The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
- Henry David Thoreau
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As an adult educator, I watch people growing in their skills and abilities, and I wonder what separates one person’s ability to master a skill from another’s ability. Part of it has to do with the potential that each person has to master a skill, but that leads me to wonder, what untapped potential does each of us have? I’ve read that most of us lead a life well beneath our limits, so there is often so much more we are capable of.
But, of potential, there are two different types – being gifted with a natural skill that only needs some refining, and being gifted with a natural skill that requires diligent practice and effort, but, once you have developed the skill, you can outshine the average person’s ability with that skill.
I remember that when my cousin was learning to drive, my aunt called up my parents, overjoyed to report that my cousin was a “natural.” I wondered if I, too, would be a “natural” and have my parents similarly excited about my hidden gift. When the time came to learn how to drive, I almost hit a parked car. That day, I heard a tone in my instructor’s voice that could only come from a mixture of terror and exasperation. I was not a “natural.”
How many people dream of being a “natural,” and, when they find out, like I did, that they are not so gifted, they give up? Sometimes, a skill is latent, or is not possible for someone to come by without practice. But, is a skill like this any less important? I would say it is more important, because the more important tasks tend to be ones that take the most effort to learn, one for which there can be no “naturals.”
What can be more mournful that a life where, upon death, you have left so much untried – things that you desire are there for the taking, yet left untouched? Imagine if, upon death, each of us were given an inventory of our potential. This world would then know sorrow unlike anytime before.
I can’t help but wonder why people don’t try for their potential. Is it because of a fear of failing, a pride that they must be a natural or not try at all, a pride that they are always right?
Having to be right all the time stops our ability to reach our potential. Seeking out that mythical upper limit of our capabilities is wrought with failure, loss, and pain. The irony is that people who think that they have to always be right – people who are afraid of failure, of being wrong – are often trying very hard to be the best that they can, yet they are the very people who will never be the best.
And each year that passes takes away twelve months of opportunity to try to access your untapped potential, to find your way through the charnel ground of failure to reach who you truly are.
Once a week, Milwaukeans and Wisconsinites get into their cars and make a quest to sacrifice their hard-earned cash along a section of Fond Du Lac Avenue known colloquially as the Miracle Mile. They stand in line, sometimes with twenty or more people in front of them, at any of a number of convenience marts and liquor stores that have been uncommonly lucky in generating winning lottery tickets.
Five-spots in hand, and visions of PowerBall floating before their eyes, the lines they stand in go farther than just the asphalt of the road outside. Behind them in line are Coronado, Pizarro, Raleigh, and many more who sought out the Miracle Mile by one of its many other names: the Seven Cities of Gold, Sierra del Plata, El Dorado.
Over the centuries, brave men have sought out the city where gold coins and precious stones were there for the taking, hoping to find the city and leave with enough bags of precious metal to make them wealthy, or perhaps to come upon the city with an army at their backs, taking it for their own and achieving such wealth that they might challenge even the royalty of Europe. In the jungles of South America, battling both disease bearing mosquitoes and hostile native warriors, Pizarro and the others always thought that El Dorado was just over the next rise, or past the next river. In one expedition, Pizarro lost over 3,000 men before returning home. In today’s world, money is more often all that is lost.
But any loss is small compared to the wealth that would come from the fabled treasure of El Dorado. Imagine a life free of debt, where you can go to the store and buy whatever you desire. Each person in line at the Miracle Mile stands there, making plans for what they’ll do with the treasure: they’ll share some with their friends, but not with that guy that’s always annoying, and relatives will be grouped into the good ones who will benefit, and the bad ones that will be left without; they dream of buying a new house, a sports car, or telling their boss to take their job and shove it.
You may have heard stories of those who have glimpsed El Dorado. The sailor who was rescued and nursed back to strength in the city, or the guy you work with who hit it big. (What was it like? you ask. Man, I ate like a hog, got two magnums of Night Train, and that night at the club, all the babes got twenty-spots for tips. They thought I was a king! He sits back, rubbing his belly, lost in reminiscence of his glimpse of the royal life. You ask, Then what? He sits back up. Well, I spent it all. That’s why I’m still working this crap ass job.)
