’s Our Own Little Dance. From all of it, great meaning arises.

Speaking of music, 2020 had its moments. Taylor Swift’s double, back-to-back album drops in the last month helped add to a cautious but growing recovery in my spirits. If you’re a dad of two young women, there’s no escaping Taylor Swift. But, I’ve got to say, she is the real deal. A superstar. With Folklore and Evermore, it is gratifying to see her come into her own as a song writer with evocative ballads. In the meanwhile, Blake Shelton, country music star, Gwen Stefani’s soon-to-be-husband, and my second favorite judge on The Voice, put out a single (clearly about his love for Gwen), which includes a line in the chorus that goes, "Girl, your love can make a man feel rich on minimum wage." Blake, minimum wage? Seriously? That line doesn’t work, buddy. Not. now. Not. ever.

Among other things, it feels like America has lost its moorings. It’s hard to process a headline that says, “Horned, shirtless man breaches the US Capitol along with 1000s of others,” without a sinking feeling. The end of Modern Rome is near, doomsayers say. Granted, all things eventually come to an end, good or bad. But, how close are we to America’s moment of reckoning? If I were to bet, I’d say, “Hold on. We’re not done yet.” America’s dance didn’t start in 1776, the Year of Independence, or in 1619, when Slavery, its most horrific crime, started, or, even in 1492, when Columbus discovered the New World and ended life as they knew it for the Indigenous Folks. America’s story began a few hundred years before Christ with Aristotle. The idea that man can use intellect and reason to control the world is an ancient one. It shines brighter today than ever, in America, in its belief in Manifest Destiny, and in its ideals of Liberty and Happiness.

America is the latest chapter in a book that Aristotle prefaced and the Europeans authored. Great Good has come out of it. But, vast energies have been spent on promoting a view that, amidst the continuity of Nature, there is an inexplicable break where a Specific and Exclusive Caucasian Exceptionalism begins. Great cathedrals of progress have been built with this view. They have brought Life, Wealth and Power to America. They have administered to our enjoyment, and inspired the occasional poet. But, these cathedrals haven’t inspired a sacred association in our hearts as sites of fulfillment. We are sealed in an impenetrable chamber where the Flame of Progress burns brightly. Some day, the oxygen will run out, and we will be overpowered by poisonous fumes. Or, will we? That is the Question.

A society molds its men and women according to its best ideals. All of its Institutions, Legislatures, Standards of Praise and Condemnation, Conscious and Unconscious Mythologies, and Teachings promote these ideals. The American ideal is of Perfection in Physical, Intellectual and Moral dimensions. Its flawed yet great Constitution stands testament to this ideal. Even as America scaled new heights in the physical and intellectual dimensions, and perhaps because of that, its Moral Fabric frayed. Moral Deficit began to overcome Intellectual Surplus. Oxygen began to yield to Poison. Will a window open and let new air in? Time will tell. For now, the flame burns as brightly as ever. More cathedrals will be built. And, there is plenty left to tell in this story of America, which will alternately jar and inspire the world for decades to come.

As always, stay safe by getting weekly shots of The Vaccine. We have now moved from trials into the mainstream phase, from essential readers to err.. the non-essential ones. Do announce it from the rooftops to One and All. I mean that. Tell. Everyone.

Have a great week ahead. Here’s to the Music and Dance of Life.