With both these people, as with so many others who have confided in me, the real problem was believing that their sense of inner restlessness and lack of fulfillment indicated psychological disorder. They had swallowed the cultural myth that says, “If you are well adjusted, and if you are living your life properly, you will feel fulfilled, satisfied, content, and serene.” Stated conversely, the myth says, “If you are not satisfied and fulfilled, there is something wrong with you.”

The myth is so widespread that the majority of adults in our culture accept it without question. There are three ways we actg out this belief: We may try to “fix” ourselves, our life situations and our relationships because we feel there is something wrong with them. Or we may repress our restlessness, trying to appear to ourselves and others as if we had achieved perfection. Failing this, we dull our concern altogether, seeking to lose ourselves in work, food, entertainment, drugs, or some other escape. Ironically, all three ways easily become addictions in themselves; addictions to self-improvement, to perfect adjustment, or to various means of escape.

The myth has pervaded virtually every aspect of our society. Popular religion promises peace of mind if only we will believe correctly. If we are not completely happy, it maintains, it is because we are somehow not right with God. Perhaps we are too sinful, or our faith is insufficient, or we have missed the one true doctrine. Countless people believe the religious myth, even when a cursory reading of the lives of saints reveals great agony, doubt, and struggle within themselves and their world. A slightly deeper probing of spiritual growth shows that as people deepen in their love for God and others, they become ever more open: not only more appreciative of the beauty and joys of life, but also moroe vulnerable to its pain and brokenness.

Popular psycholofy promotes the myth as well. It promises peace of mind for only two categories of people: those who grew up in perfectly functioning families and those who use modern psychology to rise above the scars of their dysfunctional families. Countless people believe this psychological version as well, even when the knotted lives of our most successful citizens are continually displayed in the media for all to examine and when no such thing as a truly functional family can be found.

Although it is very right to treat our real disorders and maximize our health, we make several great mistakes if we think life should or even can be resolved to a point of complete serenity and fulfillment. To believe this is to commit ourselves to a fantasy that does not exist and that, if it were true, would kill our love and end in stagnation, boredom, and death. It is also to remove our concern from the real issues of our life and worlad, to transfer our energy to a vague, self-serving agenda that must be carried out before we can get on with the business of living, loving, and creating a better world. Further, the myth perpetuates the willful delusion that we human beings are objects, like machines, to be built and repaired, meant for efficiency rather than love. Most importantly, the myth of fulfillment makes us miss the most beautiful aspect of our human souls: our emptiness, our incompleteness, our radical yearning for love. We were never meant to be completely fulfilled; we were meant to taste it, to long for it, and to grow toward it. In this way we participate in love becoming life, life becoming love. To miss our emptiness is, finally, to miss our hope.

–JA

Since my last report, we have traveled from Gabarone, Botswana by airplane, car, taxi, bus, powerboat, mokoro (a sort of pole-driven canoe) and foot through Botswana and South Africa. After spending a few days with the staunchly hospitable Phil Rotz at his home in Gabs, we made our way north to the Okavango Delta. This is accomplished by way of a short flight to the small city of Maun on Botswana Air, then transferring over to a Cessna 207 (six seats) for a 20-25 minute flight up to Gunn’s Camp, a fairly rustic facility near Chief’s Island. If you browse through the pictures we’ve posted, you’ll enjoy photos of the Gunn’s Camp Airport Terminal, complete with a fire suppression system that made me smile: Five or six galvanized buckets, painted red, and suspended from a rail.

Our reservation had us meeting Dave Kao, AJ Nadelson, and Dr. Kao at Gunn’s Bush Camp (the leaping-off point for camping excursions) for lunch. Happily, the Kao contingent had just returned from several days in the bush and delayed their much-anticipated shower plans to have lunch with us. We were excited to hear about their excursion, and they had the good fortune of seeing Rhinoceros. We hoped their good luck with the wildlife might rub off on us a bit. We also had a chance to pose for a somewhat-belated remote campaign photo-op for Ben Cannon, who recently won a primary race to represent urban Oregonians in the state legislature. Theresa Kao provided campaign buttons, and Dave and I posed for a few “West Linn High School Alumni Friends of Ben Cannon — Okavango Contingent” photos.

