Haibun: America's Story
I’m not sure how it is throughout the rest of the world this blog touches, but in America, I see so much fear being lived out. For instance, consider these common refrains: “turn on the 24 hour news station, the story is fear,” “give a fingerprint or face I.D. to a smartphone and a more enraging fear shows up with a Facebook or Twitter feed,” ”and more private tears flow for any normal person from the FOMO or the “not being worth seeing” in the ever pervading Instagram parade.” These personal retellings about fear, anger, and tears is an emerging national pastime. Yet I’m not convinced this fear should be the norm.
Here’s why I believe it’s not normal: I’ve experienced a natural cycle of hope contrary to this pervasive story of fear America’s trying to live out. One way I’ve experienced this is through observing my own inner life. I become afraid when I interpret events through a pessimistic lens. Seeing the prospect of scarcity and loss, I end up afraid like everyone has since the beginning of remembered time. On the flip side, I consistently feel hope when there is enough to survive and even thrive. This inner reflection force me to challenge our current American story—the story of communal pessimism, a story America seems to have grabbed with both hands in the 1980’s in response to broken hopes of working together instead of working for the advancement of one, ourselves, and for a story medicated by the dopamine from a misleading layer of self-esteem contrived by supremacy, tribal status, and comparison. Amazingly, this story we buy and sell is a story of lack, despite America being the richest nation in the history of the world. And this is the story that divides us through fear.
Another reason I reject this story of fear we tell ourselves is because it is an incomplete story. And like with most incomplete stories, it give a false conclusion. Consider the lime tree reflected about in my haiku as a needed addition of our story: Each year it grows and gives even more fruit, it naturally grows and becomes more abundant. And together with that which surrounds it, things like the sun and our little bit of desert rain (helped out with irrigation), this tree generates fruit, therefore becomes an active member in the global story of life and abundances. From the harvest of food to lime tree to the sunshine, the natural story of hope is a big and beautiful universal story of more and plenty, yet we ignore it, leaving out a pivotal component in our telling of “America,” therefore making it a false telling of “America.”
And now about ending this haibun. Through editing and rewriting, I kept having to go back into myself to witness fear and hope, optimism and pessimism, and what is going on now with our current American divides versus what could be in being more neighborly and understanding. I kept returning because to observe and tell wasn’t enough this time. I finally realized I wouldn’t be finished until I worked out a doable action this community, especially for this community that graciously and consistently gives their time limited and pulled at attention. This is the action I finally arrived at: if we continually go out into the natural world and take it in as it is, we will witness the abundance and will, eventually, absorb that hope and abundance into the stories we tell when we’ve reflected on it enough.
a desert lime grows,
unripe hardness shows, but soon…
caustic juices flow
Here’s why I believe it’s not normal: I’ve experienced a natural cycle of hope contrary to this pervasive story of fear America’s trying to live out. One way I’ve experienced this is through observing my own inner life. I become afraid when I interpret events through a pessimistic lens. Seeing the prospect of scarcity and loss, I end up afraid like everyone has since the beginning of remembered time. On the flip side, I consistently feel hope when there is enough to survive and even thrive. This inner reflection force me to challenge our current American story—the story of communal pessimism, a story America seems to have grabbed with both hands in the 1980’s in response to broken hopes of working together instead of working for the advancement of one, ourselves, and for a story medicated by the dopamine from a misleading layer of self-esteem contrived by supremacy, tribal status, and comparison. Amazingly, this story we buy and sell is a story of lack, despite America being the richest nation in the history of the world. And this is the story that divides us through fear.
Another reason I reject this story of fear we tell ourselves is because it is an incomplete story. And like with most incomplete stories, it give a false conclusion. Consider the lime tree reflected about in my haiku as a needed addition of our story: Each year it grows and gives even more fruit, it naturally grows and becomes more abundant. And together with that which surrounds it, things like the sun and our little bit of desert rain (helped out with irrigation), this tree generates fruit, therefore becomes an active member in the global story of life and abundances. From the harvest of food to lime tree to the sunshine, the natural story of hope is a big and beautiful universal story of more and plenty, yet we ignore it, leaving out a pivotal component in our telling of “America,” therefore making it a false telling of “America.”
And now about ending this haibun. Through editing and rewriting, I kept having to go back into myself to witness fear and hope, optimism and pessimism, and what is going on now with our current American divides versus what could be in being more neighborly and understanding. I kept returning because to observe and tell wasn’t enough this time. I finally realized I wouldn’t be finished until I worked out a doable action this community, especially for this community that graciously and consistently gives their time limited and pulled at attention. This is the action I finally arrived at: if we continually go out into the natural world and take it in as it is, we will witness the abundance and will, eventually, absorb that hope and abundance into the stories we tell when we’ve reflected on it enough.
a desert lime grows,
unripe hardness shows, but soon…
caustic juices flow
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| & Haiku: Unripe Lime |
