Articles and Essays
Some of you have asked about my Essential Principles, which I use as foundation for much of my work. These are a set of eight principles with associated practical subheadings – an attempt to synthesize and condense what I consider to be the very best from the entire body of existing knowledge about human personal development from virtually all schools of thought now and throughout history.
“Since you’ve touched on it, could you address in more detail physical health and well-being?”
An old teacher once told me, “Choose any one thing; if you stay with it long enough, research and experiment with the elements that make it up with true passionate curiosity, you will understand how anything and everything functions.”
Life relevantly livedWhat are the signs of happiness in persons I’ve met? Well, they laugh a lot, listen well and are consistently generous. They’ve realized that being right doesn’t make a bit of difference. There’s also a certain noticeable fearlessness, as if what they’re compelled by is more appealing than security and the opinions of others.
The Keys to Happiness? Creativity, Service and Physicality
How can we reduce or eliminate the primary obstacle to personal happiness?
“Darrell’s thought-provoking revelations are a joy for me, and I am constantly desirous of observing his thought processes. I recognize his mind and talents are giant-sized.”
— Ted Richardson
“Ideas and connections of words expressing Darrell’s thoughts and work are unique and have never been expressed in such a way by anyone. Translating them into another language sometimes implies difficult choices, as one can’t find the equivalent elsewhere. In doing so, I sometimes have the impression that it is the language, the way things are being conceived and expressed, that is being affected and slightly shifted. It seems that the language itself will never be exactly the same because of what has been written.”
— Christian Demeuré-Vallée
“…my deepest admiration for ‘Life Relevantly Lived’…as you have here so eloquently embodied the very thing you express, engaging with passion and a humble curiosity as well as with a warrior principle of outraged ethos the imagination you celebrate to transform an oppositional and destructive assail into a living articulation of imagination so compelling as itself to become a functional implementation of the framed paradigm…”
— Ethan Dunn
“As someone who’s only moderately familiar with your thinking, I definitely had my work cut out for me. It’s not that I mind the challenge; I’d expect nothing less from you. At times, your writing has an unusual kind of opacity to it; although the words aren’t so complex, they don’t yield their freight readily to the casual observer. It definitely becomes an act of conscious (and conscientious) devotion… yes, true passionate curiosity.“
— Kevin Kreiger
“[Being Well] is the most succinct, complex, complete and incredibly useful piece on ‘wellness’ that I have ever read. I can imagine the hours and even years that it must have taken to hone this piece to the essential, right down to the choice of each word. This leaves so much to contemplate and yet is so truly inviting and immediately applicable.”
— Karen Strassman
Reader Format
Being Well
Some of you have asked about my Essential Principles, which I use as foundation for much of my work. These are a set of eight principles with associated practical subheadings – an attempt to synthesize and condense what I consider to be the very best from the entire body of existing knowledge about human personal development from virtually all schools of thought now and throughout history. (I know, that sounds like a pretentious and overly ambitious project, and it probably is.) I’ve spent about 30 years working on this and have cross-checked all information a number of times with experts in various fields and those I consider to be the wisest and best representatives I’ve met, which is not to say that it’s perfect, but at least the research and homework have been done.
I’ve assembled these principles into a sequence that I think corresponds to the natural process of human development, from the simplest, most fundamental needs through increasingly sophisticated yet indispensable concepts and skills. The central context or idea behind these is to help define and lay out a clear path toward the universally sought life of complete well-being, fulfillment and ultimate success. I hope here to delineate some of these principles for greater understanding and practical application, so your questions and comments are more than welcome…
1) Be Well
Be a healthy animal. Establish a practical well-being program based on versatility. Pattern yourself according to real, natural rhythms and cycles.
Okay, that sounds simple enough…and ultimately it is. Notice the first verb: Be…which is where we want to start and end. What makes for a healthy animal is fairly easy to identify. Simple dynamics set by nature are profoundly influential, all of which can be studied in any species that actually lives in nature: consume the amount you use for energy; move when and how your body yearns to; sleep and rest to rejuvenate, not more or less; hold your posture so that it harmonizes with gravity and circumstance; breathe naturally and voluptuously; recognize and follow need more than want. Take these simple indicators and follow them through creative experimentation to expertise and you will be a very healthy animal.