After a nice lunch, we parted ways and boarded a mokoro with our guide, loaded for a few days of camping in the bush. It’s a bit odd heading off into the wilderness — and we’re talking about some serious *wild* here — with a guy you’ve just met and a box of camping supplies packed by a bunch of people you haven’t met. Nevertheless, we hopped blithely into the boat, and “Radi” our guide commenced the hour-long trek through the wetlands to our camp site.

While we were in the bush, we spent each morning and afternoon on nature walks, totaling 6-7 hours a day. My feet, most recently adapted to the sedentary programmer’s lifestyle, protested. In spite of sore feet, we wandered around for the bulk of each day, seeing (and it seems crass simply to enumerate, but…)

* Lion (1 male, three females)
* Hyena (1, and very briefly)
* Kudu
* Honey Badger
* Python
* Giraffe (lots)
* Elephant (lots and lots and lots. they are filthy with them!)
* Warthog
* Mongoose
* Baboon

A few experiences from the camping trip stand out. First was the cooking — Jonathan was challenged a bit by constructing meals out of the farrago of ingredients presented in our cook kit. Of singular interest was the canned-corned-beef bolognese with spaghetti and squash. Never has canned meat tasted so good to me.

Another event was our coming upon the pride of lion not 1/2 km from our campsite. They were as surprised as we were, but all evidence suggested that their feet didn’t hurt as much as mine. It was a thrill to watch them lounge about (well, after they reorganized themselves a bit to accommodate our presence) and watch us. Eventually we got tired of watching and taking pictures, and made our way around them to our dinner. Later that evening, after dinner and sundown, as we sat around the fire we heard them kill some kind of creature. Quite a stir, as hyena descended on the site. We estimate that it was less than 1km away, as the distinct sounds of individual hyena and guttural growl and (a few) roars of the lion were easy to make out. It sounded as though some baboon had also been freaked out a bit by the events, as we heard some screaming which sounded like baboon. It’s also possible that one of them just accidentally fell out of a tree and injured his pride, which seems to happen with startling regularity.

The last and perhaps most amusing event, predictably, revolves around our attempts to bathe in the wild. Angela had brought along some kind of contraption called a “sun shower”, a plastic bag one is instructed to fill with water and leave in the sun to warm. Later, it is suspended from a tree while prospective bathers attempt to clean and rinse themselves in 3.5 gallons of water descending from a rubber hose. Armed with a fully-primed sun shower, we headed off into the trees to find a suitable place. As we got set up, we noticed that our activity was the focus of attention for a troupe of 30 or so baboon. Angela ran back to the camp to fetch cameras, and we spent some time taking photos in the low light. Nervous baboon twittered away, and a few fell off of trees, stumps, and each other, creating a ruckus. I am reliably informed by an old wildlife book from the camp that this is known as “gamboling about.” And so, they gamboled and we shutterbugged. After we got bored of documenting them, we turned back to the task of bathing in the bush, watched in earnest curiosity by the baboon. The whole thing takes on a kind of voyeuristic/exhibitionist tone in the retelling, but it was rather amusing when it happened. Sorry folks, before you ask, there is no photographic evidence of this last bit of the story. That I’m aware of.

Eventually, we emerged from the bush, cleaned up and relaxed at Gunn’s Bush Camp, and headed back for civilization. I recall being told as we were selecting a platform tent for ourselves in camp that, “sometimes the warthog sleep under your platform at night.” In order to stay any concern, we were reassured that, “don’t worry, you won’t bother them [the warthog] at all. They’re used to campers.”

