Thank You
I was bored so I started thinking about how the environmental crisis would never be solved by mere practice alone because it needed to be accompanied by a revolution in consciousness but I wasn’t sure if the revolution in consciousness would alter behavior or if changing behavior first would usher in the revolution in consciousness. Then Lucy started guzzling a glass of water. Lucy performs everyday acts with an intensity that tends to attract my attention. She just tipped her head back and gulp gulp gulp gulp gulp gulp. She’s got guzzling in her genes. Then she went and did that magic little kid thing where they perform a sweetly simplistic act all shot through with profundity and ancient wisdom.
She pulled the tiny purple cup from her lips and made that exaggerated “Ahhhh” refreshed noise. She held it 12 inches away from her face and admired it with sparkling eyes and a delighted smile. She made me smile. I think the cup smiled too. See. Lucy’s smile was not limited by the bounds of her face. Rather, she created an atmosphere that smiled. Everything in her orbit smiled in the smiling. She set the cup on the kitchen table, leaned into it, and said earnestly:
“Thank You, Cup.”
The animistic world, wherein all objects have souls or are part of one big world soul, has long been replaced by a world full of stupid dead objects. We live in this world of unlively things as a result of the scientific vision of the world somehow achieving the status of “reality”. Instead of a vision among visions, the scientific view elbowed its way into being the way things really are. But there’s a price to pay for being so damn right.
We could stand to learn a few things from pagans and children—simple things like the relation to the world that results from a stance of pure gratitude. The cup is that which contains the source of our thirst’s quenching. And for this Lucy was grateful and found the cup worthy of speech and good manners. Soon, for Lucy, the cup will be stripped of its personified traits and be replaced by a hunk of dead plastic. We’ll call that growing up. Development. She’ll have achieved a more complex level of maturity and she’ll score higher in terms of reality testing.
But imagine what kind of world we’d live in if we were all so grateful for cups. What if we all thanked the chair for so dutifully embracing us after a long day on our feet? The kitchen table deserves your praise! It is not only that which holds your dinner aloft. But it is also binds your family around it. What would happen to these various environmental crises if our notion of what is to be respected extended past a small handful of people? How would the world look? How would we act? Perhaps sorting and taking out the recycling wouldn’t be such a chore or a hassle. It might suddenly be the least we could do. To excitedly walk these things out to the curb toward the next chapter of their service. Thank you.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Reader Comments (52)
I held on to that idea much longer than the other kids, I think. When I was a kid and I couldn't sleep, I would lie on the floor until I was unbearably uncomfortable, then climb back into my bed and apologize to it. I still say I'm sorry to inanimate objects when I bump into them; it's an instinct, yes, but I kinda like that gratitude is always on my lips. Thank YOU.
This was a Read Outloud post.
I loved this so much. I wish President Obama read this out loud to America last night (minus all of his long pauses and ummmm's) I am going to go link this right now. So rad.
Big loud perfect high five.
Oh BHJ...I love love LOVE this post. It's perfection.
Thank you.
What a great post. I am absolutely going to try to readjust my thinking to this outlook.
Thanks to you, and thanks to my laptop and the internet for bringing this to me (and for for twittering it too!).
This year, I've felt something I haven't felt in a long time. A sense of pride and cultivation when it comes to this planet and my responsibilities.
Like Maggie, I held onto that a long time too. I remember being eleven and sobbing and sobbing apologies to my bed when my parents sold it to get a different mattress.
George, to this day, can upset me by making boxes of pasta talk. "What? You don't want to eat me? I'm so sad now..."
I will remember to say thank you more often now.
You're awesome, sir.
BHJ--only you could turn drinking a glass of water into such a cool post!
did you know that GOOGLE is the main reason for our earth going to hell in a handbasket?? The energy spent on people searching the internet is mind blowing...
Sustainability is a way of life.... we need to drill it into our kid's heads and teach them...
Great post dude...
