9: Bound By Desire: Taking back our lives

Taking back our lives

Our purchases have long tentacles …

The newest car still needs regular maintenance, and often repairs.

Clothes impose laundering and organization.

Apps burden us with passwords to remember.

Books beg time to read, games time to play.

Gym membership or streaming service alike, our time is scarce.

More insidiously,

Our own ideas hold us hostage.

Photo by “Helga”, with permission

A good idea has its way of nagging us. It won’t go away. If we act on it, it takes hold even more. My father became beholden to the success of the small company he led, working to the end of his life to maintain what he started. Even my photo web-app project began as a fun idea, then became an addiction to fix, maintain, and enhance. One idea leads to another, then another.

‘Have my projects become my prison?’ I wrote in the previous missive, ‘The Beauty of Simplicity.’

ما كل ما تمناه المرء يدركه رب إمرئ حتفه فيما تمناه
!كم نافس المرء في شيئ وكابد فيه الناس ثم مضى عنه وخلاه

Not everything one desires, gets What some wish, may hasten their fate
How many contested others for a thing then left it behind unclaimed

— Abu al-‘Atahiya (أبو العتاهية), Kufa, Iraq, ~800 AD
(translation by Ramsey Hanhan)

Knowledge is similarly confining. If word gets out that you are good at something, be it math homework, or fixing a house or a car, people expect you to help them with it. Expertise is a trap. “Don’t tell anybody that you fixed the copier jam,” an officemate once told me. He should know. Known around the building as the “computer guru”, he was called upon to troubleshoot everything from a word-processor glitch to recovering data from crashed disks and unlocking ransomware.

Something in me rebels against these self-imposed obligations. I want to enjoy life as it is, in the here and now. Instead, I am spending my time catering to different thoughts and ideas. Even writing these very words. I had to allocate time and energy for it – time and energy that could have been spent with my daughter.

The rat race is not imposed on us, but begins when we willingly join the pack, chasing our own thoughts.

Taking Back Our Lives

the problem of humanity has not changed from the beginning of time
those with money and power have no incentive to share it
and those without are too weak to change things effectively

and when they do band together and make change,
a new class of the rich and powerful emerges that suppresses the rest
be it a church, a revolution, Communism,
a new dynasty

the only real solution, for individuals, is to withdraw and stop feeding the system

don’t buy, don’t consume, don’t work, don’t pay taxes
live minimally
that’s essentially what Jesus preached
what Taoists mean by harmony with nature
and Buddhists by non-attachment

so, if I resist paying taxes, I’ll go to jail, unless I stop working
but then I need food, which I can grow if I had land
but I have no land since my ancestors were evicted
and a price put on real estate

still, I make small decisions
buy only what is necessary, shop local
drive the smallest and most efficient car, if I needed one
minimize my footprint in this world

-- Ramsey Hanhan, unpublished poem, June 2021

Even before the COVID pandemic, a short drive around my neighborhood became a depressing sight. Store after store was closing, like dominoes, in the face of that Internet Behemoth – Amazon. Borders, the first bookstore I visited in the US, was gone. Sears, my first department store. Toys-R-Us, my daughter’s favorite store. While chains folded, the small local stores were devastated. I was so sad one day, arriving at my local discount book warehouse, to see it gone. Meanwhile, the Behemoth delivery trucks were becoming the most common visitor to our block. As guilty as my next-door neighbors, I awaited the packages. Shameful in a way. Trading my future for the transient convenience of two-day delivery and a comprehensive inventory.

In this age of “globalization”, a few mega-corporations control the world’s wealth, amassing enormous powers. Much of the ongoing global strife and migrations emanates from the total disregard people feel within the present international order. In the West, the anti-immigrant and Islamophobic reactionary movements are nurtured to deflect attention from the real causes of unemployment and exploitation – namely the multi-national corporations.

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The only real answer is to stop consuming their products. Buy local and support local businesses as much as possible. Avoid big names. I will write more later about ways we can fight back. For example, supporting your local farm by joining a Community-Supported-Agriculture program.

Simplify, unplug, live off the grid. Eliminate, reduce, pollute less, and consume fewer resources. These are concrete steps we can take.

And develop our spirituality.

غَيْرُ مُجْدٍ فِي مِلَّتِي وَاعْتِقَادِ ي نَوْحُ بَاكٍ وَلَا تَرَنُّمُ شَادِ
وَشَبِيهٌ صَوْتُ النَّعِيِّ إِذَا قِيـ ـسَ بِصَوْتِ الْبَشِيرِ فِي كُلِّ نَادِ
أَبَكَتْ تِلْكُمُ الْحَمَامَةُ أَمْ غَنَّـ ـتْ عَلَى فَرْعِ غُصْنِهَا الْمَيَّادِ
صَاحِ هَذِهْ قُبُورُنَا تَمْلَأُ الرُّحْـ ـبَ فَأَيْنَ الْقُبُورُ مِنْ عَهْدِ عَادِ؟
خَفِّفِ الْوَطْءَ مَا أَظُنُّ أَدِيمَ الْـ أَرْضِ إِلَّا مِنْ هَذِهِ الْأَجْسَادِ

I cannot be sure if Noah’s crying, or a singer’s chanting
The wailer’s voice is not far from the herald’s calling.
Is the dove mourning, on its swaying branch, or singing?
These graves filling the land, are ours, so tell me, where are the graves of past ages?
Tread lightly, the soil of the earth, I think, is but of these spent bodies

-- Abu al-Ala’ al-Ma‘arri (أبو العلاء المعرٍّي), Ma’arra, Syria, ~1000 AD
(translation by Ramsey Hanhan)

The less involved in this world we are, the less dependent on it we become, and the less threatened by it, or beholden to it, we feel. That was the response of Jesus when the Devil tempted him from atop the mountain. It’s not worth it. Nothing in the world is worth the ugliness that ensues from possession.

Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh agrees:

“In the context of our modern society, simple living also means to remain as free as possible from the destructive social and economic machine, and to avoid stress, depression, high blood pressure, and other modern diseases. We should make every effort to avoid the pressures and anxieties of modern lives. The only way out is to consume less.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace

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Next time, … The Power of the Negative

In case you missed it, Simple is beautiful: