Steeling
I am a strong believer in the law of compensation.
Emerson was one of many sages who articulated it.
It goes back, however, much further.
The Taoists (600 BCE?) opined that the universe is made up of opposites.
Westerners often think of ying and yang as masculine and feminine, but, to the ancient Chinese, the concepts were much broader than that.
I have no idea if that’s true.
Stay with me anyway.
In the west, around the same time, Anaximander said pretty much the same thing.
In every life, you get some good and some bad.
That’s the deal.
Whitney Houston is only the most recent example.
Clive Davis paid her $100 million.
Extraordinary success too often ends in tragedy.
Take any Kennedy.
Heraclitus, another Pre-Socratic, a little younger than Anaximander: “For from all I have heard I know of no man whom continual good fortune did not bring in the end to evil, and utter destruction.”
We all have our suffering to do.
When we anticipate it, when we have the luxury of a degree of predictability, however illusory, we have a tendency to steel ourselves.
We brace for what could be bad news; we prepare our heads for what could be a bad dream; we brake for potential head-on collisions.
We lose sight of our blessings, of the other side of our ying/yang.
We ruminate over future consequences and forget that Otis Redding is on the box.
Sunny winter days, agreements with North Korea, scenes of Mitt Romney talking to Lenny Kravitz pass by without generating so much as an emotional photon.
Syria may blow at any minute; Israel may bomb Iraq; it’s 2012; hunger and disease rampage Canaan: so what?
Steeling oneself demands focus on the problem at hand, to protect oneself from personal consequences – of death, disease, bad breath.
Did I hear that the State of Texas spent a million dollars “protecting Rick Perry” while he went around the country making a fool of himself?
At least we do not have to steel ourselves for the possibility that he may be our next Commander in Chief.
Steeling is a skill.
Develop it; it will come in handy.