Extremism

I cannot touch on Sameul Paty's obligation as a teacher without also touching on all of our obligation to love.

Why is it still so hard for some to understand that there are many and differing ways to live a good life? And I mean Good as in the Platonian sense of pure, true, enriching, beneficial. 

In this information era, we can experience vicariously so many different world views. Through film, books, music. By joining various forum, social media and online activities. By looking around our streets, even here in Japan diversity is increasing. Once monocultured countries everywhere are seeing more and more migration. Most people these days can say the know someone who lives in a different country.

It is so easy to meet alternate world views.

Why is it that we are still so afraid of them?

We have had generations, now, of education about the need to be accepting of difference. About understanding that we don't have to like everything about someone's life to still like some part of them. To still recognize that there is some part of them that is valid, good and valuable as a human being. 

Where are our soothsayers to calm boiling blood, to help us reflect on and understand the actions, agency and choices of others. To understand the outcome and consequences, desired and unintended, of our own actions. 

While the West values freedom above most things. I think that peace is far more valuable than freedom. And sometimes to create peace, we must restrict ourselves. But that is my perspective, having been indoctrinated by the Japanese philosophy of harmony.

Genius

I was thinking about genius this morning. I was thinking about being gifted too. About receiving the gifts of your gods, your faith, culture and the like. I was thinking about how so many of us use ceremonies to receive and prove that we are gifted people. But this is a little bit nonsense. We are not gifted because of the ceremonies of gifting that we have partaken in. We are just gifted.

It is a bit like this. Just because I don't have the postcard, doesn't mean I haven't been to Australia. You know? The ceremony is just a show, the lack of ceremony isn't the lack of the gift.

Today I will engage a fairly exciting ceremony as I begin to prove my gifts for caring, healing and health care. For even though these gifts already exist in me, my society needs ceremonial proof of their existence. I think this is fine. But it can be a bit nerve racking to have to perform these acts. Nonetheless, I am excited.

But this also hearkens on to an experience I had about a month ago. It happened while I was shower climbing for the first time. I had recently read about the grandfathers and grandmothers choosing to give their gifts to a little native girl, and the elaborate ceremonies she had to endure to receive those gifts. I was thinking, while a read about her experience, that I would never receive gifts from the grandparents of the forest, because I had no one to perform those rituals and ceremonies for me.

And yet, as I was climbing that waterfall, actually just after I finished climbing a rather difficult line, I found myself alone in a part of the river. The next member was still climbing, and it was just me, standing in the water, the sunlight trickling through the leaves of the forest. And as I stood there, I heard drumming. Simple at first, the drums became louder and more complex. The rhythm surrounded me and I found myself transported into a sort of still ecstasy. I stood still and listened and danced at the same time. I laughed because I realized just then how silly I had been to think it was the ceremony that granted the gifts.

Life grants gifts, whether we notice them or not, whether we celebrate them, stylize them, exaggerate them or ignore them. We are everyday receiving gifts from all around us. We shouldn't mistake the ceremony for the gift, and remember to give thanks for all our gifts. They are all precious and they are all real. And celebrated or not they are all valuable.