Episode 2: "Chop Wood and Carry Water"

Keep Calm and Carry on.
Stay alert, stay busy.
Keep on keeping on.

This episode is not going to be a deep dive into anything specific to one heritage, but seems an important note for ANYONE on a mission, so as I start mine, I want to start right. 

Even when you don't know what good can be done, maintaining stewardship and the routines that preserve order, for you and those around you, is a valuable skill... and I know, that sounds impossible in the face of what seems to be coming. Civil rights as a human concept has weathered many more centuries as a fringe idea than one most people seem to agree on, and even so, that agreement is fraught with nuance. I heard a term recently, "juan crow" and realized it applies similarly. But even in the face of all that looms, I know that nothing has curtailed my ability to be my best in my capacity yet. I woke up in a bed, next to a loving partner, put my big-boi pants on and went to work.

In a world where it seems like the problems that most need solving are the ones hardest for any one person to take meaningful action about, it is important to remember that in the course of being ready for the big moments, every small moment is incrementally valuable.   

But here's where it gets interesting... while you are carrying on, WHAT are you carrying on about? We are told to chop wood and carry water, but what gets made from the wood we chop? whose lips are wet by the water we carry?
The line can be traced back at least as far as a Buddhist abbot from around the year 808, who said this: “My daily activities are not unusual,

I’m just naturally in harmony with them.

Grasping nothing, discarding nothing.

In every place there’s no hindrance, no conflict.

My supernatural power and marvelous activity:

Drawing water and chopping wood.”

Layman Pang's words are read from a Zen kōan or “a story, dialogue, question, or statement which is used in Zen practice to provoke the ‘great doubt’ and to practice or test a student’s progress in Zen. 

I'll invite some scrutiny here as a confess to not being any kind of expert in zen teachings, so I sought a different expression of this one to help me understand it better.  

“A young boy became a monk. He dreamed of enlightenment and of learning great things. When he got to the monastery he was told that each morning he had to chop wood for the monks fires and then carry water up to the monastery for ablutions and the kitchen. He attended prayers and meditation, but the teaching he was given was rather sparse.

One day he was told to take some tea to the Abbot in his chambers. He did so and the Abbot saw he looked sad and asked him why.

He replied every day all I do is chop wood and carry water. I want to learn. I want to understand things. I want to be great one day, like you.

The Abbot gestured to the scrolls on shelves lining the walls. He said, ‘When I started I was like you. Every day I would chop wood and carry water. Like you I understood that someone had to do these things, but like you I wanted to move forward. Eventually I did. I read all of the scrolls, I met with Kings and gave council. I became the Abbot. Now, I understand that the key to everything is that everything is chopping wood and carrying water, and that if one does everything mindfully then it is all the same.'”  

 In an easily read post, blogger Kyle Kowalski writes about mastering one's own mind in order to appreciate the extraordinary miracles of ordinary life, and reminds his readers that "life goes on during and after" He's talking about enlightenment here, but I believe that whether you are seeking the locus of all wisdom, or just trying to understand the insanity of where we are right now, the sentiment is the same. The next 4 years are going to ask more from some of us than we are currently equipped to handle, and I'll quote another pithy saying to remind you that we cannot pour from an empty cup. The discipline that will be needed as the world around us teeters further out of balance will not be available without training and exercise. So what does chopping wood have to do with that? What does waxing a car have to do with Karate?

There is peace to be found in finding joy wherever you can, and that peace is not a means of escapism. A Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh spoke highly of brushing one's teeth, among other things.

“I am standing here, brushing my teeth. I still have teeth to brush. I have toothpaste and a toothbrush. And my practice is to be alive, to be free to enjoy tooth-brushing.” In his self-titled pocket reader,  Thich wrote about a practice of freedom, and a freedom that comes of mindful exercise is one that takes a little practice. It's increasingly easy to get lost in the rhythm of daily toil, consumed with anxiety over whether the current action is worth the energetic investment, or whether there is something else that's been forgotten or even made more difficult by the investment of energy here. If you're curious about the notion of privilege from the perspective of a person's energetic capacity, Christine Miserandino's 2003 Essay on "The Spoon Theory" gives a whole unit of measurement to how we spend our day. It's applicable here because I know I would hardly be the first to say that when we are consumed with fear and worry about the state of our union, we burn through our "spoons" even faster. Consider the way that folks may be talking even more about inescapable exhaustion as a default status these days. As news articles on fresh horrors and atrocities begin to mount up, the onslaught of negative information will be non-stop. It will reduce your capacity to be effective if you let it, nickel and diming your emotional state until it takes everything you have to pour yourself out of bed and shamble through your routine, ghosting through work and errands, and collapsing again before bedtime.  

