Me, age 3, actually fishing... sort of.

The fish are biting and I’m reeling ‘em in, I’m just not posting ‘em. Posting requires so much clean up to make ‘em fit for reading.

Finishing the last chapter of the Tao Te Ching was the catalyst I guess I needed to reevaluate things. I’ve wondered for a while now why I post in the first place.

I mean, the Taoist point of view has to be among the oddest and most ironic subjects to speak on. After all, he who knows does not speak, he who speaks does not know.

So I have to ask myself, if I don’t know, why reveal my ignorance? On the other hand, if I do know, why am I speaking? To be fair, that pithy “He who knows…” statement is not the whole story. On the positive side, trying to write coherently is a fascinating challenge for me, and my observations do appear to benefit a few people. Simply put, I am composing and performing ‘music’, as seen from a mysterious sameness point of view anyway. Now certainly, my ’songs’ are music to nearly no ones ears, but that is just as it should be. Meaning, a Taoist ’song’ seeks to poke through the bio-hoodwink and sing it as ‘it’ is, not as we want ‘it’ to be. Popularity would just be symptomatic of singing it off-key, Taoist-wise.

Tao Te Ching, Word for Word

I just ordered a handful of my just completed translation (see below). We’ll use it here at our monthly meeting along side D.C. Lau’s translation. I think having the nearly literal version to refer to along side D.C. Lau’s version will be helpful. I notice that all translations bear an inherent problem due to relative word meaning. Meaning, when translating the Chinese to English, one must choose one word among several related meanings. Each of these can mean something different in the mind of the beholder – translator and reader alike. On top of this tenuous situation, rest an even fuzzier one for pseudo translations (like Steven Mitchel’s for example), which are actually interpretations of authentic translations. The benefit of correlations is that the process bears none of these problems. The whole responsibility of discerning meaning lies with the bewildered mind of ‘correlator’. Maybe that accounts for its great ‘popularity’.

Next step

I will continue to reevaluate my translation over time to make it more readable when possible, yet with any luck, also more accurate. Still, that may just amount to moving the furniture around the room. Now, with that disclaimer, anyone wishing a copy can buy direct from the printer Lulu. Lulu doesn’t ship abroad, so if anyone outside the USA wants a copy we can work something out. I’d really appreciate any comments, questions and criticisms with an eye to making it better. Great perfection here we come.

Is redundancy the name of the game?

I feel like I’ve said it all before, ad nausium. Still, a constant echo seems to be useful to counteract the bio-hoodwink. Reviewing the view I see in my most balanced moments helps anchor me in my less balanced ones. From what I can tell, that is a common human practice. Forgetting what we truly want of life is all-too-easy!

Adventures of aging

I never remember any old people telling me how fascinating aging was or would be, although if they had, it probably wouldn’t have registered, i.e. one can only understand what one already knows. I seem to be having increasing difficulty remembering things. My mind is becoming blanker. That has some interesting effects; insight seems to flow like water through the void my mind is becoming. This ties into the sleep on it and blind spot issue John Clease spoke about.

On the other hand, I could just be seeing myself more as I actually am rather than the ‘genius’ I once liked to think I was. Yes, that old ‘Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty‘ issue. That offers a twist on the idea of a ’self fulfilling prophecy’. What you think is so prevents you from seeing what is actually so, which make it more like a ’self fulfilling prophecy bubble‘.

Another possibility is that I could be experiencing the beginnings of Alzheimer’s and the hole it produces in memory lead to my final days of insight before the mind’s curtain falls. Speculating is such fun, especially given how life usually turns out differently from anything we think. It is an adventure, that’s for sure!

Shishi odoshi ("deer scarer")

Yes, it is true. The reason it may sound ridiculous is that we are biologically set up to respond positively to gain and negatively to loss. A useful trick I’ve found in life is convincing my hoodwinking emotions of the actual benefit of loss and the hidden downside of gain.

Years of evidence, hard-won through personal experience, helps keep me constantly convinced now.  The Tao Te Ching echos this view in chapter 58, It is on disaster that good fortune perches; It is beneath good fortune that disaster crouches. The proverb “be careful what you wish for, it may come true” points in the same direction.

There are countless examples of this ‘open secret’. Just go throughout the day looking for them, although they are mostly fleeting and subtle. Being that these are subtle, such gain and loss doesn’t trigger emotion strongly enough to make the process easy to notice. When major loss (or gain) occurs, the emotions overwhelm reason and so all you see is one side, feeling either euphoric or miserable. Both emotions blind-side rational impartial observation.

