The Wild Ones

An inner rewilding and the suffering that accompanies freedom

“Dear Shiv,

These lines from your essay shattered me:

How do you know you are not aligned to life?

How do you know you are not perfectly adhering to your own nature?

How do you know each and every one of us 8 billion humans on the planet is not operating precisely according to Nature’s designs?

How do you know our destructive presence on the planet isn’t just Nature’s creative way of introducing a pestilence, a destructive virus, a cancer, because the Earth is in need of a reset?

How do you know suffering is not to the human what the howl is to the wolf?

I reflected on these questions all evening and arrived at the conclusion that I don’t know, yet I have been living for 70 years like I did.

When I awoke this morning, it felt like I was seeing the world for the first time. Thank you for giving this old fart a chance to live again. I mean it. Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks!

Shiv, I am curious how you incorporate this way of seeing into your daily living. As I understand it, you have a young family to support and the world is not always kind to those who refuse to kneel at its altar. I’m an old geezer with few responsibilities other than keeping this body alive—and I still struggle to hold things together…

Do you suffer as freely as the wolf howls?”

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***

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I suffer.

I struggle.

I don’t always hold things together.

You are right, the world is not always kind. And I do not kneel at its altar or any other altar for that matter.

But it’s not because I’m ‘noble’. Or ‘superior’. Or ‘enlightened’.

I am just unable to. It is a limitation in my design. I am unable to adapt to a world that demands constant obedience to its perpetually changing and arbitrary principles.

A world that is obsessed with becoming holds no space for one who is primarily oriented towards being.

I have struggled with this all my life. The lack of recognition, of respect, of being seen. Not being valued by society because I refuse to wear a costume and dance to a particular tune. And, by extension, not being remunerated by that same society in a way that I can sufficiently and easily support my family without the sword of financial ruin constantly hanging over my head.

Do you know how many times I wished I could just kneel at that fucking altar?

How many times I fantasized that if I could just amputate that part of my soul - that cares about depth, about being, about questioning every aspect of our existence - then I’d be free to just be a dude with a steady career or business, a nice car, a mortgage-free home, a healthy pension, an unhealthy cigar smoking habit, who plays golf with his buddies on the weekend and vacations at the same resort in Mexico every year with his family?

I no longer entertain such fantasies. Because they are poisonous. I have tried to play those games and ended up making a fool of myself.

A fish that was made for the depths of the pond is not made for climbing trees like a monkey. It might succeed in jumping out of the water and landing on an overhanging branch - and claim, “Look how well I climbed!”

But when it begins to suffocate, it will have no choice but to drop back into the pond.

Ours is a society of climbers. How many trees can you climb? How high can you climb? What variety of trees have you climbed? How have you helped others climb?

What does such a society know of the depths of the pond?

Even its language is a climbing language. Imagine a fish trying to explain the reality of a pond to monkeys while speaking ‘monkey’.

This is why all spiritual talk sounds circular and recursive. You are trying to point to an experience beyond words using words. It is like trying to use a butcher knife to pick food out of your teeth. You might succeed but not without leaving a bloody mess behind.

You asked if I suffer as freely as the wolf howls.

I say, freedom is its own kind of suffering.