My four year old, sitting next to me on the couch, just ripped the biggest loudest fart ever, sorry couch....
I remember my mom telling me that i was "being an idiot" because I didn't want to switch places on the bench at the dinner table with her after my dad left. Not because I didn't want to help her alter all things about her previous life, but because I was truly afraid I would hurt the benches feelings with my fickle move. (remember I was 11 when my dad bailed).
Course I switched bedrooms fast than anyones business.
Maybe if I teach my daughter to thank the toilet, she'll speed up the potty training?
Pretty damn insightful. I think kids hold the key to the world, whether or not we see or accept it. There is such an innocence that is either appreciated or squashed into what people want it to be.
Way to catch the truth!
My son does something like this occasionally when he sips his juice:
"Ahhh, nice and yummy hot cocoa."
But what you've articulated here is pretty much how I feel every time this happens. It's nothing short of awesome.
Have you read Tom Robbins' Skinny Legs and All? I think you'd be a huge fan of all of his work, but this one features a host of inanimate objects (Dirty Sock, Conch, Can o Beans, and a Spoon). It's one of my favorites.
Very profound post.
Definitely one I will be sharing!
Yes, it would be nice if we were more thankful to and for things and people in our lives.
While I'm spiritual, I don't know how I feel about the concept of God, however I did read a quote recently that caught my attention. It went something like this - God is in everything and nothing can exist outside of God, therefore even "negative" stuff is part of God too.
I kind of like that notion, of God as universal energy - living inside everything and everyone. Not because it elevates God so much but makes all of us (and this) equally wonderful and also horrible.
PS. I thank my hair conditioner every single day.
In my house, anyone left hanging upside-down with blood running to the head gets righted. This goes for toddlers and sock monkeys alike.
Young HotDoc, my boss-slash-best friend, was hanging out with me one day when he got thirsty. He rummaged around the cabinet for a moment before extracting one tumbler. Young HotDoc then held it aloft, foolgrinning and saying, "This looks like a FUN glass to drink out of!" Stuff like this is, of course, why he is one of my favorite people.
He creates atmospheres of smiles, too. I think that is a mighty valuable gift to be in possession of. Lucky us to know those people with such a wonderful ability.
You. You get it right every friggin' time.
I am the meme monster, rearing its ugly head - http://www.schmutzie.com/2009/04/this-thursdays-made-for-meme-ing.html
very nice, BHJ!!
my friends say i get EXCITED like a DOG...it's a compliment, of course...i'm all about appreciating and finding beauty in the seemingly "small" things.
Absolutely and amazingly true. Since I can remember, I have given equal time to every gift I unwrap. Most people would assume it is for the benefit of the giver. It is actually because I don't want any of the gifts' feelings to get hurt just in case they have them. Every atom and molecule is in this journey together. How pretentious are we to assume that our molecular arrangement is somehow more deserving of respect? I love this and just spread it around the office. Thank you for a wonderful post.
Amen, Father Black Hockey Jesus.
I'd totally join your church.
We would all be a lot happier if we had the same views of life as children. That is for sure.
Sent over by Ryan. And I have to agree, LOVED this and sending you a big virtual high five. xoxo
I think there's hope that Lucy might hold on to that a little longer... with you as a father and all.
Thank you Lucy, thank you purple cup, thank you BHJ.
Love love love this post.
Reader Man. I suggest Joanna Macy for a bit of that same thing you are talking about. And environmental salvation is only possible if we love the cup too.
that's lovely! there's a great anne sexton poem that's sort of like that.
