(Photo: the BOSS Great Wall, which is a supercluster of galaxies over 1 billion light years across, making it the largest structure observed in the universe so far.)
“Hi there - been a reader of yours since the start and have lived your journey vicariously from your humble beginnings on Facebook, to your books and now Substack! Watched you mature as a writer, and you don’t seem to allow all the attention go to your head…maybe that’s what draws me to continue reading your essays?…they are still as refreshing as when you started. Can you speak to why so many teachers and writers in this space succumb to the projection of their followers? What do you do differently?”
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I woke up at 6:00 this morning and sauntered over to the kitchen to start my morning coffee and begin prepping the kids’ lunches for school. As I stood by the sink washing a coffee mug and yawning, still somewhat bleary-eyed, while contemplating the busy workday I had in front of me, filled with meetings and to-do’s related to projects I am working on, I caught sight of something unfolding just outside the window before me.
It was a spider hard at work, building one of the largest, most exquisite and most perfectly symmetrical webs I have ever seen. The web was barely visible against the backdrop of gathering light in the pre-dawn sky, and the only reason I could see it was because of the glistening beads of dew that hung like pearls off each strand in the web. The water still running, my hand still holding the soapy sponge, I remained transfixed for nearly half an hour, as the spider went round and round carefully secreting her spider silk and connecting each strand artfully and with mathematical precision to the rest of the web. To the naked eye, the web seemed a perfect circle with each concentric layer equidistant from the next, and each sub-section proportionally smaller than the adjacent subsection in the preceding layer.
My feeble brain marveled at the spider’s architectural instinct - how could a creature so small and so entwined within her own web create such exquisite symmetry without the ability to zoom out and see the whole? Without the ability to model the web in her own mind? Without the ability to create architectural blueprints? Without the ability to “measure twice and cut once” as the saying goes?
She seemed to just be able to do it.
The rapture I felt watching my little friend (for by the end I was in love with her) was indescribable. When my wife and kids awoke a little later, I showed them the web as well.
Later this evening, after a day filled with meetings and fighting various proverbial fires, I took a shower. Standing under the showerhead, I watched the patterns of water droplets that formed on the glass door of the shower with fascination. I witnessed a sordid drama unfold, Shakespearean in both intrigue and scope, as droplets conspired with one another to band together and form rivulets that quickly progressed down the surface of the glass door, uniting with other factions and annihilating other unassuming droplets in their path before finally reaching the base of the door and then perishing as if it had all been for nought. I marveled at how it seemed such a fitting metaphor for human history. It was only when the water turned cold that I realized how long I had been in the shower and was roused from my reverie.
Moments like the ones I have just described are frequent features in my life (as are my unusually high water bills). They are constant reminders of the genius, artistry, efficiency and precision inherent in even the most mundane happenings in our environment, if only we have the eyes to see them. They also serve as a much-needed counter-balance to the ego-inflation that we are all susceptible to and which can become a runaway phenomenon if left unchecked.
For example, take this article that you are reading right now. Perhaps, you find it compelling reading. Perhaps, it is insightful for you. Maybe the ideas I am expressing have hit a chord or have inspired a certain positive sentiment within you. And if that were the case, I could begin to convince myself that I am responsible for having that effect on people. I could convince myself that I am a creative genius with the ability to evoke inspiration within my readers and impact their lives in a positive manner.
And if a hundred or a thousand or a million people were to feel the same way about my words, perhaps my sense of self-significance might grow. I may begin to believe I am special and influential, gifted and powerful. I might grow in social stature and begin to become more and more preoccupied with my own power to influence others and obsess about how to direct that power more effectively. I may become consumed with planning my day, my week, my month, my year, my life - around how to maximize my power and influence so that I can impact and serve more readers just like you. And as the pressure (most of it self-imposed) to live up to these lofty expectations I have set for myself begins to weigh down on me and as I begin to exceedingly feel like I am failing to live up to the very ideals I have set for myself, perhaps I will redouble my efforts - even at the expense of my health, even at the expense of my relationships, even at the expense of my own ethics - to satisfy this “sacred purpose” the Universe has seemingly conferred upon me.