Establish a practical well-being program based on versatility. The human body is designed to be extremely adaptable; we perform best, feel best and produce the best results when we are challenged and engaged through the widest spectrum possible. In terms of daily practical choices for outgoing energy (exercise, walks, manual labor, conversation…) and incoming energy (breathing, eating, restful gathering, receiving information…) explore the entire landscape of each day’s innate potential, including in-between, transitional moments. Variety, range, surprise, adaptability. A formal program design should include and emphasize agility, strength, precision, stamina and timing, practiced and played out through any and every engagement possible, but most certainly when exercising…exactly like great stick and silk or wrapper work.
Pattern yourself according to real, natural rhythms and cycles. Such as…spending energy when you have it, and gathering when you don’t; eating when you’re actually hungry, and stopping when you’re not; getting up when you wake up; resting when noticeably tired, even if only for moments of quiet breathing; stretching, deep inhaling and sighing the instant you feel inclined; creatively making the most of weather and seasonal variations; seizing and exploiting moments when you’re inspired to play or create; sing or dance when you like the song you’re listening to; stop, listen and look long at beauty that compels you; spontaneously engage what naturally calls to you; and whenever, wherever you find a sensation of deep well-being, prioritize it, fall into it and luxuriate in it as long as possible…
These are all clues and suggestions, from expert sources, that require personal exploration and experimentation to make them yours. Being well is an art, and like all art, technical skill should eventually be forgotten and fade into the background as the artist becomes increasingly liberated. Organic flow results, in which experiential knowledge integrates into the moment-to-moment fabric of living, and one finds oneself just being.
© 2020 Darrell Calkins
Well-Being – A Letter by Darrell Calkins from Re:
“Since you’ve touched on it, could you address in more detail physical health and well-being?”
Anyone can lay out some kind of ideal physical program, exactly what you “should” do, so I don’t know if I can offer much help in that department. As I’ve mentioned too often before, we are governed, and specifically our physicality is governed, by fairly strict rules, which are easily observable in nature. We have some freedom to manipulate some of these, but really not by very much. Everyone knows, or at least has the information, about the horrors of ignoring health issues and expecting your body to do what you want it to do with the least investment in it. Another “authority” telling you what you should do is not the answer.
Beyond this, ironically, many of the institutions that run the economy, such as medicine, education, law and even psychology are largely dependent upon failing health. If you add up the amounts of money exchanged in the control, anticipation and reaction to failing health (insurance, pharmaceutical research and products, reactive or compensatory medicine, related legal issues, consultation and therapy for those who are unwilling to improve their physical health and claim or believe the problem is elsewhere, etc.), you end up with an enormous chunk. To keep that moving, we need people to be sick. Then we have the extreme social emphasis placed on the pursuit and maintenance of a lifestyle based on making money at any cost, often at the sacrifice of health, sanity and well-being. Few persons would place money at the head of their list of values, yet in actuality, the amount of time and energy invested in making or spending it far exceeds investment in anything else. Getting down to the gym a couple days a week and having low-fat milk in your morning latte isn’t going to make much of a dent in a system or lifestyle that is essentially, well, unwell.
How to maneuver through all this, and be truly well, is no small trick.
Setting aside more profound issues, such as the value of attending to one’s conscience, performing work that is engaging and purposeful, and noticing why you’re alive in the first place, the real problem is finding a way to create and sustain a lifestyle that allows for and supports your real, nonnegotiable, physical needs. Many needs are unique to the individual, such as how much solitude one requires to remain sane—and that is a physical need, not only a psychological one—but there are some basic ideas that are pretty much universal. Please remember in all this that I’m not trying to design some ultimate program, which is a lot easier to do but would be absolutely abstract. One has to think in terms of balancing the reality of one’s circumstance with the components of one’s being—finding a way to harmoniously blend the two.
To do that well, some sacrifices and adjustments are inevitable. And that implies going up against the walls of opposition, both internal and social. No one will improve his health significantly without accurately perceiving priorities, knowing clearly what is at stake if those are not attended to and what is to be gained if acted on correctly. That’s the basic homework before any change can come about. Then that knowledge has to be transformed into a sustainable motivation. “Look, you’ll feel and perform better,” “You can do it!” and, “You’re going to get sick and die if you don’t,” are already out there in many forms as motivational information, with a long-term success rate of less than one percent.
