Wire walker

While having soup and sandwich with my son and expressing outrage at what I'd just read in the paper ('Calm down, Dad'), I had a moment of insight a couple of nights ago which I've been rubbing between the fingers of my mind since.

In this blog, I've been exploring personal encounters and seeing them in a context of the world to come. Let's leave that aside for a moment, and think of images that express where we as mankind here and now are going, and why it's worth wanting to get there.

There's the Deus Ex Machina vision, a city descending from on high. There's the Excelsior! race to the top of the mountain. There's the final victory over the forces of (fill in the blank), ushering in a New Golden Age. The problem is not that these aren't desirable, but that we know enough to ask: what then?, a question that deflates all the glamour. The Millennium is now history and any future Golden Age looks glittery from here more from its sprinkling technological sequins than from something transcendent that the word 'Progress' once connoted.

Since my wife and I rounded the corner of our 40th, I've been thinking about how to evaluate that longevity. Lots of people are congratulatory, speaking as though simple persistence were what's praiseworthy in this two-person institution. Yet, hanging in there this long does have some significance, but what is it?  No dragons are dead beneath our feet; we don't dwell on the summit of any mountain; no descending city has yet to break through the clouds.

The image that came to mind as I sat with my son was of a tightrope artist, ever sensitive to the movements of the center of gravity, moving forward step by step. Each moment is an adventure in balance. In the circus there may be a net beneath, but the daredevils who sling wires between towers and walk out exposed to hazards above and below, left and right, are more what I had in mind. There's something heroic about it. When walking wire, one is successful until one isn't. The accomplishing begins anew with each step. The longer one doesn't fall, the greater the achievement.

Is this not like mankind, walking a wire anchored ahead of us we know not where, striving to maintain  balance as we keep moving forward. Indeed, our smaller scale enterprises that in total comprise the overarching story may be conceived and evaluated the same way.

One thing more. The wire walker between towers can be buffeted by winds. Birds may land or take off from the balancing pole. The nose may develop an itch. So I conceive of us walking. The unpredictability of circumstances and the incessance of human busy-ness continually threaten the balance and require adjustment.

But if our arms are ever extending in new explorations, our backs ever offering hospitality to new if sometimes awkward things, our interior configurations ever accommodating as friendships develop, (and useless things let go), we may find in these practices the signs for centering and the means for restorating equilibrium. We will be ever different, but ever going ahead.

Thus, the challenge of 2014 will be different from that of 2064 or 2114, or 3114, each age its own exercise in balance such as never before assayed. For however long we do walk in this way, we will have been doing something wonderful, an achievement worth aspiration. (For how long have I wanted to find occasion to use the future perfect progressive?)

As poorly as I've expressed this idea, I can see several advantages in the image of mankind as wire-walker toward an indefinite destination. It's open-ended in time; there's a built-in rigor (fueled by fear of falling); the multifariousness of our aspirations is acknowledged; the maintenance of a dynamic equilibrium (not just an Aristotelian mean) is our good work; longevity of journey represents our achievement.

After 40 years, is our marriage like that? Certainly we can expect changes, but will we always still take the next step? Let it be so.

And you, my beamish boy, tell me: is this image in any way compelling? Does it avoid the inanity of sheer extension of time? Can ambition find opportunity in it, and imagination find sustenance? Is walking the wire worth the effort?

Don't worry; I'll keep my voice down as I ponder these things.