Carnal Reason

I spoke to an old friend today, and the subject of my youngest daughter came up. She is five years old, and autistic. She does not speak, and seems to understand only a little of what is said to her. My friend asked why it is that I never express my emotions. It is a good question.

Part of it is that what I feel is too raw. Some days it is a spike through my heart. More often it is a ghost who hides around every corner, waiting for me to let my guard down. Time helps with that part.

To speak of what I feel borders on self pity. It is my daughter who is stricken, not me. For me to wallow in misery is pointless, narcissistic, and ignoble.

Monks, what is the noble truth about the origin of suffering?

Just this craving, leading to rebirth, accompanied by pleasure and emotion, and finding satisfaction now here now there, namely, the craving for sense-pleasure, the craving for new life and the craving for annihilation.

Monks, what is the noble truth about the cessation of suffering?

Just the complete indifference to and cessation of that very craving, the abandoning of it, the rejection of it, the freedom from it, the aversion toward it.

The Buddha, from The Essential Mystics by Andrew Harvey

I disagree. To eliminate desire is to eliminate the wellspring of action. I think the enemy is unfounded expectation, the sense of entitlement that says the world owes me what I signed up for. My oldest daughter Laura is beautiful and smart and perfect. The world pivots around her, and in my heart I expected another one exactly like her. I was mistaken, and it is up to me to deal with it. As John Lennon put it, “You better free your mind instead.”

Modern belief has it that the expression of emotion leads to catharsis, to relief. Perhaps, but body and mind are one. Emotion serves a purpose. Fear prepares one to flee, or to fight. What is the purpose of what I feel? It is a fire lit to forge me into someone able to do what I must do. It is not my goal to extinguish the fire. I still need it.

We are each presented with an impossible task. How to accomplish it? Never give up. How to find meaning in the face of injustice and indifference? Create it.

CC loves the water, so I take her swimming when circumstance allows. In those moments when she is happy, so am I. Every night she likes to go upstairs and watch television. I go with her, because she wants me to. I stay with her till she falls asleep. Her life, like mine and like yours, consists of good times and bad. I try to give her what good times are in my power to give.

If the way which I have pointed out as leading to this result seems exceedingly hard, it may nevertheless be discovered. Needs must it be hard, since it is so seldom found. How would it be possible, if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labour be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.
Ethics, Benedict de Spinoza

I have come to appreciate why some people believe in God. Life is too damn hard to end here, there must be redress. Everyone has his own vision of what that might be. Some poor fools want a bunch of virgins, or so I hear. In my vision of Heaven, a little girl speaks.

Posted on August 10th, 2006 by pwyll
Filed under: personal observations