Looking for evidence of this is really quite easy, yet the usual response would probably be, “Why bother spending time and energy on this?” Well that’s easy…  Deal with a thing while it is still nothing; Keep a thing in order before disorder sets in. Without a doubt, the better I know myself, the more likely I am to ‘deal with a thing while it is still nothing‘, and looking deeply into ‘gain and loss’ is simply an essential side of getting to know myself.

The photo here is of a Japanese shishi odoshi (”deer scarer”). Every now and then I’d come across one on the grounds of a Japanese temple. I always assumed it was symbolic of the process: loss brings about gain, gain brings about loss (i.e., when it fills, it empties right away, and then begins filling again). Looking for this photo I discovered its practical and perhaps traditional use. But does it really scare deer away? They are probably smarter than that.

Claiming that I caught the flue for the first time must surely be untrue, but up until now I never ‘knew’ the difference between a cold and the flue. I’ve heard of flue shots and the danger of catching flues, like the bird flue of a few years ago. However, whenever I came down with fluey symptoms I ‘knew’ I just had a cold. Do you see where I’m heading with this?

No? Here’s another example. Up until about 30 years ago I’d never been depressed. I’d heard about people being depressed; I just ‘knew’ I’d never experience it myself. After my six month long episode of  intense, day and night work on the correlations I experienced depression for the first time in my life. But was that really the first time? Like never having caught the flue, never feeling depression until then was most improbable.

I had felt bad at various times throughout my life up until those ‘first times’; I just never knew exactly. A bad time would eventually revolve back to a good one until the next bad one came around again. It felt as natural as, It is on disaster that good fortune perches; It is beneath good fortune that disaster crouches. Of course the cognitive experience of any animal, other than human, would not even have thoughts of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ with which to label the experience. Even so, not attaching a specific label to my experience was more animal-like than otherwise. A more murky (like muddy water) sense of being gives the mind less to dwell upon.

These two experiences exemplify chapter 32, As soon as there are names, one ought to know that it is time to stop. Giving a name to the experience increases the difficulty. Instead of blending in with the forever nameless uncarved block, naming those experiences just ‘hardens the glare, hones the sharpness, opens the door, and ties the knots’.

Evidently stopping at the ‘murky’ side of cognition is not usually what people appear to want. (Or when they do, they crack open a bottle of pop a pill). Most people find no peace of mind until their experience becomes a name that can be named. Although, to be honest, I suppose that’s why I ponder my observations. Writing about all this is just another way of naming ‘it’. Although, on the other hand, I’m always looking for mysterious sameness in order to blur distinctions. What I’m doing sounds a lot like chapter 36. To paraphrase: If you would have a thing blurred, you must first clarify it. Indeed, I suppose that is what everyone is doing.

To summarize, our mind’s space obviously needs to be filled. After all, Nature abhors a vacuum. So we name ‘it’, and think and speak about ‘it’ to fill that space. Okay, so far so good. The difficulties come when we seriously believe what we think. As one of my favorite chapter puts it:

To know yet to think that one does not know is best;
Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.
It is by being alive to difficulty that one can avoid it.

The sage meets with no difficulty.
It is because he is alive to it that he meets with no difficulty.

When I first brought this up with my family they all rolled their eye… “yeh, right” they said. However, constant brain-washing finally brought them to see my point. Brain-washing? Well, not exactly. Just offering concrete examples over time helped sell my case (or are they just humoring me).

I understand, but do I know? is a recent post that attempts to deal with this off-the-wall point of view. And yes, all this may seem bizarre, but then knowing and understanding are mysterious, bottomless issues. Anyway…

Low and behold Science News comes to the rescue again (kind of) with a recent article, Geometric minds skip school. It seems Amazonian villagers grasp abstract spatial concepts despite lacking formal math education. They know geometric principles intuitively. Sure, my views on knowing and understanding are more radical, but then I don’t have a bunch of skeptical peer reviewing scientists looking over my shoulder.

I regard all the advanced knowledge civilization prides itself on as actually being based in innate knowing, as this research implies. The emergent property principle may help support and give deeper context to the view that we only truly understand what we already innately know. Also, what often passes for understanding is merely mimicry as noted in Learning What You Know. (Although, mimicry can certainly be a step on the path to understanding.)