This is actually what my master's degree is about. At a Christian school, actually - which I realize seems oxymoronic for most people. Interestingly though, a regard for the intrinsic value of creation and physical objects came largely out of early Christian theology, to the chagrin of the rest of the Greco-Roman culture. I'd like to bring that back, b/c things have obviously gone horribly awry.
i don't know if you ever do these - but you have been tagged
http://areason2write.wordpress.com/2009/04/30/i-am-it/
and by the way, I rotate my hot curlers (when I dust them off and use them) so they all get a turn
This post makes me feel better, and a little less insane for keeping my favorite "fat" clothes. I just lost 80lbs and I kept them because I felt it was wrong to toss them in the Goodwill box after they held my fat ass when other clothes had long abandoned me. I was grateful and I really felt they were deserving of a second life, like maybe a quilt or something. OK, so maybe I am insane, but nonetheless, I'm keeping them. And your post made me feel better about that. Thanks.
It is adorable. my 4yr old does that. She thanks the chairs and tables, and trys to delay going to bed by giving anything she has come in contact with a hug and kiss.
I love this post.
Such a simple idea, so why is it so hard to integrate into my daily functioning? I always feel the same way about the yogi/Eastern philosophy of kindness to all things and in all actions. Of course that's what I want, so why doesn't it happen?
Change starts with me - or maybe with you?
Great post.
I actually name most of my inanimate objects. My husband finds this to be a strange practice but I don't care.
I thank my glass of diet coke every day because without it, I'd totally be lost. Oh, and unable to function.
Thank you, web browser, for delivering Black Hockey Jesus to my eyes for reading. Now please take me back to my porn.
I let out a rebel, loud, appreciative pagan belch while savoring the piquancy of this post!
THANK YOU, MOZART!
Today at work I thanked the copying machine for working and not breaking on me which would have led everyone to point their fingers at me and laughed...
And I cussed out my computer at work for not cooperating...
Perfect.
thank you god...
Thank you, internet.
I absolutely love how you describe your feelings of your daughter.
Remember these times as she becomes a teenager, someone who will swear you no longer know.
Your post makes me remember my shildren small, innocent, and full of wonder again. Then I get to appreciate them all over again.
So to you I say thank you.
This really made me smile, Thank You- and Lucy:)
I have been keeping a thirty day Gratitude Journal on my blog and found this post of yours so wonderful that I posted an excerpt from it with a link to your blog. I hope you don't mind. I think the image of Lucy's cup will stay with me for a long time.
Oh, I live in a world full of gifts, small things that manage to shine through the fog of depression and remind me of the wonder of it all. Blessed be, Lucy, who sees what others may miss and wonders, acknowldedges, and gives thanks for service.
I am glad to be one of the pagans who sees the spirit in all things...I feel all the richer for it.
I wonder how the world would change if everyone saw the things around them as living, perhaps even sacred, embued with spirit.
Shade and Sweetwater,
K (still crazy, after all these years)
Dude. Love the blog, read it from beginning, never posted before.
But I just gotta say. It’s not one or the other. The best magic is found in reality.
How is it possible for particles to exist in multiple places at once, and therefore no place at all? And is that tiny space, defined by the impossibility of pinning-down, where free will exists? Theoretically, with a strong enough telescope, we could see the beginning of time; how close will we get? What’s the deal with dark matter? How wondrous is it that some guy built a special hang-glider so that a crippled eagle could fly? And another specializes in building prosthetic limbs for wounded sea turtles?
I used to be plagued by this dilemma of wanting a life full of magic and rain dances and wood nymphs and Pan – and simultaneously wanting to know reality in all its minutia.
In a fit of frustration, I asked my atheist dad, “Don’t you want a life full of wonder? Isn’t there anything you believe in that you can’t explain scientifically?
His whole face changed and with uncharacteristic gravity, he said, “Yes, I find it wondrous that something can be both a wave and particle at the same time. To me, that’s magical and I love thinking about it.”
That conversation changed my life. The magic in pretending a cup is real, and that it has feelings, is easy. The magic of reality requires more effort, but is more rewarding.
Every day I hear about things both real and magical: pigs jumping into lakes to save drowning babies; prosthetic limbs that move with our thoughts; nanotechnology to fight cancer; alternate universes with other me’s choosing the other fork in the road; plants that exhibit characteristics of self-awareness; life flourishing in unlivable ecosystems; etc.
