by Martin Anton Smith martinantonsmith@gmail.com
You can shore yourself up slowly & surely for a decade or longer. You can definitely do that. Upon doing so you begin to climb out of that whatever that form of randomized cultural abyss you’ve been programmed by as a child and a teenager. Most of us came from various shades of cultural abysses. The child of the crack addicts & the child of wealthy on the hill are different, but I contend it is still a matter of degree, rather than form. The child’s crack addict parents were addicted to temporary chemical highs while the child of the rich-on-the-hill parent is addicted to the imperfect feeling – also a ‘chemical high’ – of security money & status gives. The crack addict vs the money & status addict adult share biologically all the same ‘brain machine’ of the same species. The difference, as I was saying is one of degree in terms of programming – morays – culture, which has rules for which ‘objects’ of the world (tangible & intangible) get focused on.
On that, if I was to speak as a English person from the 20th century I might say that just because the ‘working classes’ & the ‘middle classes’ hate each other, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t just on different sides of the same coin. I once said to a long term childhood friend of mine, who I talk of sociological matters to, “the working classes take their profits in sex, & the wealthy forgoe sex to get the cash”. A little crude but it was a good analogy. But back to the story of climbing out of the abyss – which from the last paragraph’s explanation – is a task for everyone. We are all tasked with crawling out of our own personalized abyss.
So as you crawl out of the abyss, you see the light is getting stronger. Eventually – perhaps after a decade or two of adulthood (if you are lucky or not forever willfully blind) you see that the trail has changed & looks less ‘abyss-ie’. A quicjk surveillance shows that you have now arrived at the foothills of a hazed but surely very real, and at the least ‘partly beautiful’ towering mountain.
But then you being an Apprentice (of Life) instead of a Master, you chose to take rest. That’s what feel right. On this rest you relaxed too much thinking you were enjoying yourself – that which is happening is the ‘Masters test’. For you don’t know it, but you’ve done something wrong by resting. The Master knows this is where you let your guard down (against Life). The (future self) Master is watching you (as him/herself in the past) as a greenhorn Apprentice (of Life). The future-self Master see the present more foolish you has in choosing to rest too long has allowed a random unvetted element to sit beside you while you were resting. While you patted yourself on the back about ‘how Farr you’ve come’, some trange force came to distract you, perhaps it was a person pf a ‘collective of people’ that appear in human form (common), but perhaps not (perhaps the distractivve force was simply an obsession with electric guitars).
Because you as the Apprentice (of Life) only within the first twenty five years, you have so much to learn yet to become literally ‘Masterful’. In taking to rest & the distraction served while in the ‘rest area’, you lost sight of the hazed covered mountaintops & the less beaten path that leads towards its peak. So, of course disaster can then easily strike just like an asp might strike someone ambling dreamily through the long grass on the savannah.
The disaster bites, you are snapped out of you’re seemingly-always-getting-a-little-better-journey. Suddenly you’re rolling back downhill fast, tumbling, sweating, having no rest, losing parts of yourself piece by piece. That’s what they call in the vernacular a ‘rude awakening’.
Before you knew what was really happening you have stopped falling & are now still at the bottom. You notice it ‘looks and feels like’ the psychological state called ‘rock bottom’. But now you have dusted yourself off, checked you’re bruises and broken bones over you can now see you seem to indeed be back to the ‘randomised cultural abyss’ where you started your journey between ten and twenty five years ago. You at this stage of your development trust your surroundings to much – or should I say the ‘meaning imbued’ into your surroundings. this is natural for remember – you are not a Master (of Life) yet, you are an experienced Apprentice – perhaps you are even a Journeyman, which is of course worse than the Apprentice who can become a Master (of Life). For a Journeyman lacks the constitution (tools) to ever become a Master. But let’s say for simplicity you are not so ‘bad lucked’ for that case – let’s say you can become a Master (of Life).
In truth when you woke up you were no longer the same exact Apprentice immediately before the fall, (and definitely not a Master). But this is where Life throws up a ‘fork in the road moment’. It is a psychological form. It’s of belief. It is akin to the ‘what you Think becomes you’re Actions and what becomes your Actions becomes your Reality thesis (that saying is True – but of course Life Coaches/Internet guru’s have twisted/murdered all these good old type fables). The (psychological) fork in the road goes like this: From that point after the fall, you can either ‘roll over & die’ or ‘load yourself back into the stock barrel to be fired back into battlescape (of Life)’. If you chose the wrong path in the road (i.e. you agree to ‘roll over & die’) you also choose not to ever become the Master. If you choose the ‘barrel of the gun path’ you are on the path to possibly become a Master (of Life).
What if the difference between the two situations – the barrel or the ‘roll over & die’? The one that ‘loads themselves into a the barrel again’ has proven they are ‘future Master material’ – for they intuitively know not to trust their kneejerk feelings after wakign uo from the fall back to what looks very much like that old randomized abyss of (perhaps) ten to twenty five years ago. The future Master choose not to take the ‘beaten down, in-the-moment, go-to advice’. The future Master has (psychologically) a healthy ‘dissociation’ between themselves and their minds ‘chatter’ (bad superficial advice).
I hate to admit it, but life seems to be indeed akin to a War (and I would contend is at least as much ‘attritional’ as vs a series of ‘shock & awe’ battles). Sun Tzu (The Art of War) had many fine points on the matter in fact. In wandering the wrong forked path after a blow to the mind and spirits, anyone can easily forget life’s ‘War-like-ness’ – & I think even a future Master (of Life) can even still fall prey to ‘aimless wandering’ – but perhaps I am being to optimistic, but that’s also not a bad strategy in itself, so long as it’s based on (Enlightenment like) philosophical reasoning vs blind reasoning. I’d like to think that twenty years in a psychological rest area is not also a metaphorical black hole of mediocrity (as eighty years as an Apprentice would certainly be).
The War of life is about embracing the rough & tumble, showing your battle-scars with pride. Then you are reminding yourself that you are at (some various kind of) War – with at least large attritional aspects. While a soldier in the ‘War of Life’ (hopefully to be a Master) you then must agree (as a soldier does by definition) to ward off the often ‘beaten down part of your mind. After all – a soldier doesn’t like a chatterer in the ranks while under enemy fire (to do so would be seen as Treasonous or at least Court-Martial-able).
Isn’t it sad we don’t always hear of ‘Life’s battle cries’ hidden amongst the rest areas of the mountain’s foothills, and in the ‘randomized abysses’ we all came from, and in particular after a ‘heavy fall’. But then again if everyone was a ‘Master’, then it would also be true that no one would be – for ‘without shade their is no light’. Whatever the Truth is, Shakespeare was onto something, for life as it is and has been lived here prima facie on Earth, is surely some kind of weird alchemy of both tragedy, comedy and history.
This writing is owned by Martin Smith Creations Ltd (NZ). For Commercial use contact Martin A.Smith at martinantonsmith@gmail.com. For non-profit Educational use, please share freely.
Anton Martin Smith Writer 