Here are a few excerpts from this article for those whom the link fails to work.

In a South American jungle, far from traffic circles, city squares and the Pentagon, beats the heart of geometry.

Villagers belonging to an Amazonian group called the Mundurucú intuitively grasp abstract geometric principles despite having no formal math education, say psychologist Véronique Izard of Université Paris Descartes and her colleagues.

Mundurucú adults and 7- to 13-year-olds demonstrate as firm an understanding of the properties of points, lines and surfaces as adults and school-age children in the United States and France, Izard’s team reports online May 23 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

U.S. children between ages 5 and 7 partially understand geometric space, but not to the same extent as older children and adults, the researchers find.

These results suggest two possible routes to geometric knowledge. “Either geometry is innate but doesn’t emerge until around age 7 or geometry is learned but must be acquired on the basis of general experiences with space, such as the ways our bodies move,” Izard says.

Both possibilities present puzzles, she adds. If geometry relies on an innate brain mechanism, it’s unclear how such a neural system generates abstract notions about phenomena such as infinite surfaces and why this system doesn’t fully kick in until age 7. If geometry depends on years of spatial learning, it’s not known how people transform real-world experience into abstract geometric concepts — such as lines that extend forever or perfect right angles — that a forest dweller never encounters in the natural world.

If I were a true believer in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic world view I might even be susceptible to the ‘end of times’ stories these prophets preach. Being a Taoist lets me off the hook for the most part; any part that remains ‘on the hook’ is nicely assuaged by Buddha’s Truths.

I suspect this sometimes apocalyptic sense of life is one of the deepest we humans feel. I see it manifested in various ways, and while not as literal the “May 21″ end of the time story, they are nevertheless common. The stock market crashes foretell the end of the economy as we know it; extinction of species and global warming foretells the end of the planet as we know it.

These recurring stories, along with the recent Gulf oil spill and the nuclear disaster in Japan, all trigger cataclysmic perceptions in people far removed in time and space from actual events (or non-events as in the case of Armageddon-like stories).

Believers in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic world view and the Western view in general, may be especially vulnerable to apocalyptic scenarios. The Western model of creation is a one-time event. The big-bang (or God created the world in seven days) beginning is over, when is the end? It’s not surprising that really true Believes get anxious from time to time. The Judeo-Christian-Islamic end of life scenario with its heaven or hell finality is also symptomatic of the Western one-shot creation model.

Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, with their cyclic view of reality, offer those who share those beliefs a safer and saner alternative, I have to say. “Don’t freak out, you can redo life over better next time” works for the Buddhist and Hindu. For a true Taoist, life, death, beginning and end produce each other. This mysterious sameness offers a continuum of existence—immortality may be too strong a word (and perhaps Catholics would call that purgatory).

What accounts for this apocalyptic sense all humans appear to share? I imagine knowledge of our own death lies at the heart of it. The first truly long term reality of which we were aware must have been death. Other species mourn the loss of companions (pair-bond or herd), but humans have acquired an objective memory of this. We know there is an apparent END to every BEGINNING, which makes life a much more serious affair. Knowing this, we could no longer merrily merely hunt and gather our days away. We realized we had to prepare, and cognitively applied this fearsome model to many things we do.

Given all this, it is odd how we fail to take action until after the fact, like preparing adequately for earthquakes or our own health. Yet, we speed up through the intersection so as not to lose the yellow light. Perhaps we feel the former “won’t happen to us”, and in the latter we see immanent loss. Well of course! Fear rules, but only when we feel it. Of course, fear always lurks beneath the surface. Improperly placed, our fear asset is wasted. Yes, fear is a valuable survival asset, and wasting it has consequences—namely, when the people lack a proper sense of awe, then some awful visitation will descend upon them.

Which path leads where?

A few months ago a new member Dan asked me, “So, I’d like to ask, do you have any life advice for a man approaching 30″?

One problem with that question was too many things came to mind. So I turned the question over to my subconscious. Oddly, I find not thinking about tricky issues is the best way to resolve them. Of course “not thinking about” doesn’t mean disregarding. I suppose the ‘not thinking about’ phase helps the mind get through its blind spot.

Finally, up bubbled something worthy of the question. Overall, nothing feels more important to me than understanding. While stressing the importance of understanding seems obvious, it may not be as simple as it sounds.

