Voices


Dear Eugene,

Season changes.  Does a person, truly?

There is a well-known C. S. Lewis saying: "It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind."

I wouldn't change one word of what he said, other than maybe the word wind to hurricane.

Therein lies the rub, we are living in a wind, a hurricane, and to "shove them all back" one must at least acknowledge, recognize the strength of gale around him, carrying him, battering him, pushing and pulling him this way and that.  When one is getting used to the noise and commotion one is truly getting old.

I don't suppose one ever just "goes with the flow" as in the nursery rhyme:

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream

See, wrong conclusion.  If anything, Life is but a scream.

I can see when you are young it feels good to live in the dream of a wind.  You would go through the trouble to get the adrenaline rush, to go up, up and away just to experience another fall from the sky: downhill ski, mountain bike, amusement park ride, relationship roller coaster.  You'd live for the magic carpet, pay high price for it, keep upgrading to the latest model and ask, Is this as fast as you can go?

That's what being young is all about, you say.  And of course if you can't handle the wind, the height, the speed, the radical exuberance, it must mean you are getting old.

If I have to pick one key word out of Lewis' famous quote above, a word that every other word of his wisdom pivots on to gain its fine but precarious balance, the word is listen.  "Listening to that other voice..."

 And what "other voice" would that be?

Yesterday I was at Whistler and there was a mountain bike festival.  I was with family from out town and acted like a tourist, paid the insane price to go up the gondola for the first time.  You drink in the exuberance of a can of $4 energy drink with an angry beaver on it for the marketers tell you this is the taste of youth; you give them a $5 bill and say keep the change.  The place was really noisy, the air suffocating, and everything looked like money.

An older couple in the group decided to stay behind, for the man, after clipping a laundry peg of an apparatus on his finger, found his heartbeat higher than even its usual abnormally high level.  I heard what he said, his faint voice, a number he read off from the device.  The couple stayed grounded for hours to wait for the happy report of high altitude exploration from those of us who paid the tall price to stay young.

I think the older couple too could see with their mind's eye what is "up there."  There's text book and there's Google.  It was the deep voice from down below they heard and must make sense of.

And how the hell do you do that when the place is so damn noisy?

Yours, Alex

Comments

  1. UnknownAugust 17, 2018 at 1:33 AM

    Dear Eugene,

    “It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes & hopes for the day rush at you… And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening… coming in out of the wind [hurricane].”

    Hurricanes of life compel you to change. I could think of at least 2 tumultuous occasions marking my journey like dual poles in time: one in my youth & the latter in my mid-age season but both culminating to an incessant scream through time & space.

    It’s strange but I did not “recognize the strength of gale” in my 1st hurricane until years after the wreckage became more apparent to me. During my undergrad studies in UBC, on virtually all New Year’s Eves & Days, I worked in a small tea shop at the old Aberdeen Center intoxicated with shoppers & merchants in adrenaline flight. The noise was as explosively celebrated as the shrills of cash registers in relentless use & indeed, “everything looked like money”. I summoned all my charm in its most debased form to finalize any sale of exquisite oolong tea leaves presumably derived from high altitudes of harvesting & thus promising an epiphany in solitude for every buyer then enraptured by the euphoric screams extending into the New Year. To honor this hurricane of sales, my boss supplemented my hourly wage of about $ 7 with a hefty red pocket. Towards midnight, I left work only to re-emerge the next morning & many subsequent days in this perpetual spin of collecting & scattering, my lips blanched & ears straining for the next scream of ecstasy.

    In contrast, the more recent 2nd hurricane 2 decades thereafter, which also evolved around New Year, was insidiously delayed & deceivingly quieter, yet its sequela proved to be more decisively cruel. Without my consent, this storm transported me on the 1st week of this year across the Pacific Ocean to Hong Kong, where the 2-day funeral for my mother-in-law ushered in the most traumatic & grievous “amusement park ride” for my extended families. The night after her cremation, I sat in silence on the sofa with my father-in-law, his lips similarly blanched & ears straining for the nostalgic screams of his late wife. He was the first among us to penetrate the silence, braving through the eye of the hurricane. In Cantonese, he uttered a whisper: “I look ok but I am not. I am deeply lost… without her.” In subdued tones, he lamented the finale of his 5-decade long marriage, only now discovering the start of new life & the onset of fresh wounds, craving to see with his “mind’s eye what is ‘up there’… [and listen to] the deep voice from down below” in the aftermath of the most melodramatic hurricane of his life, which has ravaged him till this day.

    “Listening to that other voice… letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in.”

    If this is the “key word” for me in my storms of life, how the hell do I listen & make sense of it when my place is so damn silent past midnight? Silence, like noise, can be violently overwhelming to my ears. And how should I “shove them all back” - the screams of hurricane & the debris every morning - in the midst of other voices masking mine?

    So I want to go back to the roller coaster again at riskier speeds & altitudes - but this time only with the other voice in my heart & soul to change how I can live or even thrive in hurricanes.

    Yours, Kate

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