Having said all that, one could look at this entire dynamic kind of like being in prison, with enormous limitations and impositions, but still with some freedom to be creative. Each item on the list I gave as priorities for physical well-being—posture, breathing, exercise, food and rest—are possible to manipulate and progress with in any situation, including an actual prison. If you want, I can pick each of these apart, but I’m not going to sell you on their value; that’s something you must discover yourself.
Posture is, I think, probably the most underrated of all items on this list. Besides having been identified recently as the single most important factor in what men find sexy in women, the list of how correct posture influences internal organs and systems, and also mood and general energy, is very long indeed. Your internal environment depends on the efficiency of the flow of elements within it. Obviously, this includes oxygen, blood, hormones and nutrients, but also all interaction between nerves and the brain. The spine, which is your foundation and support, has a natural position that guarantees the efficiency of movement and interaction of the related elements. Your internal organs are all right alongside the spine and depend on its correct position to function well. Any prolonged restriction or deviation from this natural position will result in some, at least partial, dysfunction. Over a long time, the results can be devastating.
The typical image of a depressed, lazy and tired person is someone hunched over and inert. Often, the assumption is that if one had more enthusiasm and inspiration, he would then stand up straight and move. In many cases, this equation is backward. But, as with everything related to one’s physicality, balance is the key. An overly erect and rigid posture may convey confidence and power to some, but it also causes a subtle accumulation of tension and rigidity on various levels, including psychological and emotional. Check it out. Find someone who looks like they have a steel rod up their ass and spend a few minutes with them.
For myself, I like the image often used in ballet classes, where one looks for the sensation of being gently pulled up from the top, not the front, of the head. That is, you’re not looking to hold the posture by contracting muscle; the sensation is one of lift and space between the vertebrae. Open chest, for sure, but also a slight indentation at the base of the spine, which I experience as a falling forward and down of the lower abdomen, causing a subtle backward tilt of the pelvis. Careful of too much muscle in the upper or lower back, and let the shoulders fall directly down, not forward or back. Someone with great posture gives the impression that they have an unusually good relationship with gravity, as if they float a bit (even with their lower body solidly into the ground).
And while floating (even with your lower body solidly into the ground), it becomes a lot easier to breathe well. As with posture, I’m not a fan of control. The body knows what to do when given the chance. Of course, if you’re sitting at a desk all day long, it doesn’t really have a chance, so you’re obliged to compensate for the absence of freedom. And I believe freedom is the word here. Weak, forced or restricted breathing will cause the same thing with whatever you’re focusing on at the desk or anywhere else. “How was work today, honey?” “Weak, forced and restricted.” The quality of one’s breathing has a remarkable capacity to penetrate any and everything one is engaging.
I’ve already discussed breathing elsewhere, so I won’t spend much time with it here, and there are some decent books on the subject. Indeed, the essential dynamic underlying almost every elite and esoteric physical art is work with the breath, so there’s information available. I would only add that it’s unfortunate that so much work is done with it, and not much play. Laughter has got to be the single healthiest activity one can perform. Just think how healthy you would be if you could sincerely laugh at that which now oppresses you. I’ve mentioned before that one good measure of someone’s depth of spirituality is how long it takes before they become offended. Imagine laughing hysterically at the criticisms, complaints and impositions you receive. At the least, you’d be breathing well.
When you’re not laughing, though, your breathing should be sexy, like posture: voluptuous, uninhibited, graceful and natural.
Which also happens to be a good list of qualities for an exercise program. In my experience in working with professional athletes and dancers, I’ve often been surprised by the evident lack of real versatility in their physical maintenance program. Almost everyone tends to exploit what they are good at, or what comes easiest, and ignore what they really need. Any authentically whole physical exercise program must include an evenly distributed focus on the full range of the human body’s naturally existing potentials, no matter how specialized one wishes to be. Otherwise, injury, malaise and nagging restrictions are inevitable.
The human body, like the human mind, is best at versatility and adaptability. This is our greatest skill and our greatest chance to unlock natural potential. What that means in terms of physical movement is that a fairly equal amount of time and effort should be allocated to the widest possible range of activity. That includes strength, flexibility, precision and endurance, but it certainly doesn’t stop there.