At that point, will we be any better off than those incarcerated behind the walls of steel and concrete? I used to interpret System of a Down's Prison Song somewhat literally, and there's certainly evidence that that was by design-- the lyrics do include stats on the state of incarceration at the time. But Naomi Klein gave different perspective in her 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine. At the time, Klein was focused on private capital, and the business of what she termed, "Disaster Capitalism," exploiting moments of shock and extreme violence to implement policy changes that never would have withstood scrutiny in better times. Sound familiar? Trump's first presidential term made effective, if haphazard use of the constant barrage of shocking headlines to bury notice of more sinister deeds, and Project 2025 is a blatant manifesto to do exactly the same, on an even larger scale.
So how do we stick it to the steamroller of negative and jarring news sensationalism?

NOT BY IGNORANCE.

Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky are among a parade of authors who serve to remind us that ignorance is not the kind of bliss that lasts. While their book, "Manufacturing Consent" builds our understanding of the five filters of editorial bias, they repeatedly note that the whole point is to render a society to be complicit in its own oppression. Now that book was written in 1988, and doesn't explore the way that social media factors in. Newer works, like Jonathan Haidt's "Anxious Generation" describe a growing epidemic of people buried in an avalanche of media that seems unavoidable and robs young people of their motivation to be participants in society at all. I've seen the evidence, through the somewhat biased eyes of a classroom instructor, locked in a dance before a captive audience whose faraway gazes intimate their fundamental desire to be anywhere else.  

In a system that seems to be raising children at all income levels to normalize the notion of feeling trapped, It doesn't seem like there is any escape to be found.
We are all on the inside here, and you can easily be reminded of that at every grocer, every gas pump, and at your very place of employment. Remember - Brush your teeth, because you have teeth, and they feel better when they are brushed. YOU feel better. But like heaving an axe into a hunk of dried tree, this can be an active process, until you have built a habit out of it. Do you brush your teeth in say… a restroom? Can you feel better rested by being there? I kid you not, I spent my first week after the election doing a minor rehabilitation of my restroom space. I didn't want to, it seemed like a waste of energy in a rented space where everything existent seemed perfectly functional. Yet, upon a bit of prompting by my partner, I donated our old darkly colored linen cupboard, which I hadn’t even noticed was casting a good deal of shade in the small room. For all my notions of contrast and negative space, the new furnishings offer more storage capacity while leaving our restroom feeling more open and inviting, the light tones, soon matched by floral printed shower curtain and bath mat, have created a whole new feeling of peace in a room I had previously thought was fine. Was it necessary to make such drastic change, spending money and energy alike to feel better about where I brush my teeth? No, of course not. I will attest, It wasn't all consumerism, our old furniture was passed on to someone who'd lost their home in a fire, and the replacements were bought from a neighbor. There was a sense of participating in community throughout, and it is much easier to be mindfully grateful while brushing my teeth in a space where I get to be surrounded by reminders that I am doing at least minor good for myself and my village.
See, chopping wood and carrying water are rarely tasks that are done solely for one's own good. It's inefficient.
If you're going to go to all the trouble to reduce lumber to ash, that energy release can be so much more beneficial than you'll need, and there is much greater reward in doing it for community. So, in these moments where nihilism and ennui can seem insurmountable on one's own, there is incentive in being supportive to your neighbors, and recognizing them as capable of being supportive to your needs, if only in return. Therein lies a system that no politician can quash, where happiness is attainable and requires little to no risk. Without going down the rabbit hole of a hierarchical needs pyramid and whether Maslow deserves as much credit as the named system implies, I will cite some fundamental needs in warmth and water. As our planet continues to warm, it can be hard to imagine needing to not be cold, amid day after day of yet another record breaking heat wave. But the warmth in burning wood is a crude but undeniably effective way to sterilize water and denature food so that it requires less energy to consume, and by which be nourished. To say nothing of the calories burned in chopping and relocating said wood, if we continue to think literally. Past the wood, we all need to stay hydrated, ESPECIALLY in the warming climate. When was the last time you primed an outdoor pump? Probably been a while. How about, do you have one of those water-filtering pitchers? Seemed like a great idea when it was given, but replacing filters and carrying it back and forth between the sink and the fridge can seem like so much work… But when was the last time you filled it, chilled it, and offered a cold glass to the neighbor whose been mowing his yard all morning? Or were you too busy being annoyed by the noise of the mower? Are there systems you can maintain, that help preserve your surrounding community?

