Interesting Times

                            “May you live in interesting times.”

 

According on my online sources, this quote is said to be an English version of an ancient Chinese curse: 

 

"Better to be a dog in times of tranquility than a human in times of chaos."

 

Whether it was intended to also be a curse or a suggestion that “interesting times” have their own hidden gifts is anybody’s guess. But it is certainly relevant to our times, especially here in the United States where we seem to be on the verge of dismantling our experiment in Democracy, brought down not by invasion or revolution or natural disaster, but from the extraordinary ignorance and uncaring choice of some 80 millions voters and people who represent the American dream of unlimited wealth using their power to inflict a nightmare on the rest of us. The dogs seem oblivious but we humans are reeling in the turbulent chaos.

 

But then there’s Emerson:

 

“This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.”

 

Indeed. This is the time when we can step up to our promise that often is dormant in the workaday world, awaken it from its slumber and rise up into the larger versions of ourselves. And I see this happening all around me. Certainly in the presence of the five million people nationwide and worldwide who took to the streets last Saturday. (Please notice how even the “liberal” media failed to report those numbers. They are NOT stepping up and we should hold their feet to the fire.). People who normally stay quiet about things “political” are speaking up and in their own words. Not waiting for a savior, but trusting their own humanitarian instincts and doing the thinking and feeling and caring that helps grow our soul and connect it to the soul of the world.

 

Hard times can also make people grow smaller and meaner, double down in fear and give their power over to a despot who promises to save them. Shut down their thinking, harden their hearts, disdain caring as weakness and sell their souls to the Devils in power. As one clever sign in the march put it, “Two paths diverged in the wood and America took the Psychopath.”

 

But not all of America. How this will all end is anybody’s guess but as long as people meet the challenge by thinking deeper, caring further, acting more courageously, hope lives on. Every morning, I can feel the two voices in my head wrestling with each other— “Hope!” “No, Despair!” “We’re going to be all right.” “We’re doomed!” I have to decide how much news I can handle or where I go for the news— including to the park to hear what the birds and trees have to say. Or to the piano to see what Bach’s point of view is.

 

This all leads to the best quote of all about the times we live in, from that wise humanist Charles Dickens. Read it in the light of where we are now.

 

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

 

That pretty much says it all and helps me lean towards hope. Still I wonder if it would have been better to be born a dog.