For example, virtually every elite training program lacks real range in dealing with speed (or timing, really) and transition. And every program lacks true development of spontaneity. The memorization of specific movements and sets of movements certainly has a value up to a point, but the human body, like any other animal, does not naturally move in geometrical patterns. If a body is consistently trained to do so, the first movement out of what is familiar is not only awkward and ineffective, it is likely to cause injury. The same with speed. Your body has at least five speeds. I don’t know how many yoga practitioners I’ve worked with who had no idea at all of how to move naturally and well outside of their practiced range of speed (second gear and sometimes first), which is unfortunate, because often exactly what they are looking for is on the other end of the spectrum they’re working on. The exact same thing is true for a number of athletes I’ve worked with who specialize in timing, like baseball hitters, or martial artists (forth gear and sometimes fifth); they never conceived of the idea that to understand how time works, and how to master dealing with it, one must have exceptional attention to detail within a single second, and that necessitates slowing that second down so that it looks like a few seconds. At least half of that work involves knowing how to move slowly and precisely, and being completely comfortable doing so. As with all forms of specialization, one lives and analyses data within a frame, unaware that the solution is most often just outside of that frame. Never underestimate the depth of your subjectivity.
What does all this mean for the average person looking to construct an effective physical exercise program? Think versatility. We don’t live in nature and interact with it such that surprising and varying situations demand of us a full-range of skill in response. But we are genetically designed for that, and we function best in some version of it. If you always walk on a sidewalk that is flat and straight, of course the structural support in your ankles, knees and hips is not prepared for uneven terrain. And if you never have to climb a rocky hill or tree, you don’t have the true upper-body strength to handle spontaneous adjustment. You may be able to bench press 300 pounds, run a marathon, or sit in a full lotus for an hour, but those are not transferable to a million other more important physical skills, and very probably are a cause of more problems than not. I’m all for ritual and repetition in exercise, but if that does not include the consistent requirement for real adaptability and versatility, in space and in time and with real objects, it’s a lot more irrelevant than one and one’s fellow specialists would believe.
I understand, of course, that the common person usually exercises to improve image rather than well-being. But that’s not the subject of this letter.
Onto food and diet… What can one say? You can go to any bookstore or library and find conflicting advice in any two books sitting right next to each other. There’s probably some truth in each of them, although, like exercise, it’s a good idea to take a real look at the person who is giving the advice and determine if you like what you see. Then crosscheck it with someone who is completely different from you to get a more objective view. I think the real crux of this subject is mostly about how one relates to food. Obviously, the purpose of food is to provide energy. If you’ve wandered so far away from that fact that it’s mainly a ritual of sensual self-indulgence, distraction and entertainment, it’s not going to make a big difference if what’s on the plate comes from the health food store or the local fast food restaurant. The healthiest people I know are mainly those who don’t really care that much what they’re eating. But they have a real gift for knowing why and when to eat and why and when to stop.
Again, balance and compromise between circumstance and essential need is where the focus and creativity must be placed. I’d stress here creativity and experimentation, trying different combinations and then really taking the time to notice how you feel and perform afterward, over time. Certainly food is fun. But like anything else that’s fun, it has its limits and has a dynamic in place in which you have to pay one way or another for the fun. As with drugs, if you feel great for an hour and then fall apart or are numb for the entire day after, that’s not a dynamic that supports well-being, health or happiness. If you haven’t noticed that, or can’t figure out how to negotiate the variables, I believe that just falls into the category of stupidity.
There’s a notice on my pack of cigarettes here that states, “Smoking kills.” Now, one could place that notice on anything—cars, steaks, televisions, rivers, people, religions, flowers (the Autumn crocus) or scarves (think of Isadora Duncan). What actually kills is bad discernment. Food as a weapon against oneself is hard to support as technique or way of life.
Of course we should enjoy the delights of food and eating. I still remember well the most enjoyable meal I ever had: a tart green apple with a piece of Gruyere cheese. Having not eaten for five days, I found the sensations extraordinary. I recall actually feeling a significant jolt of energy and perception within thirty seconds of the first bite. I assume I have the liberty to write something like this without it being construed that one should fast for five days. I’m simply trying to point out that truly enjoying anything requires a good sense of proportion, which includes the capacity to go without. “A balanced diet” is not so much about protein/fat/carbohydrate ratios. The real ratios to consider, at least for the typical American or European, are energy consumption/expenditure, pleasure/actual need, food/everything else.
