Our Tenure
Of the circumstances of one’s life, one thing can be said that is absolutely true for everyone: it could always be better, and it could always be worse. If things aren’t quite satisfactory now, just wait a little and then see how they are. If things take a worse turn, then wait a little longer.
The past, present and future are what you believe they are, compared to some standard. And, that standard is always shifting. On good days, things seem better than they do on bad days. One thing that’s perhaps fixed about the comparison standard is a baseline of vague dissatisfaction. We all think the next moment is what this moment is leading up to and that one will finally be worth the wait. Then things will start to matter and to make sense.
All these notions must be credited to Eckhart Tolle, who would in turn credit someone else, or ask what is the point of attributing credit. His concluding thought along these lines is, that since it’s a given this present moment can always be better or worse, it has to be okay as it is. This moment must be okay. It has to be okay enough to be acceptable. If it were not acceptable to you, by definition you would not be here.
The next moment also could be better or worse, so it also has to be okay. Except, Tolle would say the next moment doesn’t exist. It has to be agreed that it’s not here yet. Only things that are here now can be said to exist. Same for the past. It’s no longer here, so it doesn’t exist.
All of this serves as premise to a question that I have no idea how Eckhart Tolle would answer.
What if the present moment is not even close to okay as it is? The present moment on this planet is saturated with the colors of grief, including grief over the loss of a sustainable ecosystem. In this moment, which is clearly a moment from the final chapter of the human story, you can also say it could be better and it could be worse, but it is still not okay. It’s not okay to be writing the final chapter. Because it didn’t have to be the kind of story that was self-limiting and so short. Why did the self-destructive narrative have to be the prevailing storyline we followed?
Of course, we’ve heard that you see what you look for, so one should look for beauty and all wonderful things. But it’s very difficult to look for and hold onto beauty if it sits isolated in a context of ugliness that is a vast as the warming oceans. The ugly heritage of human missteps throughout our tenure is now on our doorstep announcing its gloomy presence. Logical consequences really suck when your history is one replete with illogical behaviors. We have met manageable challenges before, but this one is not manageable. Our management got us to where we now find ourselves.
If the present moment must be okay for the reasons stated above, but it is not at all okay for the reasons stated above, then what are we left with for a perspective template. It certainly seems like nihilism comes to the fore. It certainly appears that nothing at all matters. Wars have been fought and hordes of people have died in the name of something that was passionately held important. But, it wasn’t really, was it?
Most of our myriad predecessors made their sprint from the womb to the tomb without notice let alone fanfare and are each remembered today as much as a fallen leaf on the forest floor. Except for a relative handful of human lives that have been written about, and even their animating energy and corporeal matter was returned the same as a decaying leaf.
It makes no difference that that which we call energy apparently changes into matter and back again. It doesn’t matter whether there are actual or perceived variations in any given state of energy/matter or if it’s part of a continuum that includes states beyond our experience. Everything just is, regardless of how it is measured, described, experienced or imagined. Everything and every non-thing just is.
In this regard, of just-isness, I suppose Eckhart would say that everything is okay. But damn what a low bar.
Last point, and this points to something else altogether. This has been a consideration of the nature of existence. What hasn’t been addressed is that which exists of which we can know nothing. Most of the mass of the universe is of a sort we cannot measure. Most of the “volume” of an atom is a void within which infinitesimal sub-atomic particles do their barely measurable thing. We perceive this vast expanse as a void because we have no other category for it. It’s beyond our ability to perceive, so we cannot conceive of it, therefore we say it cannot exist as a thing. It is a no thing.
If, within that portion of the universe that we can perceive, we can say it appears nothing has any meaning — that nihilism is the only sensible framework — perhaps within the greater remainder, the imperceivable part of the universe, there is some context for meaning applicable here that we can hope exists.
I believe sacred writings address this and faithful adherents find comfort there.
