In the last post the reader was introduced to a book mariner wrote about twenty years ago. The book was about what’s important – and that what seems important may not really be important. Below is the first chapter which defines generally the places where we can find what’s really important. It’s a long chapter so it is offered in post-length sections.
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1.1 What’s it all about?
It’s all about what’s important. The question is, where do you find out what’s important? Sweatshirts, for one: “Let the dog in, let the dog out…let the dog in, let the dog out…” Life’s a bitch, then you die”; “He’s with me, I’m with her”; “Green Bay Packers”; “Back Street Boys”. I guess these things are important because people feel inclined to express them on their clothes like blatant but removable tattoos.
It isn’t about what’s not important. Rudi Valle, Eddie Fisher, the Temptations, Elvis and the Beatles, N’Sync — important icons come and go, to say nothing of Rutherford B Hayes, Kaiser Wilhelm, General Lee and Albert Schweitzer. All of them were once very important but the wave of importance keeps moving. I guess it’s because the sweatshirts wear out. The challenge for you is to find out continually what’s important by searching in places that are rich in contemporary, important stuff.
A person’s age is a place to find out what’s important. I’ve noticed that very young children and very old adults have a similar independence and care more about experiencing the moment at hand than the rest of us do. A young child, in an innocent, impulsive fashion, will enjoy the current experience with total disregard for future ramifications. Older folks, not so much with innocence but with wizened independence and disregard for decorum, will engage the present moment with deliberateness others seem not to have the patience to endure. It occurred to me that the very young and the very old find it easier to live in the present moment than the rest of us because the one has no past to fall back on and the other has no future for which to be held accountable. ‘Now’ is important to these folks.
For the rest of us, now is not important. Our past haunts us and our future threatens us. What’s important is not who we are now but who we were (I was in the war) or who we will be (I’m going to retire at 50); even who someone else is (my son is a doctor; my team won the Super Bowl).
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As mariner rereads this book, the voice reminds him of splinters rather than blocks of wood. He apologizes for this but the style allows for quick, influencing insights that, on the one hand, are insightful but on the other hand, don’t deserve full paragraphs. From time to time, he will drop in excerpts from this unusual piece of work.
Ancient Mariner