Rebels

On a good night I dream I am flying, dancing, making love, or (the best) all three at once. On a bad night I have nightmares. When I was little the worst ones involved being chased by bulls—bulls that in real life we kids would encounter while biking the dirt roads of Halfway, OR. But the next worst ones involved school: that assignment I somehow completely neglected, or suddenly realizing I'd been going to the wrong classroom—for months. This kind of dream, perhaps because I still operate in a world of tasks, I still have.

It is Sunday night and my self-imposed deadline for posting the week's blog is breathing down my neck. I have been fortunate to have had a fabulous weekend of catching up with friends and loved ones. LL and I have just finished a meal of the season's first home-made pumpkin soup and are discussing our schedules, and why they are that way. There are a good fifty things I would love to do in the next five minutes, including:
—write a letter of outrage to the AAFP for its appalling new alliance with Coca-Cola
—email and call friends I need to catch up with, and write some more thank-you cards
—read a dozen articles in various journals as well as the next chapter in "The Hypomanic Edge," John Gartner's fascinating look at, well, why it's Sunday night and I'm writing a blog instead of relaxing in preparation for bed
—draw/paint a bit on my own books (LL just helped me reach a breakthrough in understanding the first book)

The list goes on. Some of these things I will get to in due time, others will inevitably be postponed past the time I think they "should have" gotten done. Why on earth do we Americans, more than any other people, assign ourselves so many tasks that we have nightmares about failing to complete them?

And what are the implications of this endless on-the-go doing, for ourselves, our health, our world?

I am coming to believe that this pace of living keeps us from living well. And by living well, I mean simply living in a way that first does no harm. Living in a way that is sustainable, happy, and sustainably happy.

The double-edged sword of despair and hope, for me, is that this way of life is the path of least resistance: In America, it is easier than not to work a job that requires long hours, to commute to work by car, to have little of one's income support healthcare, education, the environment. But in other countries, as travel writer Rick Steves reminded me recently, there is a different path of least resistance. Your job pays you to take time off, including for maternity leave, for moms and dads. Public transit is cheap, efficient, universal. Taxes go towards true social security, rather than to fund wars and favor corporations. And just because America may be, as John Gartner argues in "The Hypomanic Edge," self-selected for nonstop doing, there is no reason we can't point that in the direction of doing good.

What this will take, however, is a rebellion. It will require us to not accept things as they are, until they are the way the way we want them to be. It will require us to think more—and do, at least within the current system as it operates now, less.

Which brings me at last to the quote that I wanted to share, from the book "Nonviolent Communication" by Marshall Rosenberg. The author "shares the sentiments of French novelist and journalist Georges Bernanos..." Here is what Bernanos, who fought in WWI and saw his three sons fight in WWII, has to say:

"I have thought for a long time now that if, some day, the increasing efficiency for the technique of destruction finally causes our species to disappear from the earth, it will not be cruelty that will be responsible for our extinction and still less, of course, the indignation that cruelty awakens and the reprisals and vengeance that it brings upon itself...but the docility, the lack of responsibility of the modern man, his base subservient acceptance of every common decree. The horrors that we have seen, the still greater horrors we shall presently see, are not signs that rebels, insubordinate, untamable men are increasing in number throughout the world, but rather that there is a constant increase in the number of obedient, docile men."

It is 24 hours later. I worked today, I work tomorrow. I want to sleep more than rebel. But perhaps tonight I will dream of flying.