Live Fully and Help Others

Amongst my Fall projects, I’m working on getting out two books I’ve already written two drafts of. One is about a year-long trip around the world my wife and I took in 1978-79 and the other is titled Zen, Jazz, Orff: A Life in Three Worlds. Both are kind of back-door autobiographies looking at the things that have shaped — and continue to shape— my life. The second also looks at the Venn diagram of what these three practices share in common and what we can learn from their overlap without committing ourselves to be Zen students, jazz musicians or Orff teachers. 

 

Re-reading the chapter titled "Purpose," it rang out yet clearer in the face of all the deserved attention given to Dolly Parton’s passing. The mantra of “Live fully and help others do the same” perfectly captures her inspiring life. So here’s a taste of the importance of a purpose that is kind, generous and helps defend and sustain the life we all deserve. 

 

My Orff colleague James Harding was in his first year of teaching when he led the group of 3-year-olds down the hall into the music room.  They followed him singing a song and he expertly led them into a circle, ended the song and they all sat down ready to begin the next activity. Just before he started, a distressed little boy sitting next to him looked up with a pained face and asked, “Why are we here?!!!!”

 

Why, indeed. Haven’t we all wondered that at one time or another? It’s the question that has driven our species straight into the arms of religion or art or spiritual practice or philosophy. It’s the question that has seduced us into accepting other people’s answers gathered into dogma or party lines, often at our peril as we become obedient players in other people’s power games, be they priests, politicians, or professors. Easy answers designed to stop further inquiry, to impede or even prohibit further thinking, seduce us into a fundamentalist mindset that offers the illusion of comfort with a high price tag. 

 

At the other end of the spectrum are those who refuse both the question and the answers and wander aimlessly through a meaningless world, succumb to the scientific empirical view that we live in a random universe of mere atoms.

 

Then there are those who decide that “God is the least interesting answer to the most interesting question” and keep searching for signs that there is a hidden order inside of the apparent chaos that we can align ourselves with without having to believe that someone made it all and is running the show. They keep asking the question that leads to the next question and like Charles Ives, grow comfortable with simply feeling the beauty of “the Unanswered Question.” 

 

And so purpose. If we find ourselves in a Zen Center, up on a jazz stage, holding hands in a circle at an Orff workshop, how would each of them answer our question, “Why are we here?!!”

 

We’ve already touched on Zen, Jazz and Orff as ways to carry and ease the suffering mind, heart, body and achieve some form of liberation, release, freedom. All of which could be taken to mean to ease our personal suffering self, achieve personal freedom. A kind of radical self-care. 

 

All of which is good, as far as it goes. We all deserve to be more present, more free, more happy. But if as far as it goes is the border of our own skin, the country of our own heart, the territory of our own mind, all three disciplines suggest the same thing— not far enough. 

 

“Live fully and help others do the same” was today’s little Facebook post I received and it’s not a bad Mission Statement for Humanity. One without the other is incomplete and we should especially note, personally resist and publicly call out, those who purchase their own illusion of happiness at the expense of others. Parading around in super-yachts living the Pepsi life built on exploiting others is not what we came here for. Every religion, every artistic pursuit, every worthy educational pursuit includes a purpose that includes service to others, living beyond one’s selfish needs and desires. All likewise understand that we can’t heal others if we ourselves are broken, can’t uplift and inspire others if we haven’t done the work of following our own star. 

 

The most worthy purposes are those that sustain life, that nurture life, that protect life, that savor life. As we are called on to arrive at our own sense of meaning, it will be too small, too narrow, missing something essential,  if it only serves to make us comfortable or happy without consideration of others. We would do well to consider that “others” not only includes the full spectrum of humanity’s diversity, but the yet larger world of sentient beings— plants, animals, bugs, rivers, mountains, the whole of creation.

 

And so we sit silently with it all, praise it all in song and dance, walk through the magic and mystery of it all with the children’s hands in ours, in deep gratitude for the miracle of simply being alive. That’s a purpose worth considering.