Now and then my otherwise delightful three year-old daughter panics when she isn’t given her dessert right away after dinner. My usual comment to her is, “Hey, relax; it’s only food.”
Last on the list here is rest, and believe me, I need some after writing all the above. I look at the idea of rest as rotating one’s qualitative focus, not just doing less or changing activity. The role of rest is recovery. If you keep pushing the same quality button (fast or slow, concentrated or dispersed, hard-working or lazy…) for the same component all the time, of course it’s going to become depleted, just like if you keep working a single muscle in the same fashion or don’t use it at all. Eventually, it’s going to collapse and take everything else with it.
In my experience, most people are actually seeking recovery from the monotony and anxiety of qualitative repetition. This applies to body, emotions and mind. And that monotony and anxiety involves inertia just as much as over-use, meaning inertia in some areas and over-use in others. People generally believe that stress is responsible for depletion, but apathy and uninspired systematic repetition are equally responsible. Or rather, systematic repetition produces as much or more stress and anxiety as anything else.
Recovery through sleep isn’t going to happen if the majority of the components of your being aren’t getting enough stimulation or resistance to work against. Your brain may be tired after work, but if your body and emotions haven’t been challenged through the day, they’re going to keep irritating you even if you’re asleep. They don’t need rest; they need work for real recovery to take place.
Rotating activities will help, but the goal there should be to experience and express a full-range of qualities by all components in proportion to their potential and need.
Well-being, or wholeness, implies integrity and harmony between all existing elements, providing freedom for the whole. If you’re ignoring a high percentage of the elements of your entire being, and the range of qualities they can naturally engage, there will be no real recovery or progress until you do. The typical relentless worker is just as lazy as the typical indulgent idler; they’re both just going through the habitual motions. To break the repetitive pattern, and discover more energy and effectiveness, one simply must stretch out in all directions, rotating focus and application of the qualities that make up one’s natural versatility.
A last note: your body has all this information already. Physical well-being necessitates listening to what you already know, and then taking it seriously enough to act accordingly. When you wake up and feel the impulse to arch your back, stretch and exhale with a loud sigh, for God’s sake, do it.
© 2020 Darrell Calkins
True passionate curiosity
An old teacher once told me, “Choose any one thing; if you stay with it long enough, research and experiment with the elements that make it up with true passionate curiosity, you will understand how anything and everything functions. Choose any two things that appear to have no direct relationship, apply the same methods, and you will know how Nature thinks and feels.”
This is one of only a handful of ideas that have sustained their original impact on me through the course of my life, remaining so penetratingly relevant that it has actually altered my approach to everything from my work, to raising children, to reading a newspaper or walking across the street. At its essence, the implication is that a connection, a working relationship, does exist between any two, and therefore all, independent things. The ethic born from this implication is that we as human beings have the freedom and the need to comprehend the connection—to construct a bridge with our imagination between our own needs and the innate potential of anything we happen to come across.
The process to doing that, as I’ve discovered, is infinitely complex. (So, at least I’ve gotten that far in knowing Nature.) The greatest minds throughout history have all enacted some version of this idea. Indeed, one could define the stepping stones of human evolution as steps made up by connecting apparently unrelated and often seemingly irrelevant matter and images: sand and fire formed glass; crushed plants and minerals created ink and paint to transport the ideas of writers, painters and musicians; moldy food produced the cure for bacterial infections; the search for a space or fabric caused the discovery of continents and cultures.
In my study of this idea, I’ve tried to isolate the key components that appeared to be so casually assembled when I first heard it. For example, “with true passionate curiosity.” Seems simple enough. Then again, religions and the major schools of thought throughout the world have spent thousands of years trying to design a technical map in response to passion and curiosity. A few describe passion as the opposition to resolution. Some have settled on an open mind with compassionate interests. Others have interpreted it as a little specifically directed curiosity with moderate passion as a means to get what one wants. Still others have split the two, promoting passionate imposition as the solution to the discomfort and awkwardness of genuine curiosity.
I’ve learned a lot from persons who seem to have a real gift for applying passionate curiosity in such a way as to come up with extraordinary discoveries: an old beekeeper who lived on a dirt floor, a basketball player who delighted in being double-teamed with just a second left on the clock, a biologist who studied evolutionary mutation in cockroaches, a child staggering through the final stage of an incurable disease. Each of these persons had an unusual knack for intuiting that something imperative was somewhere else other than where one would think to look.