El Dorado has taken root in the mythology of America, and its seedlings grow around us, such as in Milwaukee, where they took root upon Fond Du Lac Avenue when a handful of insignificant markets languishing in the shadow of Wal-Mart had a string good luck.
Many of us, when we dream the American Dream, dream of the jackpot, and mobsters and lotteries alike have taken advantage of this dream. Is there another place where you seek out a windfall, a sudden fortune that rises you to wealth and luxury? If so, then you, too, have your El Dorado, your share in the American Dream.
So, I leave you now, so I can head down to Fond Du Lac Avenue. If you can get me a five spot, I’ll put our money together on the next ticket I buy, and when we hit it big, we can get a couple of magnums of Night Train and live the life of kings!
Halloween has me thinking of evil, and evil often makes me think of the horrific Dharmapalas of Tibet, and the Dakinis who serve as guides through the Charnel Ground, the land of the dead, past red fields and blood lakes. This path, while dreaded, is often seen as the fastest route to enlightenment, and therefore these Dharmapalas, these savage and terrifying deities, are praised and honored.
Even though I’m not a Buddhist per se, I’ve spent many hours in their temples, learning the chants to the various gods – and to the Dharmapalas. It was after one such chant that a Buddhist came up to me and told me that he could tell that I took the path of Wicca rather than Christianity, because Christians turned Buddhist often seemed discomforted by the chants invoking the Dharmapalas. For some, these gods bear too much resemblance to Satan.
Thinking about Satan and the terrifying Dharmapalas makes me wonder, how do I know if God is good? And not just God, but what about all the reasonable behavior that I’ve been taught – respect for my elders, restraint, and selflessness – is this good path truly the way to heaven, enlightenment, or wherever your faith may provide you with as an end goal? What if God is a Dharmapala, savage, terrifying, and evil?
From a Christian standpoint, perhaps this isn’t as unreasonable as it might seem. Some of the greatest saints started as sinners – Paul / Saul comes to mind, and the apostles and Mary Magdalene are no exceptions. Is the truest path to heaven through sin and ecstasy? Even the ultimate symbol of the Christians is the by-product of the betrayal of Judas. The sacrifice of Jesus, the redemption of mankind, all from an act of evil.
Perhaps the answer isn’t that the God of the Bible is evil, but rather, the trickster Satan is a Dharmapala sitting at the right hand of the God of the Bible, not a polar opposite, but rather the divine fool that leads you to the path by taking you off the path?
As intriguing as such a thought might be, let’s leave the relationship – or lack thereof – between the God of the Bible and Satan to the Gnostic branches of Christianity and to the Kabalists. What’s more pertinant is the dicotamy between good and evil.
When we were young, we were admonished for not being good, were told to only ask for that which is reasonable. The story behind the tales of the Dharmapalas of Tibet and saints of Christianity paints another picture, however, where evil and ecstasy is essential for growth and development, and therefore worthy of respect and worship.
A Tibetan shrineroom has a small altar in the back that is dedicated to a Dharmapala. Our culture honors evil with Halloween. Vampire and zombies, pimps and murderers, death and disease: this Halloween, we recognize you and your essential role in life.
In this land of freedom and liberty, we all have the opportunity for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Or at least, that’s how the Dream goes. But no one person’s dream is stronger than human nature. No matter how far you run, you can never escape yourself, and life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness become forgotten ideals, just like last night’s dreams.
One of our strongest traits is our desire to put down those that each of us feels is beneath us; and perhaps one of the few traits that can often overcome this is our willingness to submit to the yoke, sometimes passively and sometimes with mumbled complaints, but nonetheless submit. Only sometimes the yoke is disguised as Kool-Aid.
Those who sought out this land sometimes were escaping the yoke – the Pilgrims come to mind – but running only provides a temporary reprieve. Soon followed debtor’s prisons, indentured servants, slaves, and continued disenfranchisement of women. (Even though, by that time, England had seen two sovereign queens, and named one of the colonies after the second of the two.)
Let’s pursue this Dream, not with the hopes of casting off the yoke or stopping the corruption that comes with power, but rather, to wake without waking, to watch the Dream playing out around us, part of it yet separate. We shall be the lucid Dreamers, the pilgrims of the American Dream, and better understand our American mythos. And perhaps we’ll grow a little closer to the ideals through not pursuing them, unlike so many others before us, who have pursued them and failed.
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