Another short hop by Cessna returned us to the airfield at Maun. Here we encountered what must be a distinctly African approach to coping with travel scheduling uncertainty. As the departure time for our Gabarone flight approached, folks in the terminal started to exhibit some anxiety about the seeming lack of aircraft. A solitary, nervous airline employee in uniform entered the terminal and made a 270-degree transit of the room. Her shy smile, downward-cast eyes, and nervous hands suggested that some news of great portent was in the offing. She then selected a customer from the terminal and pulled him aside to speak with him. The man regarded the room with a bit of a shrug and said something about having done something wrong and being scolded.

When he returned, he was giggling a bit. With the employee flanking him, keeping him between her and the bulk of the crowd, he announced that the airplane would be a bit delayed (an hour or so) and that he had been nominated spokesperson. There were immediate calls by the assembly for our newly-minted middleman to negotiate on our behalf for tea and crackers for our trouble. To no avail. To the amusement of all, our spokesperson continued to provide updates until our airplane left, roughly an hour late.

Upon our return from the Delta, Phil Rotz collected us in his ’silver pellet’, a serviceable if not beautiful vehicle “imported” (I hesitate to apply a word so laden with implications of legality) from Japan and set loose on the byways of southern Africa. We headed out the next morning by road for Johannesburg with traveling companions Noxi and Vin, Phil’s girlfriend and roommate, respectively. Vin was on a southbound mission to reunite with his girlfriend, who lives in Johannesburg. The remaining four of us set up camp at a bed and breakfast, Melville Manor, and set about visiting various bits of Jozi by car. By and large, I’d say that African city driving offers a close parallel to the same sport in Boston, and I recommend it for those of you whose palette has not been suitably tantalized by the thrill of American automotive sociopathy.

We had the pleasure of visiting both the Hector Pieterson museum [wikipedia] in Soweto township and the Apartheid Museum [wikipedia]. Uplifting and daunting experiences, both of them.

We are ready to return home — particularly after an unexpected extra day or so here in Jozi — and look forward to talking with all of you about the trip on our return.

I have posted a few more of our photos at:
http://andersoj.org/gallery/v/2006-africa/. For those of you who have missed the earlier emails, I’ve also posted these at my much-neglected blog:
http://andersoj.org/oddments.

Blessings.

JA

Today I write from Gabarone, Botswana. We have been here with Phil Rotz for the last couple of days, and enjoying ourselves immensely. When last I wrote, we were in Cape Town. We rousted ourselves very early in the morning (as is our wont, and that of every space-available air traveller), and drove to the airport in Cape Town to divest ourselves of a rental car and hop on an airplane. Since both of these operations create stress in my life, I was very pleased to find that the airport offered omelettes and coffee.

We arrived back in Johannesburg at 8:00am, at which point we set about getting into town, to the bus terminal at Park Station. One would think that public transport of some kind would be available, but no dice. A short but fairly spendy taxi trip got us to Park Station, where we cooled our heels until 2:30pm in Buffalo Bill’s Pub and Grille. We then hopped on the Seabelo bus bound for Gabarone. After an enjoyable communal experience of watching Maid in Manhattan (go, J-Lo!) with our fellow travelers, we arrived at the border with Botswana around 7:30pm. Then the magic of border crossing by bus commenced. It took quite a long time, involving unloading of bags, wandering around, and aimless-looking official types milling about sending SMS messages and generally not paying attention.

Happily, we reboarded the bus and made it into Gabs by 9:30. Phil and companions picked us up and ushered us to a hot meal at very trendy digs.

We had a chance to have dinner last night with a number of friends of Phil — more later on this — and today, we visited a wildlife preserve at Mokolodi. Lots of good pictures, and we got to see Elephant, Rhino, and Cheetah close up. Angela had a chance to pet the Cheetah, but it seemed to react badly to Phil and I.

This afternoon, Phil drove us by an artist’s community. We had a wonderful discussion with the owners of a pottery shop and picked up some interesting pieces.