As I’ve said before, true understanding may only be possible for that which you already know intuitively. Knowing comes with maturity (time and circumstances) and not from any external particulars, per se. Knowing moves from inside out, not from the outside in. If I’m correct, how can we ever teach or learn from each other? Naturally, there’s more to this.

Just consider how methodically we are culturally and linguistically ‘brain washed’ (albeit in the nicest possible way) from birth onward. As a result, much of what we think and ‘know’, is derived from preconceptions that we’ve been trained to believe to be true and real. Now, if what we teach and learn are along the lines of our ‘brain washing’, things usually go smoothly enough. On the other hand, understanding anything outside our cultural and linguistic ‘box’ is another matter. That can be a fearsome experience which is why few people peer into the darkness willingly.

Actually, we all know anyway!

Even so, we can’t help but sense that darkness. ‘To know yet to think that one does not know‘ actually speaks to this silent, universal knowing. While all life feels the mystery, only we have names and words for which to think about it. We can’t help but try to cognitively shine light on (explain, describe, interpret) the mysterious mirror feeling—including right now as I write and you read this. Truth to tell, all our thinking never unravels the mystery. Instead, we end up cultivating a sense of self and pseudo security as we follow the paths for which we feel an innate affinity (e.g., religion, art, sports, business, science, etc.).

Our difficulties begin when we get overly certain in what we think (i.e., to think that one knows will lead to difficulty). I regard certainty as merely a symptom of a desperate need for the security believable answers promise us. Honestly, this is the dynamic that drives me to ponder life (and death) and write about it. Still, using cognitive certainty to shore up my innate insecurity doesn’t overly impair me, as long as I know and understand what is driving my certainty in the first place. In other words, it is by being alive to difficulty that one can avoid it.

If we’re not alive to this difficulty, we end up putting all our eggs in one cognitive basket and hang on for dear life. The resulting blind spot puts what we might otherwise ‘know’ just beyond our mind’s eye. Put another way, thinking enables us to focus on the trees; this blinds us to the forest. This is not to say thinking is bad; it is just more dangerous than we imagine. It is like a loaded gun with no safety in the hands of monkeys. Much of our problem stems from not realizing that we, like all animals, are supposed to feel somewhat insecure. Being on fear’s razor edge aids survival. Dulling this by relentlessly thinking that we know is no different than refining foods to enhance our eating pleasure at the expense of nutritional value. Both quickly become cases of willfully innovating while ignorant of the constant, and it comes back to bite us.

We’re too clever for our britches

Finding enough humility to acknowledge that thinking that that one knows will lead to difficulty can help avoid ‘thinking ourselves into a corner’. This is an important step in understanding what is beyond the understanding of all but a very few in the world. This is difficult because our self identity is created and maintained by the beliefs and paths to which we cling and follow. As Buddha put it, “The illusion of self originates and manifests itself in a cleaving to things”. “Things” is often considered to be material objects. I find that our mental “things” play at least as large a role in this illusion.

Buddha had it right in his Eight Fold Path. While each ‘fold’ affect the other, notice which fold comes first—understanding! As understanding deepens and broadens over time, our actions follow naturally. I can’t really see what else can be ‘done’. The doing arises out of the knowing. Willfully doing anything would be like putting the cart before the horse. This may partly explain the Taoist frequent call to ‘action-less action’. Chapter 43 sums it up well:

That is why I know the benefit of resorting to no action. The teaching that uses no words, the benefit of resorting to no action, these are beyond the understanding of all but a very few in the world.

There’s a silver lining though

Our thoughts and actions are driven by the needs or fears we feel right now, without much sense of the long term, big picture, balanced understanding. So what hope is there? I’ve found being hesitant and tentative in what I think helps me keep balance. Mind you, it’s okay to lose balance. That’s only human. However, it is invaluable to recognize when I do. Here are some ‘tells’ I use to warn me when I’m losing balance:

• Any strong sense of attraction or aversion, likes or dislikes, needs or fears (emotion) tells me that whatever I think I am seeing is actually simply a reflection of that emotion. It’s not that; it’s this.

• Any perception that make differences appear significant (makes mountains out of presumable mole hills). Remaining alive to the relative nature of judgment helps avoid taking a cognitive ‘wrong turn’ and ending up in the ditch.

• Impatient are we? Feeling the impulse to resolve it now, get it done, fix it ‘yesterday’ are excellent indications of imbalance. Going with my impetuous flow is usually looming disaster. Count to ten, take a deep breath, go take a nap, sleep on it.