Why waste time (as an adult, I’m not referring to Lucy) pretending that plastic cups have feelings when there are more than enough creatures on this planet that indisputably feel to offer me both sufficient motivation to recycle and all the real magic I need for a life of awe?
Santa Claus isn’t real, but the way I feel when I hear those jingle bells is, and that is the gift I will pass on to my daughter when she asks me if there “really is” a Santa.
Beautiful post. You are such a lovely writer. Thank you.
We all have the time to be a little more grateful and patient.
http://glitterpaintpony.blogspot.com/2009/03/kindness-works.html
"Dude. Love the blog, read it from beginning, never posted before."
Thank you. And thanks for commenting today.
"But I just gotta say. It’s not one or the other. The best magic is found in reality."
Yeah, and if that's what I'm putting off - that it's one or the other - then I'm misrepresenting myself. Rather, what I'm trying to express via many different angles, and using my daughter as a protagonist, is that "reality" (scientific reality) is only one function of the imagination. What I mean to say is that it's all imagination and that, in terms of world history, we have collectively decided that what's discoverable by science is the only really real, relegating truths of the imagination to a degraded fake status.
"How is it possible for particles to exist in multiple places at once, and therefore no place at all? And is that tiny space, defined by the impossibility of pinning-down, where free will exists? Theoretically, with a strong enough telescope, we could see the beginning of time; how close will we get? What’s the deal with dark matter? How wondrous is it that some guy built a special hang-glider so that a crippled eagle could fly? And another specializes in building prosthetic limbs for wounded sea turtles?"
I don't think we're at odds when it comes to conceiving of these things as cool.
"I used to be plagued by this dilemma of wanting a life full of magic and rain dances and wood nymphs and Pan – and simultaneously wanting to know reality in all its minutia."
I don't see these desires as conflicting. The figments of your imagination are real. They occur. They may not occur in the way that things we call "real" occur, but figments happen.
"In a fit of frustration, I asked my atheist dad, “Don’t you want a life full of wonder? Isn’t there anything you believe in that you can’t explain scientifically?
His whole face changed and with uncharacteristic gravity, he said, “Yes, I find it wondrous that something can be both a wave and particle at the same time. To me, that’s magical and I love thinking about it.”"
I've done my time with the new physics. It's cool. But does it translate into a new ethics that changes things up? I'm not so sure. But i just imagined your dad saying "Yes, I find it wondrous that I imagine things in a manner that is unbidden. To me, that's magical." And it's magical that I just had that image of your Dad in a way that was as real as your Dad sitting here "for real". I'm not saying he was really here. I'm saying that the fact that he appeared in my imagination was real.
"That conversation changed my life. The magic in pretending a cup is real, and that it has feelings, is easy. The magic of reality requires more effort, but is more rewarding."
I've only met one other person in my life who's pretended such things in a vigorous way, and he's dead. So I'm not quick to call it easy.
"Every day I hear about things both real and magical: pigs jumping into lakes to save drowning babies; prosthetic limbs that move with our thoughts; nanotechnology to fight cancer; alternate universes with other me’s choosing the other fork in the road; plants that exhibit characteristics of self-awareness; life flourishing in unlivable ecosystems; etc."
Yes, I'm with you. And all I'm saying is that every day your imagination presents you with unfathomable richness. I don't see that as negating your list of real things. Why should the real things negate the talking cups?
Why waste time (as an adult, I’m not referring to Lucy) pretending that plastic cups have feelings when there are more than enough creatures on this planet that indisputably feel to offer me both sufficient motivation to recycle and all the real magic I need for a life of awe?
