Accepting the good and the bad elements of life has really been weighing on me a lot lately, because I've been trying to decide whether it's better to view life as basically bad and spoiled (with some positive surprises) or better to view life as basically good overall (with some negative surprises). I basically came to the conclusion that every single moment and aspect of life is filled with good things and bad things. I think that calling life good OR bad is creating an artificial image that isn't often (if ever) really true and it's an easy lie that we want to tell ourselves. Life sucks. Life is beautiful. We want to create that definition for life because it's easier and it's easier because if we can define life, then to some small extent, we are in control of life; we know what to expect, so we aren't quite so out of control. It is much harder to just accept every part of life that happens to you, and let it happen to you, recognizing that most things are really out of your control. It's harder, but I'm realizing that in the end, it's a much better life.
So I've been thinking a lot about this radical acceptance thing, and about looking every moment in the eye, good or bad, and letting myself really feel it and embrace it, and then give it to God.
In another talk this week, I heard someone talk about a sense of inner conflict that is almost an emotion, a not-rightness, and how this pain always comes from a real conflict - I think he used the word 'discrepancy' - so instead of complaining and bemoaning the melancholy and trying to fix the emotion, we should accept the emotion and take some time to sit down and ask ourselves what the discrepancy is.
I've been struggling with a strong, almost-overpowering sense of inner conflict for several months now. I have wondered if I am again dealing with depression, and I don't rule that out, so my response has been not to let myself slump, not to fall into myself, as it were. I tell myself that I have no reason to feel conflicted, because - in nearly every way - my life is better right now than it has been in a very long time. I'm doing what I want to be doing, and - though there is more financial frustration than I've ever had before - there is not really anything that I think, "If I could change this, I would be happy." So I've done exactly what maybe I shouldn't do, which is to combat the sense of melancholy without even stopping to ask the source of melancholy.
When the speaker talked about stopping to find the discrepancy that needs to be fixed, I did just that, and have spent the past three or four days trying to figure out what the discrepancy is, with no luck. Last night was particularly intense and unpleasant for me, so this morning, when I listened to a song by Joanna Newsom called "Monkey and Bear", I suddenly had a sense of what the discrepancy is, and I realized that they were right: fear of death - unwillingness to accept death - pervades everything, even if (like me) you don't really see yourself as afraid of death.
I haven't exactly figured out what the discrepancy is for me except that it has to do with fears so deep I almost can't touch them, so I think I want to just show you the lyrics to the song, which I transcribed as prose since I want to focus on the story of the song more than the lyricism or poetry of it.
I guess I had a moment when I thought, "I am Bear," and then a minute later, "I am Monkey," and a minute after that, "I am both Bear and Monkey," and a red light went off that said: discrepancy!
I guess for me, Bear is the beast who years to be wild and the artist and the believer, and Monkey is the pragmatist, who wants to be fed more than to be free. And yet it's not that simple, because freedom was Monkey's idea, and the story is told from his perspective, even though everyone dislikes Monkey and loves Bear. If I see myself as both Monkey and Bear, it is all directed at myself. My Monkey (that sounds hilarious) is enslaving my Bear, but it's all still me, all of it! And I'm afraid that Bear is dying...
So here I am feeling that. How do I accept that? Where do I go with that?
Down in the green hay, where Monkey and Bear usually lay, they woke from a stable-boy's cry.
He said, "Someone come quick! The horses got loose, got grass-sick! They'll founder! Fain, they'll die."
What is now known by the sorrel and the roan? By the chestnut, and the bay, and the gelding grey? It is: stay by the gate you are given, and remain in your place, for your season, and had the overfed dead but listened to that high-fence, horse-sense, wisdom...
"Did you hear that, Bear?" said Monkey, "We'll get out of here, fair and square. They've left the gate open wide! So, my bride, here is my hand, where is your paw? Try and understand my plan, Ursula. My heart is a furnace: full of love that's just, and earnest. Now you know that we must unlearn this allegiance to a life of service, and no longer answer to that heartless hay-monger nor be his accomplice. (That charlatan, with artless hustling!) But Ursula, we've got to eat something and earn our keep while still within the borders of the land that man has girded (All double-bolted and tight-fisted!) until we reach the open country, a-steeped in milk and honey.
"Will you keep your fancy clothes on, for me? Can you bear a little longer to wear that leash? My love, I swear by the air I breathe: sooner or later, you'll bare your teeth. But for now, just dance, darling. C'mon, will you dance, my darling? Darling, there's a place for us. Can we go, before I turn to dust? Oh my darling, there's a place for us. Oh darling, c'mon will you dance, my darling? Oh, the hills are groaning with excess like a table ceaselessly being set. Oh my darling, we will get there yet."
They trooped past the guards, past the coops, and the fields, and the farmyards, all night, until finally the space they gained grew much farther than the stone that Bear threw to mark where they'd stop for tea.
"But walk a little faster and don't look backwards. Your feast is to the East, which lies a little past the pasture. When the blackbirds hear tea whistling, they rise and clap, and their applause caws the kettle black, and we can't have none of that! Move along, Bear; there, there; that's that."
Though cast in plaster, our Ursala's heart beat faster than Monkey's ever will.
But still, they have got to pay the bills, hadn't they? That is what the monkey would say.
So, with the courage of a clown, or a cur, or a kite, jerking tight at its tether, in her dun-brown gown of fur, and her jerking of swansdown and leather, Bear would sway on her hind legs; the organ would grind dregs of song for the pleasure of the children, who would shriek, throwing coins at her feet then recoiling in terror.
"Sing, dance, darling. C'mon, will you dance, my darling? Oh darling, there's a place for us. Can we go, before I turn to dust? Oh my darling, there's a place for us. Oh darling, c'mon, will you dance, my darling? You keep your eyes fixed on the highest hill where you'll ever-after eat your fill. Oh my darling, dear, mine, if you dance I love you still."
Deep in the night shone a weak and miserly light where the monkey shouldered his lamp. Someone had told him the bear had been wandering a fair piece away from where they were camped. Someone had told him the bear had been sneaking away
To the seaside caverns to bathe. And the thought troubled the monkey for he was afraid of spelunking down in those caves. Also afraid what the village people would say if they saw the bear in that state: lolling and splashing obscenely. It seemed irrational, really, washing that face, washing that matted and flea-bit pelt in some sea-spit-shine, old kelp dripping with brine.
But monkey just laughed, and he muttered, "When she comes back, Ursala will be bursting with pride until I jump up, saying, 'You've been rolling in muck!' saying, 'You smell of garbage and grime!'"
But far out, by now, Bear ploughed because she would not drown: first the outside-legs of the bear up and fell down, in the water, like knobby garters. Then the outside-arms of the bear fell off, as easy as if sloughed from boiled tomatoes. Low'red in a genteel curtsy, Bear shed the mantle of her diluvian shoulders; and, with a sigh, she allowed the burden of belly to drop like an apron full of boulders.
If you could hold up her threadbare coat to the light where it is worn translucent in places, you would see spots where, almost every night of the year, Bear had been mending suspending that baseness. Now her coat drags through the water, bagging, with a life's-worth of hunger, limitless minnows.
In the magnetic embrace, balletic and glacial of Bear's insatiable shadow; left there! Left there! When Bear left Bear. Left there! Left there! When Bear stepped clear of Bear.
"Sooner or later you'll bury your teeth."
