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When you step outdoors look at the weather; when you step indoors look at the faces. Chinese proverb
Automatic writing, powered by the muse, is what I do on Friday mornings. This week, during a “stream-of-fiction” writing, my page included a retired man who sometimes spent a few days in the capital city to lobby politicians and do research. He said:
“My dear wife was amazed that I was getting involved in politics, and gratified that I was getting out of “my own little world” to go do something about plastics. Husbands in little worlds end up with little minds and then with little regard for the world, the wife or anything but themselves. She was happy I was avoiding that fate …”
As it happens, there is a big plastics conference in Canada, but more significantly, I think my muse was attracted to showing a man lifting his eyes up from his human default of selfishness.
An extreme selfish disregard for the world ain’t pretty: I visualize a man with little pig eyes, and a woman walking about with an airline pilot’s Heads Up Display on her windscreen, constantly calculating “What does this mean for me?” It would be healthier to simply see with detachment.
As for rising above ego, two millennia ago the Greeks had their warnings of how the selfish gods can be capricious, warnings to keep themselves from behaving likewise. (I loved the best-seller about the lonely nymph outgrowing her forceful Olympian family, Circe)
One millennia ago Sir Galahad and other knights were going around doing someone a good deed every day, secretly, mindful of their saviour saying, “But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.” A century ago the Boy Scouts had their daily good turn.
I can imagine the gallant knights, conscious of being from a big castle, perfectly safe in their armour, cocooned from any disapproval from the cottagers, using their good turn to turn away from human arrogance, to connect them to the better angels of their nature.
There was an internationally famous educator. How famous? In the 1930’s Kurt Hahn said publicly, to his fellow Germans, that Adolf Hitler’s Brown Shirts had crossed a line by stomping someone to death in broad daylight… but the good Germans wouldn’t respond. When he was thrown into prison for his thoughts, it was international pressure got him out. He went on to teach Prince Phillip at Gordonstoun School, and, during the war, started the first Outward Bound School which saved so many lives. The first teacher was a captain who experienced two ships in a row torpedoed out from under him. The school gave young future merchant mariners the self confidence in themselves to survive a shipwreck. Before that? It was the older salts who tended to stay alive to be rescued. Hence the owner of the Blue Funnel Line went to Hahn for help.
The international Outward Bound schools do not make one tougher, they make one more hopeful.
Besides building people’s confidence through seaside cliff-climbing and such, the Schools today have their students serve in hospitals, and learn, for example, how to do mountain rescues. Saving a life, or training to save a life, builds compassion. Hahn said,“The passion of rescue reveals the highest dynamic of the human soul.”
A youthful spirit, it seems to me, be it in Scouting or knights-errant or senior citizens adventuring in the city, is built on a foundation of looking outward. My dad, a Scoutmaster, certainly thought so. On our walks we would pick up litter and nails that might puncture tires, while he drew my attention to things and people. “A Scout is observant.” Surely much evil stems not from boredom but from an inability to be interested in others. As Marley, both the singer and the associate of Scrooge might declaim, “Mankind is my business!” No wonder the motto of my local university is, “I will lift up mine eyes.” But not in Latin: in Gaelic. Mo Shuile Togam Suas.
As for Latin, and Greek too, I studied a semester of classic vocabulary at the U of Calgary where we learned to parse words for their origin. Now I can better understand that husband at the opening of this essay, whom I will explain now at the closing:
The suffix “ic”, and sometimes “y,” means “pertaining to.” Hence astronauts on Luna can become lunatics or go all spacey.
The planets, from the root “sta” as in stand, are in stable orbits. They travel together, “con” around their centre, the sun, in concentric orbits. The prefix ex, sometimes ec, means “out of” as in the Book of Exodus. The planetoid Pluto is “out of” the ordinary because its orbit crosses the path of Neptune, having an eccentric orbit.
Sir Galahad, who loved riding out in nature, would know: When that good and unselfish husband lifts his eyes and stands outside himself, he may know ecstasy.
… …
… …
Sean Crawford
Calgary
April, 2024
Word note: I see in my Oxford dictionary that the word comes from late Middle English from Old French via late Latin from Greek ekstasis, “standing outside oneself.”
Writing note: For Free Fall Fridays writing, there are two drop-in groups, one on-line, and one in person, on Fridays, 10:00 to 12:00 Mountain Standard Time. Such fun.
Quote note: I own a book of Kurt Hahn quotes, there are a few straggly quotes on the web.
Disclosure: I graduated from one of the Canadian Outward Bound Schools so that, as the rock was inscribed at Delphi, I might “Know thyself.”