Curiously and, I think, passionately, I’ve rarely met such an individual well up in the hierarchy of a religion or spiritual organization. As with any form of specialization or exclusivity, the further along you go, the more difficult it is to be genuinely curious about what exists outside of your own already-defined methods and goals. Every club, however holy or intelligently conceived, has a set of precepts that are meant to limit and hone perception toward a defined path and what lies at the end of it. This is like a particular style of music. Each style suggests, explicitly or implicitly, that the solutions you’re looking for already exist within the defined style. Which makes it difficult indeed to consider that real discovery, revelatory insight into the nature of life and one’s life, may not be within the set of precepts one is working within, however infinite or absolute one passionately believes they are.
Passion is most easily provoked by awareness of opposition. That is, it’s easy to feel passionately about the opposition to what one wants and its direct relationship to what one wants, as in, say, the pursuit of happiness. Desire may be deeply felt, but it becomes passionate only when one notices that what is desired is not so easy to acquire. This is what gives birth to “the enemy,” and probably to suffering itself. Unfortunately, it is also most often the demise of sincere curiosity. Once opposition is identified, there is no question to ask except how to get rid of it. The imagination shrinks to fit into the frame of opposing forces, and almost everyone experiences this from one side or the other, choosing which side according to style preference.
A number of great ideas have sought to break the frame. For example, the value placed on paradox so emphasized in many Eastern schools of thought and the themes of forgiveness and loving one’s enemy in Christian traditions. Such ideas extend from an underlying sense that there does exist some kind of essential mysterious harmony, and we just have to find it. Male and female, black and white, virus and host, opposing opinions, arrow and target, have an obvious bond to each other, representing two parts to some kind of whole that implies a harmonious relationship between the two will produce a superior result for both.
The search for such a harmony is a large part of the game of life. Religions, economics, politics, psychology and the health sciences all look to establish their version of a functional harmony of well-being in the individual and the community in which he lives. And each of us looks to one of these, or a stylized combination of them, for answers in our own individual search. Historically, we spend a lot of time and energy arguing and selling the superiority of our chosen system of answers over another; part of our time and energy is allocated to the actual pursuit, and the rest is spent trying to validate the way we’re going about it. Finally, there’s not much left over for genuine curiosity, and our passion is already spent on pursuing, arguing and selling. We end up with virtually no harmony at all, and nothing more compelling to show for it.
True passionate curiosity is a subtler approach to harmony, one born from our original childlike fascination and love for life. It is not the search for answers to obvious questions we’re trying to solve, or being clever in reaction to the inconveniences of opposition one faces in life, or temporarily appreciating casual distractions. It is more along the lines of an active inquisitiveness toward whatever one might happen to come across—a kind of piercing peripheral vision along the way. Not just stopping to smell a rose alongside the road we’re on, but allowing the rose to provoke imagination, to fuel the context of engagement, to open doors to mystery. And even further, choosing to passionately explore whatever is on the other side of those doors, following the sense that curiosity itself is imperative.
In this spirit, this small monthly newsletter is meant to offer sustenance for true passionate curiosity. The hope is to provide a forum for original insight into personal evolution in realtime, alive and questioning now, rather than to exchange or list existing answers and niceties, or discuss the superiority or one position or idea over another; to aid in keeping our perception and imagination vital, looking for clues to mysterious alchemy. Much like forming glass from sand and fire.
© 2020 Darrell Calkins
Life relevantly lived
“The imagination and intentions displayed in your newsletter are all well and fine, but I can’t help but feel that it’s completely obscure. For the average person trying to move along in life, your ideas seem irrelevant and like just more naïve, self-indulgent philosophy alongside the road.”
Which road is that? The one that goes to the job, the bank and the shopping mall, then directly to the cemetery?
I always cringe when in the presence of those who view curiosity and imagination as either irrelevant or an expression of naivety. Not so much because of the tone of “wordly-wise” superiority, as if maturity is learning to get beyond imaginative curiosity (from which all roads were created) to cynical criticism. Not so much because of the blatant disregard for those who applied imagination to create the things we benefit from (including the chair you’re sitting in, the computer you wrote your opinion on, and the words you used to do so). Not so much because all problems we encounter personally or as a community depend entirely upon curiosity and imagination to resolve them. And not so much because those who are compelled enough to actually risk envisioning something other than the common road to already-known destinations are seen as the enemy. But mainly because of the ignorance and naivety fueled by hubris that causes the unquestioned presumption that one already knows not only what to pursue, but also what others should pursue.