And as I begin to run on fumes, on the verge of burnout, perhaps I will begin to self-medicate - with prescription drugs, or hard drugs, or cigarettes, or alcohol, or irresponsible sex, or exotic vacations to recuperate, or $10,000 spiritual retreats, or overpriced therapy sessions, or any of the plethora of coping tools the marketplace-of-lack-parading-as-hope provides - just so I can continue to live up to the expectations I have set for myself. Just so I can personify the caricaturish ideal my grossly inflated ego has assumed in order to cover up the gnawing sense of void, that sits at the root of my existence threatening to swallow me whole at any moment, with the flimsy veils of ‘meaning’, ‘purpose’ and ‘duty’.
But then…
…I wouldn’t have time to watch the spider build her web for half an hour…
And I wouldn’t care to watch the spontaneous birth, heroic journey and unceremonious death of each little drop of water on my shower door…
So consumed would I be with my own “genius” that I would no longer have the sensitivity to perceive the inherent brilliance that literally surrounds me in each moment.
So obsessed would I be with my own self-importance I would miss the critical lessons being communicated to me in the present from the most unlikely sources in the environment.
So enamored would I be with my own “intelligence” that I would no longer be receptive to the deep wisdom that is pulsating in the very air surrounding me.
So caught up would I be in my own narrative, that I would miss the grand production unfolding on every scale from the quantum to the galactic on this vast spacetime stage.
I have already made that mistake many times.
I have already experienced how “getting what I want” can become the most direct path to spiritual impoverishment.
I have already seen how growing in self-importance renders life less and less meaningful and turns the present moment into a means to an end, an annoying obstacle to be overcome and, in extreme cases, a relentless torture from which respite becomes increasingly hard to come by.
I have already commodified myself for consumption by turning my life into a personal enterprise, my ego into a logo and my self-expression into a brand to be traded in the marketplace.
I have done all these things over and over again. And each time, I arrived at the same outcome no matter the myriad paths I took, convincing myself that THIS TIME I was finally on the “right track”.
And that outcome was a sense of alienation, exhaustion and an existential hollowness so profound that attempting to fill it in any way felt a completely hopeless pursuit.
In short, utter, total and resounding defeat.
And invariably, without fail, in those very moments when on my knees just ready to capitulate once and for all - it would come.
A sudden and unexpected shift …
…to that sense of wonder when watching the spider build her web.
…to the exhilaration listening to a gust of wind passing through trees.
…to marveling at the eyes of a sparrow curiously contemplating my suffering form without judgment.
…to spontaneously comprehending the wisdom of the bubbling brook as it narrates the ancient stories of the earth as easily as if they were nursery rhymes.
And inevitably, each and every time, this sudden opening of the heart, to the totality of what I am a part of, would shatter my despair with resounding laughter that emerged from a depth within my own being I wasn’t aware existed, as easily as one might snap a twig between their fingers.
And suddenly, what a mere moment ago seemed to me the most harrowing depths of pain and alienation would become trifles. Like watching an infant cry over a broken toy.
And instantaneously, the entire narrative would vanish. The entire sordid history of my failed life would dispel as easily as a mist in the noonday sun. And in its wake, a reality that is ever present, ever abundant, ever joyful and ever unperturbed by any of the bullshit my mind can conjure.
Having been down this road for infinite lifetimes, the message seems to be finally settling.
Where is there to go? What is there to find? What is there to aspire to when I can already, and in any given moment, (in the words of Blake)…
See the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wildflower,
Hold infinity in the palm of my hand and eternity in an hour?
The novelty of becoming the most fantastical versions of myself that my mind can imagine now pales in comparison to the simple joy of being right here right now.
Fame, fortune, prestige, power, influence, admiration, intellectual prowess, economic clout, these may mean a lot in the human world, but they mean fuck all to my friend the spider. And I do not desire to reduce the scope of my existence to the narrow confines of human ambition. For I am infinitely more than human. I am brother to the spider, I am friend to the tree, I am son of the mountain, I am descendant of the stars.
The human drama, the story of civilization, may seem of monumental importance to us but it is nothing more than a spot on the zit of the butt of an ant when compared to the sheer magnitude of what we each are a part of.
As I approach the end of this essay, I can sense my mind strategizing on a powerful and fitting conclusion to this piece. Yet, my attention is simultaneously drawn to the haunting cries of a band of coyotes in the distance that have pierced through the silence of the night.
And I must heed the call…
A marvelous journey through the human experience, what it already is when we are open to seeing. Thank you, my friend. A beautiful start to my day.
Your essays are like a cigarette after sex; satisfaction after life f*cks us. 😆
I actually had to stop and laugh at the water bill joke. And my favorite line was ‘I will not be reduced to human ambition’. Bravo 👏🏽