I started thinking about the distinction between those words the more I burrowed into the climate debacle. OK, the truth is, I got myself wedged between the two quite some time ago. I always enjoy blaming the Buddha for most everything and this is absolutely no exception, in fact it’s how it all began.

I was somewhere in my thirties. I can’t pinpoint the moment when life’s great limitation grabbed my attention. It is way too easy for me to say it all began with the abrupt death of my father when I was only nine. I have used this countless times before, but I really can’t say for sure that’s when it took hold. When you’re a kid, your emotions tend to run ahead of your mind, so while I am certain I felt the senseless loss, the truth of it kind of went to sleep, waiting for the rest of me to wake up to the shock.

i was not the most introspective young man. I was definitely going through the motions of growing up, pretending I knew what the hell I was doing, a man with a plan. It was right around this time a little over fifty years ago, when my friend Alan called to tell me there was a party on the upper East Side, with a bunch of Jews, who were celebrating their independence from the incredibly, boring gathering of families for the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, the High Holidays. No, high had nothing to do with the blessings of weed back then. Around that time, I was really floundering with the direction of my life. Unfortunately for me, I was brainwashed with the idea that I was destined to follow the too, trodden path of a predetermined destiny. 

.At the time, I was living in the East Village of NYC in the late Sixties, long before it got condo-minimized and gentrified. By day, I wore a suit, carried an attache case, playing the role of a young man, knowing where he was going and what he was doing. By night, I got stoned and walked around this raw neighborhood, feeling completely at ease. The road less traveled was not one I was equipped to traverse, so conventionality grabbed me by the throat. I felt pretty cool at that party and ended up marrying one of the co-hosts. Predictability was the enforcer and I was its willing victim.

Somewhere in my thirties, the world came apart. I got myself into therapy, something I thought was for crazy people and not for unhappy people like myself. It was like an explosion, blowing open my doors and inviting thoughts inside for which I had no vocabulary, having to invent one.  I actually started thinking about the rest of my life and who I wanted to be. All of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, I started to think about who I was, maybe who I have always been, coming to life in fifty minute, shrunken intervals. 

I think it was inevitable that the Buddha and I would cross paths. Thousands of years apart, we were both asking the same kinds of questions. I remember when I started reading about him and what he said. I thought it all sounded incredibly familiar to me. Unlike me, this quest became his entire life and he felt some strange obligation to share it with others. Trust me, I am simply on the receiving end of his incredible revelations, ridiculously obvious, but hidden by fear.

I guess the first time I bumped into the dance between realism and pessimism was understanding what the Buddha was referring to when he spoke about impermanence and suffering. It is when the terror of the nine year old, little boy, alone in the darkness of his bedroom, first understood that everything could be gone in a breath. Many would say this is debilitating and I would say it is liberating, although it took years and years to embrace.

I have bumped into this impermanence business for many years now. I did a terrible thing and left NYC in my early forties. I was totally alone in this decision and it was a costly one. There wasn’t an ounce of fear or pessimism in my choice, embracing the reality of where i was at the time, sensing the rest of my life as too quantifiable. Many would say this idea is depressing, while to me, it was strangely emancipating.

The idea of impermanence is this filtration system, separating small, self-absorption from absolutely everything else; what we think we know, juxtaposed against what we can never know, devoid of language, mutely intuitive. This state is often defined as enlightenment by the cushion sitters. Honestly, I don’t know and I don’t care. What I do know is that it was a game changer, at least for me.

These days, I try at look at things the way they are, through the telescopic detachment of passing through this time. When I look at the climate catastrophe, the true culprit of this story, I am pretty clear about what’s to come, joined at the hip to this forever denial of our inevitable termination. We live with this limitless fable of our future, individually and globally. Every single day, I read about the death of species, never to return, married to the irreversible destruction of the spectacular scenery we have taken for granted. I am not sure if we can actually do anything about reversing what our gluttony has set in motion, let alone simply halting the march to natural bankruptcy.

I am not a pessimist, not even close. I am madly in love with life and consider it a gift of unquantifiable value. Sloppily coming to terms with my own reality has cleared my view, no longer looking through the prism of denial, but never for one moment thinking I have achieved some enlightened state either.

Every morning, I wake up and marvel at the sunrise, like some kind of miracle; taking it for granted a huge miscalculation. Does this make me a pessimist? I don’t think so.

My podcast: Mind and the Motorcycle

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