“To give your sheep or cow a large spacious meadow is the way to control him. So it is with people: first let them do what they want, and watch them. This is the best policy. To ignore them is not good; that is the worst policy. The second worst is trying to control them. The best one is to watch them, just to watch them, without trying to control them.” - Shunryu Suzuki
My life has been a long sorrow broken by moments of incandescent grace, a grace that sometimes threatens to permanently overwhelm me, but the time is not quite yet. There are too many details to the sorrow — my father’s alcoholism, rejection compounded by rejection, a large inquisitive mind confined by the narrowness of circumstances — so a Zen brushstroke will have to do.
The grace has come in different forms. There has been the grace of the Sierra Nevada standing high outside the front window of my youth and looming over the fields where I worked with my grandfather — a grace of place that worked to ease the pain of existence.
I encountered the grace of family when I was 42 and a good woman and her five-year old daughter entered my life, allowed me to be husband and father. There is a grace to the willing sacrifice, of loving a child so much that one can no longer hold on to the old habits and opinions that governed reality for so long.
Once I was asked how I could be such a successful parent with the history that I had had to endure. I replied, “I was always present for my daughter and I gave her a large pasture. Her pasture was always slightly larger than her reach so that she never felt imprisoned. She always knew that I loved her.” This type of love requires a full presence and awareness, qualities of which I would have been incapable without the sacrifice of my prejudices and complaints. She is now a happy woman, intelligent, caring, and free.
There has been the grace of old men who stopped to show me the way. It began with my grandfather in the fields, wordlessly connecting me to the soil beneath my feet. Another old man just let me tell him stories and in turn told me stories populated with men searching for the true nature of things. He once told me of standing unseen behind me and my and new family as my daughter sat upon my shoulders to take in the view. He wept with joy for my good fortune.
Article comments
1 - Victor Lana
John, this is simply magnificent. We all write for our own reasons, but you illuminate yours so well. I wish you all the best with your writing now and in the years ahead.
2 - Elvira Black
Terrific post, John. Thanks for this glimpse into your life and soul and what drives you to write, as all true writers must.
3 - Richard Marcus
John, Beautifully articulate as usual. You really have a talent for litteraly going to the heart of the matter. I stand in awe and envy that ability to send your arrows on such a direct path to their target. Mine seem to waver in flight, take weird directions, and the final approach is circumspect at best.
Finding the balance between spirt and reality and avoiding the deadfalls of "newagism" is the challange facing authors who write along the lines you have chosen. As usual you navigate that difficult path flawlessly.
The difference is that you don't write for self-glorification or set yourself up as something above the rest of the struggling masses. You ask the right questions, and talk about your search for the answers, which is far more important then saying you know the answers.
Richard Marcus
4 - John Spivey
Victor, Elvira, Richard--
I thank you all for your kind words. Sometimes the words work.
John