Conscious Choice: Notes on a September Week

November 2001 | Choice Books

Notes on a September Week

by Mark Harris

"Go ahead, push your luck, find out how much love the world can hold, Once upon a time I had control, and reined my soul in tight." — Dar Williams

When sleep came that night it was fitful and short. I woke up Wednesday morning, September 12, at two-thirty, after only a few hours sleep. My stomach was tied in a hard knot, so I got up and instead worked on a project until close to seven in the morning. About four-thirty I put on the TV, leaving the sound off, just to see what the news was showing. Over and over the image of an airliner smashing into the World Trade Center filled the screen. Small human forms dropping from ninety floors up. After about a half hour, I suddenly was filled with disgust; I must have seen these same mad images at least fifteen times. I shut off the TV.

As the morning light came, I stopped my work and ate breakfast. No more work today, I told myself. I was exhausted, emotionally drained, numb with disbelief and raw nerves. My thoughts roamed over a bleak terrain. Yesterday the New York sky rained dark sorrow, a shower of soot and debris and hopes forever lost. Despair. Death was everywhere.

What a sorry, miserable world we live in, I thought. And, I was angry. But in the days to come I was angry not only at the mindless slaughter. Calls for our own brand of holy vengeance, indiscriminate, all-out war or obliteration of "evil" Muslims soon crackled over airwaves and on some street corners. One normally congenial NBC news personality talked of the necessity of a "disproportionate" response in terms of military retaliation. Another national cable host insisted that if Afghanistan’s Taliban government didn’t immediately hand over Osama bin Laden, we should bomb the whole country’s infrastructure to rubble. As for the people, let‘em starve, declared the host, if they’re not with us. Other pundits retched out equally frothing scenarios of retaliation, of bombing campaigns ranging over skies as wide as Syria to Iran and Iraq to Libya. One New York Post columnist summarized the sentiment for bloodthirst with thoughtful brevity: Oppose us and be prepared to become a "basketball court."

With the rage came instances of Arabs or other Middle Easterners in this country being harassed or beaten. "I stand for America all the way," declared the alleged killer of a Sikh man shot to death in Arizona. An angry crowd in the Chicago suburb of Bridgeview held menacing protests outside a local mosque. A female Islamic student at Illinois State University in Normal had her veil violently ripped from her face by someone who thought he was patriotic. Other stories circulated.

The politicians were doing their part, too. President Bush basically thumped his chest at the whole world, in his speech to Congress, delivering an only slightly more restrained version of the Post‘s basketball court scenario. One report claimed that even his father, George, Sr., counseled his son to tone down the Wild West rhetoric. Likewise, Attorney General John Ashcroft and others began tough talk about security as if the Bill of Rights were some regulatory inconvenience about to be deregulated.

Some of these same Washington politicians, now cheering wildly the president’s every fighting word, once also cheered bombings of civilian Baghdad and Belgrade that terrorized and killed many thousands of innocent men, women, and children, or who early in their careers backed mass assassination programs in Vietnam. Now, here they were, posturing in moral outrage as if they alone occupied the civilized holy high ground. There was fury in the air and fear and it was alive with righteous heartbreak. I understood and shared the heartbreak and the fury. But moral relativism had also become highly rampant.

On my part there were strong words that week for a very tender person who I felt was not understanding me. I couldn’t sleep later; I was full of sorrow that I had hurt her feelings. A neighbor who turned on his stereo loud late one night earned from me a call to the police, instead of a polite knock on the door. Then, a few days later, a night at a restaurant went from pizza, beer, and joking with a friend to a tense exchange about politics with a near stranger.

In the days to come I felt as I was just going through motions of living. Feeling every kind of emotion and yet, feeling nothing, as if a sheath of death had been pulled over me. On edge and not knowing if I wanted to cry or scream or, I will admit, take target practice at a photo of Osama bin Laden.

I was just so sad.

Coping

What I did try to do was read, walk, reflect, and reach out; be with the right people; and continue to try to breathe. More than anything I wanted to understand the meaning of what was happening. Toward the end of the week I was browsing at a bookstore when I saw Thich Nhat Hanh’s new book Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames. Being a reviewer, I could have asked the publisher to send me a copy. But there was no time for that. I picked the book up and decided to make it my assignment for the weekend. Maybe it would help.

Hanh is the Vietnamese Buddhist monk nominated for the 1967 Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King, Jr. I’ve always admired the way his writings on personal living and mental health never lose sight of the moral challenges of living in a difficult world, a world whose basic goodness remains stained by deep social injustice.

So I had my agenda for this first weekend of "the first war of the twenty-first century." I took a short drive out of town, to a normally quiet little hotel I sometimes retreat to when I need a change of scenery. My plan was to read, keep the TV off, and walk in a nearby arboretum. Unfortunately, when I arrived, the usually quiet hotel had been taken over by a small, boisterous convention of aging Shriners, complete with huge motorcycles and RVs parked outside. When I realized they had emptied all the free coffee in the lobby, I felt my tension grow. But maybe I had begun to use up my quota of tension. I started to laugh then, for the first time that week. At least they weren’t driving those little motorcycles up and down the halls. I made do.

