I have found myself increasingly lost in the wilderness during these dystopian times, dominated by clashing views on what is the truth. I’ve been urgently searching for familiar landmarks to help guide my way home.
One landmark came into view from reading the Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset, who lived through the chaos of the first half of the 20th century: The whole world was in armed turmoil and his government in transition – as I fear ours might be now – from democracy to dictatorship.
His solution was to take time out to turn inward to find the truth: “Few are the people who in these latter days still enjoy that tranquility which permits one to choose the truth…. Almost all the world is in tumult, is beside itself, and when man is beside himself he loses his most essential attribute: the possibility of … withdrawing into himself to … define what it is that he believes.”
“Without such respite,” Ortega continues, a person becomes “beside himself,” a zombie, “forced to act mechanically in a frenetic somnambulism.”
That describes my psychological state, especially since the advent of the present administration: somewhere between zombie and frenetic sleepwalker.
How do I withdraw inward to regain my tranquility? That became the question. As I looked back over my long life, I came across another landmark – one other time when I felt as I do now.
The first time was during the 1960s, after a euphoric beginning when my generation idealistically – but naively – believed that we were the leading edge of a wave that was going to sweep in a new era of peace and justice, simplicity and sustainability.
Tragically, the wave stalled as the Vietnam War dragged on endlessly, killing tens of thousands of us and hundreds of thousands of peasants; meanwhile our heroes were assassinated, one after another, including JFK, MLK and RFK. Our out-of-control, imperial president then enlarged the war, invading Cambodia, and students were gunned down by the National Guard.
Metastasizing polarization turned peaceful protest into armed mayhem.
The feeling I had then was what I feel today – and what Ortega y Gasset was feeling in his time and place. A breaking point comes when it all becomes too much and one must withdraw into oneself.
I dropped out of my sociology graduate program where I felt like a faceless cog in an academic machine, and joined the back-to-the-land movement, along with many of my compatriots.
While still advocating for peace and justice, my personal peace came from being nurtured by nature and the land. We grew what we needed – vegetables, chickens, pigs and children – while I earned my living as a dried-laid stone mason.
That was my tranquility, away from the hustle and bustle of a world gone mad.
Without forethought or planning, that is what I find myself slipping back into today.
This realization has become the third landmark back to myself as I find myself rededicated to my gardens and tree farm, even buying a new tractor. But the final element was a big surprise, even to me.
The germ of the idea materialized when Russet and I were put in an altered state by the patter of a waterfall at a Buddhist retreat two winters ago.
The vision gained momentum when an old friend recently gave me an 8-foot-long pane of frosted glass from the door of an old bank. Indestructible, almost one-inch thick, it could be the makings of a momentous waterfall.
To incorporate the majestic glass into a worthy water feature required some serious stonework. Lucky I have my new tractor.
A final gift came after starting my waterfall: how becoming reacquainted with the rhythm of working with stone in the web of nature erased time back to a blissful era long past.
(Jean Stimmell is a semi-retired psychotherapist living with the two women in his life, Russet the artist and Coco the Plott hound, in Northwood. He blogs at jeanstimmell.blogspot.com.)