Tomorrow, to Maun and more wildlife.

I have posted a few more of our photos at:
http://andersoj.org/gallery/v/2006-africa/

For those of you who have missed the earlier emails, I’ve also posted these at my much-neglected blog:
http://andersoj.org/oddments

But I have had to cut down on the uploads due to the fact that this is a
satellite internet connection, with end-to-end latency with the US of
about 3.5 seconds. That makes for a 7 second roundtrip, and TCP/IP was
not designed for such insanity.

Cheers.

JA

–
Jonathan S. Anderson — andersoj@andersoj.org
tel: 540.961.0229 (H) 540.818.2896 (C)
www: http://andersoj.org/oddments
pgp key: http://andersoj.org/personal/0xF0BE7EF8-pub.asc

--
Jonathan S. Anderson -- andersoj@andersoj.org
tel: 540.961.0229 (H) 540.818.2896 (C)
www: http://andersoj.org/oddments
pgp key: http://andersoj.org/personal/0xF0BE7EF8-pub.asc


The first is LibraryThing, a simple mechanism for listing the contents of your personal library online. By making use of open APIs provided by Amazon.com, Library of Congress, and others, they make it quite simple to add items to your collection, “tag” them into categories, and share with others.

Second: Commit random acts of literacy! Read & Release at BookCrossing!. The BookCrossing service provides an way of building community by sharing books. As a member, you are encouraged to place a simple bookplate with a numerical ID into books you leave laying around in bus stations and doctor’s offices. When someone picks up one of these books, they are implored to read, make a journal entry online for the book, and pass it along to a friend or stranger. I’ve just had my first release caught by a VT student, and it’s oddly thrilling… An old NPR interview.

–JA

In the last few days, I have had the pleasure of digging into Sacks’ newest book, To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility. This is a prophetic book and should be read as such by the faithful in any of the Abrahamic traditions. I offer here a brief excerpt (boldface mine) from the opening chaper (p. 9 in the US Hardback edition):

Why [have I written this book] now? Partly because I am troubled by the face that religion often shows to the postmodern world. Too often it appears on the news, and lodges in the mind, as extremism, violence and agression. Tobe sure, religion is not the cause of conflict in the Balkans, the Middle East or elsewhere. Instead it forms the fault-line along which sides divide. But that in itself is serious. When political conflict is religionized, it is absolutized. What in politics are virtues — compromise, the willingness to listen to both sides and settle for less than one would wish in an ideal world — are, in religion, vices. Religion can therefore act not as a form of conflict-resolution, but, rather, conflict-intensification. This work is my personal protest against suicide-bombers, religiously motivated terrorists and preachers of hate of whatever faith. The religios imperative to which I have tried to give voice in these pages is the one that says: create, do not destroy, for it is my world you are destroying, my creatures you are killing. The only force equal to a fundamentalism of hate is a counter-fundamentalism of love.

To this I add a further concern about religion generally. The prophets warned against a rift between the holy and the good, our duties to God and to our fellow human beings. It still exists today. There are those for whom serving God means turning inward — to the soul, the house of worship and the life of ritual and prayer. There are others for whom social justice has become a substitute for religious observance or God. The result, as I put it later in the book, is like a cerebral lesion between the two hemispheres of the brain. The message of the Hebrew Bible is that serving God and serving our fellow human beings are inseparably linked, and the split between the two impoverishes both. Unless the holy leads us outward toward the good, and good leads us back, for renewal, to the holy, the creative energies of faith run dry. For six days, so the first chapter of Genesis tells us, God created a universe and pronounced it good. On the seventh day he made a stillness in the turning world and declared it holy. Unless we reconnect the holy and the good we do less than justice to the unity that is the hallmark of the monotheistic imagination.

Stern stuff, and sensible. I’ll post more about Sacks’ book as I complete more of it. –JA