Hanh’s book helped me get my mind back on something positive. I am not a Buddhist, but this gentle man has some sage ideas on the nature of anger and how to deal with it. A man who in his living and writing (he’s written more than twenty books) has demonstrated a resolute commitment to human liberation and the enlightened psyche. As I was reading I was reminded of a comment a friend once made to me, explaining why he chose not to focus on society’s wrongs: "God does not want me to be angry." Until recently, this was perhaps a typical American attitude. Hahn is different. He is willing to look at the world. But he also does not want us to suffer with anger.

I think God just wants us to be human. I do not envision the divine life as some kind of Night of the Living, Grateful, Always Happy People. As the late minister of Chicago’s Unity Church, Mike Matoin, used to say, if you see a person who is always smiling, watch out, they’re probably psychotic. Being angry at times is just human. Being angry when someone has just stuck a missile in your collective gut is very human. But what do you do? You can shove the anger back down, let it fester in your cells, and wait until it makes you crazy or ill. You can allow what angers you to become chronic, to define who you are and your relationship with the world. Unrelieved, such anger will eventually eat away at your emotions, leaving you exposed, vulnerable, and suffering — an enervating prospect if ever there was one.

Or, you can mind your anger. You can care for it the way you care for a crying infant. Teach yourself to meditate more deeply on what moves in your heart and soul. Learn to channel the energy of anger into a deeper commitment to live with courage and kindness, to seek justice not vengeance, and to stand for human solidarity and the sacredness of life, no matter what. Hahn advocates this latter course.

Indeed, mindfulness is the operative word here, the acquisition of which Hahn likens to cooking potatoes. Raw potatoes are nearly indigestible. But cook them for a while, keep the fire burning and the pot covered, and the fire will create something you can digest, food that nourishes you. So too may raw anger be transformed.

Reading Hahn’s book I was struck by his description of anger as a kind of fluid internal fire. Likewise, his caution that if someone has set your house on fire, the most urgent thing to do is to first put out the fire, not chase down the arsonist while your house burns. It’s not that you don’t want to catch the arsonist. But actions based on anger invariably breed only more anger. So, perhaps we have to confront not only those who would kill us, but the fires burning in a foreign policy that for decades has taught the rest of the world a lot about anger. This anger is what fuels the bombs and coups and it’s why despots and military states are good for the bottom line of investors and shareholders but not the greater good of a human race that wants peace.

Love and Fear

On September 11, I had an appointment already scheduled with my doctor, Elizabeth Erkenswick, D.C., an Evanston chiropractor who is known to most of her patients as Dr. Liz. On the way to the office I was listening to a radio talk show and a caller going on about how "we have to create so much fear in the world that none of those countries will ever bother us again." Even the normally conservative radio host had to caution that fear will only go so far. In whatever momentary security it may create will also be planted the seeds of more fear, more anger.

Listening, I was reminded that when you get down to the spiritual essence of things, there is only one choice in the world, the choice between love and fear. Now, I understand the complexity of the current world political situation, and I know a political solution to terrorism requires more than platitudes about love and fear. Yet at the heart of the political problem in the world is an operative notion that defines power and right in terms of who can inflict or potentially inflict the most pain on the other. In our divided, contentious world, this is the ever-present backdrop to the mechanisms of social control that exist in and define power in the overwhelming majority of political systems.

As I arrived at Dr. Erkenswick’s office the radio caller’s comment remained on my mind. I found the normally busy office quiet and subdued; the radio was on in the lobby, the constant bulletins and updates filling the office’s usually warm air with an unfamiliar frost. I entered the exam room and sat on a table, and when Dr. Liz entered the room, I suddenly felt my eyes tear up, for the first time that day.

I shared with Dr. Liz the radio caller’s comment. I felt almost embarrassed to talk about love and fear on such a day, but it was on my mind and that is what I spoke of. We were both quiet for a moment. The doctor was checking my back, doing her chiropractic thing. I thought some more, and then I added, "I guess that’s why I come to this office. Here, I feel love." Dr. Liz suddenly embraced me, kissing me on the cheek. It was a small thing. But in that moment it brought me back to some kind of center within myself. And perhaps I was also reminded of what this whole frightened, desperate world needs: caring and connection and compassion, the courage to love, no matter what.

In this world terror and anger are real. New York-sky real. Cruise missile real. Collateral damage real. And sometimes it can seem as if love exists only in small books by peaceful Buddhists, whom people in power have no use for. Yet as I write this, I see a beautiful October day out there, the sky bright blue and soft with the hues unique to this time of year, my favorite time of year. Earlier this morning I heard a Dar Williams song I had not heard before. It was a song of sadness and family legacies and just making the decision to survive and live. "Well, the sun rose," sang Williams as she brought her story to a close. "So many colors it nearly broke my heart. They worked me over like a piece of art. And I was part of all them."

The words and the music caught up to me and I started to cry. I knew I was crying for all the victims of September 11, in a way I perhaps had not done before. I was also crying for myself, for whatever struggles I have known. But these were tears also for something brighter, for how much I love this life. How beautiful life is.

I am sad now. But I am okay with this sadness, because I know it will never tarnish my belief in the world. Nor my faith that we can transform this world into a place where love is more than something that only happens between a parent and a child, or lovers and friends, that love, this much maligned and abused idea, will someday become the force that truly rules the spirit and life of nations.

In a world of madness and uncertainty, this is what I believe. And I will never stop believing.

Never.

Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames, by Thich Nhat Hanh (Riverhead Books, 2001).

Mark Harris is a Chicago-based writer. Visit his Web site, A Writer’s Voice.

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