In summary: which path shall it be?

They both look the same, but...

The ultimate value of understanding lies in how it helps us with a central choice we are faced with each day, even each moment, throughout life. “Do I want to feel happy or to feel a sense of well being?” I expect many folks regard these synonymous. Not necessarily, at least as I define those words. Happiness is more up beat, stimulating, fun, pleasurable, ‘high’ on life. Somewhat conversely, well-being is even, cool and calm, down-to-earth, impartial, balanced. Simply put: We chase after happiness; we return to well-being.

Buddha’s prescription of life comes down to this choice, happiness or well-being. Recognizing the difference requires Right Understanding, as Buddha calls it. All in all, Buddha’s Four Noble Truths is the best road map I’ve come across for choosing the path of well-being over happiness. Use it from the bottom of your heart is my advice.

Anyway, the debate ended in a stalemate and we went on with the day. Later I realized the problem: rather than saying ‘people don’t learn’, I should have said, what usually passes for learning is actually mimicry. As is often the case, words got in the way of communication… ha!

I then made a short list of correlations to show Luke the point I was trying to make earlier. He studied it for a moment, nodded and said like “Ah yes, that makes sense”. The point I was trying to make earlier, and in vain, became obvious through correlations. Of course, that comes with its own downside cost;  clear and perfect communication eliminates the fun… the tug of war give and take. Here is the set I showed Luke⁽¹⁾. See if it makes any sense to you:

⁽¹⁾ A correlation’s view of issues may work better within our family because I introduced the correlation process to my sons when they were knee high to a grasshopper. They are familiar with this process of boiling issues down to fundamental parameters. While it never offers a final answer, it does point towards one, in a fuzzy kind of way.

Beyond words

Years ago I began to notice that I was incapable of really being in the moment when I was speaking – or even while I was thinking! In other words, when I’m speaking, I’m not reporting from an instantaneous state of knowing. Rather, I am passing on things I’ve already thought through some what. Speech references past experience, if even only a moment old. It is not of the ‘now’.  ‘Now’ is all I can truly know. The rest is only a partial view, after-thoughts, of the ‘nows’ dead and gone. On the other hand…

I speak (and think), to know what I know

Or perhaps I should say, I speak to understand what I know. How does this comport with one who knows does not speak; one who speaks does not know? In an ironic way these two are complementary, and follow each other. The knowing is that dimly visible essence we feel yet can’t nail down in words. On the other hand, speaking looses the deepest knowing just as saying “Oh look what a beautiful sunset” looses that magical moment.

That said, we need to speak (think or write) in order to understand what we know. By understand, I’m saying almost literally, to ’stand under’ in order to look up and see what we know. Certainly, much of the knowing is drown out by the speaking (thinking or writing), yet by giving our knowing a tangible aspect, we can cognitively play around with it. Like a carpenter sawing lumber and nailing it together, thinking what we know allows us to ‘nail something together’. And just like working with wood, the original tree, that uncarved block shatters and becomes vessels of which we can make use.

Keeping mindful of this tendency is invaluable. Conscientiously done, life turns out much better than otherwise I find. For me, chapter 14 speaks to this:

Hold fast to the way of antiquity
In order to keep in control the realm of today.
The ability to know the beginning of antiquity
Is called the thread running through the way.

So, what about the future. Shouldn’t we look ahead for potential opportunity or dangers which lie there? Actually, the real opportunities and dangers are found in the present. Being here in the moment is the best way to take advantage of opportunity and avoid danger. The future actually does take care of itself when I am fully engaging in the present. For me, chapter 64 speak to this perfectly:

It is easy to maintain a situation while it is still secure;
It is easy to deal with a situation before symptoms develop;
It is easy to break a thing when it is yet britle;
It is easy to dissolve a thing while it is yet minute.
Deal with a thing while it is still nothing;
Keep a thing in order before disorder sets in.

Looking out to the future actually robs from the present, and besides:

Foreknowledge is the flowery embellishment of the way, and the beginning of folly.

Speaking of foreknowledge, I tried my hand at foretelling it for awhile. In the 70’s I learned to read palms, cast horoscopes, do the I-ching, Tarot cards and a few other things. The most fascinating part of it was how people reacted to me telling them their past, present and future. Those that had faith from the start in what I was doing not only bought every word, but often amplified it. They believed!