Well, the question is loaded. It presumes that I'm wasting my time. And, though the real creatures provide you with motivation and awe, I'm wondering how much "reality" inspires us collectively. In the end, though, what I'm trying to get across is not something that excludes reality. I see my purpose as a kind of wedging open of reality as a means to hear the cups speak. And you can test it, for real. Go grab a cup, set it before you, and ask it "So what do you have to say for yourself?" and then listen to what explodes in your awareness that is not consciously created by you, by your ego. It might be a bunch of nonsense, sure. But something responds to the question. The tools of science would be quick to judge it as "just your imagination" or "definitely not the cup". But why did that particular imagining occur immediately after you addressed the cup with the question? To me it's magical, and I love to think about it.
I hope you don't take this sparring as antagonistic. Your questions made me think and I truly appreciate them. I know I probably didn't convince you of anything, and that's cool. i just really need you to know that I've enjoyed this exchange and I'm glad you felt strongly enough to comment with a clearly thought out comment that displayed a lot of depth. Thanks.
bhj
Well, I have been fascinated with what I perceived as your “obsession” with imagination from the beginning. But I think I understand more now what you’re getting at. I’m not going to pretend to know about something I don’t, but I think you’re talking about the sort of inner mental and spiritual experiences that some eastern religions focus on.
In our own culture and in western religions, there tends to be very little emphasis on inner experiences and revelations. And now that you have lead me to the question, it is interesting to me to wonder how that might handicap our culture, what cultural changes would follow from a greater emphasis on such things.
Sam Harris wrote a book called The End of Faith, which I didn’t fully agree with the premise of, but found to be a stimulating read nevertheless. I think I recall that he argued that rejection of faith didn’t require giving up these inner experiences but rather required understanding them as “real” or scientific phenomena. I think that may be what you are saying: if sitting in front of the cup and interacting with it as an animate being helps you obtain a deeper, richer consciousness, then that would be both a positive and a “real” outcome.
I think that I would still argue that the ideal outcome or goal should be to achieve such enlightenment without the aid of “pretending,” but simply by being open to all possible realities. But I will have to give this more thought. First, because I don’t have much experience or knowledge on this subject. And second, because I think I might be projecting my own issues.
I have always struggled with being too inward-focused and spending too much time in my imagination. Sometimes too much D&D prevents you from having meaningful connections with ordinary people. Sometimes pretending your name is Super Tramp instead of Christopher McCandless gets you alone and dead in an abandoned bus in Alaska. Timothy Treadwell pretended the bears were his friends and their poop was mystical and then one ate him.
It’s been a long time, but many years ago, back when I had that conversation with my dad, I had started realizing that I was never going to be friends with a real unicorn, probably not commune with the whales or become a Jedi knight. The real world was a serious let-down and I felt pretty empty. I had a choice: I could either sink further into my imagination, or I could find the magic in reality. I chose the latter, and it was a struggle for many years, but ultimately worth the effort.
But I’m not sure you have ever struggled with these issues. If you are firmly rooted in conventional reality, it may be much safer to open yourself to the processes you are describing.
I definitely did not consider your response antagonistic. At a minimum, it was one of the highlights of my week. You’re a staggeringly good writer, one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever interacted with, and I’d say you have a beautiful mind without adding whatever qualification it was that you got from the poet. It’s nice to have made your acquaintance, bhj. :-)
I'm surprised that so many people read this and want to delve more into Eastern religion. I'm not that attracted to Eastern religion because it tends to blend all material objects into emptiness. I would think the "cupness" of the cup would be negated. I also don't find science as the enemy. In fact, once you get that into the particle level, it seems as if everything is alive and bouncing around. While I am adult enough to know that the cup cannot think or sing a song, it is not out of my realm of imagination to see the cup as "alive" in scientific terms, and give it human-type properties, much as we do with the sun and the ocean. I appreciate my cups.
Nice post!
I think I held on to this for such a long time because I was such an avid reader of the Xanth series as a kid. Now that my kids are in that stage of thanking and apologizing to things, I find myself doing it again. Kindness is kindness, right? Great post.