In American author Don DeLillo's 1985 novel, “White Noise,” there is mention about “the most photographed barn in America.” Though the novel is a work of fiction, there is such a barn; the T.A. Moulton Barn, in Moose, Wyoming. DeLillo describes the road signs leading up to the barn, five of them, and I imagine they exist, like signs you’d find on the way to Niagara Falls, or any tourist attraction. I offer this, not because of the barn itself, but because of what one of DeLillo’s characters says about it: “Once you’ve seen signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn.” Think about that for a minute. There was no social media in 1985; we weren’t so easily robbed of our own experiences but still, subtle(or not subtle) advertising directives enchanted the collective like a magic spell. Now, social media has taken over and, though the technology is remarkable, its’ ability to divert and suffocate authentic curiosity threatens the essence of humanity by dismissing our agency, the responsibility we have to advocate for ourselves: Don’t just enjoy a sunset. Hurry up and post it and your life will be grand; and yet things seem to be falling apart–societal structures, and people; the world we took for granted.
For decades, I figured that life was all about accepting "the call," as per Joseph Campbell and I was all for it, but recently I realized that I had been under the delusion that mankind was growing out of its’ primal tendency toward violence. I had been considering any wars, oppressive actions, or assaults as outliers, as aberrant footnotes of an otherwise inevitable emergence of the divine soul of our species. My folly became clear during a recent read of the 75th anniversary edition of Edith Hamilton's “Mythology; Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes.” Yes, there was love and kindness, but the repeated violence, jealousy, and needless suffering described in one myth after another made me roll my eyes. All at once, I realized that not much has changed in the real world; people are still dying because of limiting beliefs, stone-aged dogma, greed, and the inability to see that we’re all in this together. I saw humankind for what it was–a flawed, well-meaning but often gullible species, unable as a collective to be strong enough to acknowledge the better path, because we’re still at each other. The evidence for this isn’t only on the political stage, but is played out in the microcosm of everyday life as people posture normalcy, blind to the need to face their own challenges.
I’ve written repeatedly about my belief in the benefit of sincere conversation, the rarity of which I feel stems from a lack of authentic curiosity: It’s a risk to see a thing and find it beautiful without having advertising tell you that it is. It’s a risk to stop nodding and smiling in complicity about an idea, an opinion. It’s a risk to heal. Nodding and smiling gets you nothing, as opposed to being curious not only about others, but about yourself and what you think. Doing a thing in itself is not a story; a story is when things change, when a challenge is met, or a vector is altered as a result of some meaningful event. Change can be scary. What if you’ve been wrong about something? Can you admit error, or even be grateful for it? There is wisdom, maturity in admitting to a mistake; relief. No? What is it that you are unwilling to feel, that you’re trying to avoid? Instead of nodding, or replying to a conversational lob with a dismissive remark, pause and ask yourself what it is that you’re defending against. Imagine the conversation if you were to respond thoughtfully, without judgement.
When Trump was elected, I found myself pausing, standing in the middle of a room, or sitting completely still in a chair, or at table, trying to comprehend the world. Hamilton, on page 71 of the hardcover version of her book, wrote: “The fifth race is that which is now upon the earth: the iron race. They live in evil times and their nature, too, has much of evil so that they never have rest from toil and sorrow.” It’s a tough, rather dark-middled paragraph, but she completed it with, “And yet even then something might be done, if only the common people would arise and put down the rulers that oppress them.” All is not lost. I believe we are born essentially good, but I’m pausing again, freezing while standing beside the kitchen table, or at the sink with toothbrush in hand. I want to want to be here. I do. I want to get up in the morning with an energetic hunger for the day, for the potential in each minute. I’ve done the work–I can see the barn, but I want you to see it, whatever that means for you. Not all of us have abdicated the responsibility to delve in order to better contribute to the world, but I feel like answering that call is more urgent than it has ever been. It’s difficult to throw it all off and accept that mankind is violent and vengeful and that is that. I can’t seem to relent the higher bar for more than an afternoon; the vision of a full moon, or a piece of art–the barn, reorients me away from complicity back toward hope.