Those who didn’t have faith from the start were less than convinced and neutral at best. It only went to show how our expectations play a huge role in how and what we see. Anything that seems to support our expectations reinforces them, and anything that doesn’t we usually discount heavily or ignore.

Never-the-less, cultures place great importance on the teacher, so what makes for a good teacher? Usually the answer centers on how capable the teacher is, and their command of the material. However, after home schooling my kids, I discovered the more important, yet under-recognized, side of teaching lay deeper.

Home schooling turned out well for my children. This was obviously not due to my command of the material. Sure, in some areas I have sufficiently knowledge, in others just minimal. Either way, I never really ‘taught’ them much of anything, at least overtly. The key to my ‘teaching’ success was simply not getting in their way! That allowed them to follow their curiosity. However, that doesn’t mean total laze fare. I was ‘right there’, but in a shadowy presence kind of way.

For example, Luke was learning computer programming, and whenever he ran into ‘insurmountable’ difficulty he would come to me. I know next to nothing factual on the subject; I would just be a sounding board, occasionally asking questions, or offering observations, based upon my overall life experience. It is amazing how well this approach actually works. The only true requirement was being patient and connected (i.e., generally curious and interested).

In fact, I reckon my sons have learned what they know more through what I didn’t say than anything I said. Does this have anything to do with the teaching that uses no words? I suppose, though even calling it that can become misleading.

Knowing when not to say something (teach) is most important, by far. That allows one to stumble as a child, which is how we all learn to walk and talk! Just imagine if your parents had hovered over you correcting every misstep as you learned to walk or to talk? Not fun! Not helpful! Not efficient! Doing it ‘wrong’ is essential part of finding how to do it ‘right’. Robbing them of that opportunity, while it might have felt helpful, I knew would actually hinder them.

I only set the overall tone of the environment, and refrained from micromanaging anything. This, allowed them to take on as much responsibility as they wished, no more and no less. This let them fulfill whatever innate potential they had. As our good book says, do not constrict their living space; do not press down on their means of livelihood. It is because you do not press down on them that they will not weary of the burden.

All things considered, I reckon that the social component accounts for 99% in teaching, while the teacher’s command of the material just 1%. This makes sense if you accept the proposition that one can only understand what one already knows intuitively. Granted, that is an impossible pill to swallow in a culture, like ours, that sees students as empty vessels into which knowledge can somehow be poured. Rather than pour knowledge in, the trick is to have conducive social circumstances which draw on a student’s thirst and intuitive knowing. Objective understanding and know-how come in due course naturally.

Finally let’s go back to the question of thirst, and whether a person truly wants to learn, or is thirsty for something else. They say it is better to teach a man to fish than give him a fish. But, what if he rather be given a fish than be taught? The former, being given a fish, is perhaps far more common, 99% to 1% more common in fact. Giving and receiving fish is a far more socially achievable relationship than giving and receiving a teaching. Furthermore, our deepest need (thirst), bar none, is for social connection, not for knowledge per se. Yet knowledge is held in the highest esteem; knowledge is power! All that is needed to bypass this kink in the way is sufficient cultural hoodwinking to make receiving of fish appear like receiving of teaching. Yep, a lot of hoodwinking goes on in human social interactions.

Back in the late 70’s I began teaching yoga. I soon noticed how many of my students began to see me as their guru. I was trying to teach them the yoga equivalent of teach a man to fish. Most weren’t thirsty for that; they wanted the yoga equivalent of being given a fish, and seeing me a their guru was one way to get that. I’m not saying this was intentional on their part. Far from it; it was simply innate social (tribal) dynamics. Personally, I couldn’t oblige them, and couldn’t help but do what I could to discourage it. Alas, I wasn’t thirsty for that type of teacher/student relationship⁽¹⁾. I suppose I am drawn to neither ‘a leader or a follower be’; ‘neither a hood-winker or hood-winkee be’. Perhaps…

I alone am foolish and uncouth.
I alone am different from others
And value being fed by the mother.

⁽¹⁾ That changed some with my own family and kids though. As a father, I naturally fell into the role of leader and teacher, albeit in a shadowy presence kind of way. I imagine that civilization is just too ‘mega’ for me to feel connected. A small hunter gather group around 20,000 b.c. would have been more my speed.

Background
Memories become dimmer as the years fly by. Many are even too misty to write down without filling in the voids with poetic license (fiction). Still, I’ve set out to fetch what memories remain before they fade any further. See: The Further One Goes for background on this ‘Times of Yore’ series.