Equanimity

Equanimity: noun - tranquility of mind or temper; composure; resignation, acceptance of fate.

            If you live in the cosmos and I hope you do then you know that living in it is no softball beer party. I’ve been to a few softball beer parties. They tend to be on the shallow side where the cosmos definitely does not. Living in the cosmos is the ultimate sobriety test, the litmus to which all is judged and compared, strong and silent, and the monolith that casts the greatest shadow. It is this indefinable certainty that defines and delineates all matter, but it is how we accept its presence that separates the wheat from the chaff. Knowing we are a part of a mystery without exactly knowing why requires patience and fortitude and a belief that the mystery is enough and the only answer you will ever need. It is through the mystery that the path to equanimity is found.

            All things being equal I can no more tell you there is a god as some random man in white chintz and a skullcap can. Or the shaman, rabbi, mullah or minister for that matter. Speculation through faith is the supreme dead end. Anything smacking of absolute dogma or ism ends up on the dung heap of failed dreams. Theories, postulates and hypotheses are great men’s necessary bulwarks against the inscrutable. Science is the ship that breaks the ice, but the ice in infinite. Any absolute meaning by men is meaningless.

            I do not waste time conjuring false meaning to placate a fear of weightlessness. I instead, look at existence in the words of Ernest Becker that, “The natural IS the supernatural! Creation is the primary miracle.” The primary miracle? Not a miracle in the commercial religious sense, but a miracle none-the-less because of the supremely infinitesimal odds that produced the right chemistry for life on this planet. Do I really need to tether my existence to some amorphous tenet or does it suffice just to be chosen to play?

            I am on the team. Not how did I get on the team or do I deserve to be on the team! This is critical. By accepting the chance I can only measure my experience against the mystery. Since it is all a mystery I am not locked into any preconceived notion of how to define the journey or myself. I have acknowledged the miracle, have accepted a spot on the team and am ready for action. I accept my fate as a fait accompli. The primary miracle is the long jumper’s board from which all creativity springs.

            What a relief! To be able to accept the mystery and build a response to it by how I live my life.  Now, I can get on with the business of creation unencumbered by the vicissitudes of commercial life.

            The concept of heaven, as if looking at the valley floor in Yosemite National Park is not enough, narrows the experience of mortal life. Heaven is a failsafe, a default for the faithful cowards who cannot look into the majestic faces of their own as absolute.

            I may have achieved some semblance of equanimity, but when you get down to brass tacks, the cosmos always has the last word.