What can be more naive and irrelevant than to not have noticed that one’s life has been spent pursuing things that made little or no difference to anyone, even to oneself?
The greatest persons I have met have been relentlessly opposed throughout their lives, not because of the specifics of their imagination or vision, but simply because they had imagination and vision. I’ve been witness to my children’s struggles to maintain their curiosity and imagination within an education system that has no plan or program for keeping these alive. I’ve worked with thousands of persons whose primary suffering is caused by trying to keep wonderment alive in a world that demands its annihilation so as to fit in.
In my naïve opinion, for “the average person,” as you put it, obscurity and irrelevance is the personal experience that comes from having lost wonderment and fascination for life. Self-indulgence then becomes the preferred technique for recuperating some residual sense of joy. The end result is finding yourself on a road you never even wanted to be on. You haven’t noticed this?
It may very well be that my articulation of these ideas is obscure. That’s probably a fault of mine in trying to find an original and effective imagery to convey their essence. But the qualities themselves—true passionate curiosity, imagination and wonderment, and ultimately awed fascination—are the source of every creation and discovery. So, they are relevant, at least to those interested in creating and discovering. They may be intimidating and overwhelming in their implications, especially when we consider how difficult they are to really locate and live according to. In their absence, however, what’s left over that’s truly relevant?
Perhaps these qualities themselves strike you as being naïve? As though they’re reserved for small children and those who can’t handle responsibility and the requisites for success in life. What then, exactly, is success? And what are our real responsibilities?
When I think of my responsibility and what success would really be for me, my mind immediately goes to providing something essential to those I love, such as my children. Certainly you’ve heard of the idea, “What I really want for my children is for them to be happy.” And you can probably imagine that to do that well, to aid someone else in being happy, is not an obvious and easy thing to do. In other words, it would take some imagination in considering how to go about it. One would need to be passionately curious about what makes up happiness, for example.
Is this still relevant? Or is it naïve and obscure to consider how to help make a loved one happy?
So, I’m thinking of what makes for a happy person. Perhaps there are clues sitting around somewhere. Common periodicals and books present the results of research made into the nature of happiness. For example, there are no consistent patterns of deeper happiness amongst certain age groups, gender, levels of income or education, location of residence, type of job, or specific belief system or religious preference. So, I’d cross those off the list and look elsewhere.
What are the signs of happiness in persons I’ve met? Well, they laugh a lot, listen well and are consistently generous. They’ve realized that being right doesn’t make a bit of difference. There’s also a certain noticeable fearlessness, as if what they’re compelled by is more appealing than security and the opinions of others. It’s as if they create their own answers instead of living out others’ answers. They’re passionate about what they do. Somehow, they’ve kept alive some sense of vital wonderment. And finally, they all have a deep curiosity, as if mystery and discovery are always more fascinating than just knowing.
Then, if I were to take this responsibility seriously, the one of helping to make loved ones happy, I suppose I’d then make choices to promote the qualities described above. And I’d probably try to keep these qualities alive in myself so that I could show how they function, give examples of their value, and share in their expression.
I’d also probably need to identify and work to protect the loved ones from the many forms of violence that seek to destroy these qualities, at least until they could protect themselves. So, I’d have to learn, for one thing, how to guard against everything that demands that they shrink to fit into the obligatory, irrelevant monotony of the unimagined life, the one without any passion, curiosity or wonderment. I’d suggest to them from time to time to remember to not follow directions from someone who could not discern the difference between relevance and irrelevance. Also, that they avoid those who complain or criticize without offering an envisioned solution. And that they never trade away their fascination for a lesser thing.
If I could achieve that, I’d look back on my life with the sense that I had succeeded, that my primary responsibilities had been fulfilled. That would be a life relevantly lived.
Perhaps, though, as you say, these ideas are just naïve and self-indulgent. What would you propose so that I better understand how to move along in life?
© 2020 Darrell Calkins
Darrell Calkins 
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