Author James Clear offers at least two quotes I find important here: First, "You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems." and second, "Every action you take is a vote for the person you will become." Ask yourself, What systems are you building or preserving? What votes are you casting, not just on election day, but every day, every action?
I've fallen into moments of complacency, as I am sure we all have, where we think about not blocking the neighbor's driveway, and yes, that is a pretty good system. But how about doing something actively for good, rather than passively against bad? As you make your choices, at home, at work, in social setting, Are you building something, or just avoiding a consequence?
regardless of how you choose, are you enabling the mechanism toward it inevitably crushing you? Does that notion change your vote? Are you empowered to be a subversive plant, quietly building strength from within, waiting for a moment where that amassed strength can be used for liberation?

When we cast a ballot in an election for representation, there is doubt to be had-- with very few exceptions in this country, our ballots are cast on 100% unverifiable touch screen voting machines. I hope you have been able to hear the stories of all the different ways hundreds of folks are working tirelessly to maintain election integrity, even as others toil away at undermining it, if not through direct action against voting systems, but through media and scaremongering intended to convince people that the tallies counted at the end of an election reflect anything other than the will of the people. I could spend considerable time talking about my own theories on whether our most recent election actually reflects what people want, but I will leave that to someone else. What I am interested in is the votes we cast for ourselves, in a daily election that drives our habits, our character, and eventually, the systems we fall to in times of crisis.

So as you go about your daily humdrum, focus on what parts of your job are really contributing to your local community. If you aren't doing it at work, are you doing it off the clock?
If you can't even imagine the latter, then it's time to go job hunting, so that at least the time you spend in daily toiling, the energy you invest is better invested. It may not be easy. I don't even know if I can be much help to you in this, the job market was insane even at what we can now reflect on as the best times we have known. But I want you to know I am willing to try. I can offer notes on a resume or help with understanding how to beat the screener bots that now guard many job postings.

Secondarily, I can offer what seems like an armchair quarterback admonishment. If you are currently employed in a capacity where doing your job could be delivering justice or even just delaying injustice, DO NOT RESIGN. Historically, when a good person resigns from a job, they are rarely replaced by someone who has any interest in doing what's right. Here's a suggestion instead. You can use your directives to offer all the good you can, which is more than can be assured of your replacement. If your directives fully conflict with moral obligation, and can't be reinterpreted, you still have the right to refuse complicity. If they fire you, they'll replace you anyway. Resignation doesn't save much, but for most agencies, it takes time to fire someone, and that's time you can use to do as much good as possible. I know it isn't the same for everyone, and increasingly we are likely to see situations where "doing good" will be considered in violation of some obscure or perversely interpreted law. Of course, a person has to exercise discretion.  

I have seen a LOT of dismal posts, both of horrors to come and the celebration of those horrors. What I want more of: Who is carrying water? Who is chopping wood?  

I am definitely going to spend some time in the coming episodes talking about the panopticon sensations of living in an ethnic minority, what it means to be near "passing" and the lifelong dread that accompanies the intentional pursuit of acceptance. But the first revolution needs to be rest. Get sleep, eat your vegetables. Drink minerals, hack your way through daily Todo's with all the grace and intentionality of an architect building his own home. And carry water to where it hydrates yourself, your roommates, be they rent paying, fur-covered, or leafy. Remember the practice and discipline that goes into maintaining order in one's own life is not about passively standing still, but actively lying in wait. Every minor task done mindfully prepares the soul for the hardest day yet to come, and before we can conquer the evil masterminds of the world, we will first conquer our own perspective, chipping away at self-doubt every time we hold the tools of self-care. In this way, a toothbrush handle is not unlike that of the axe, in shaping our future in tiny increments, revealing the champion who will overcome the next four years, and more.  

Now stick it to the algorithm by directly telling me what you are currently up to-- specifically things you are doing to improve your community or advance a justice cause.  

Are you working for an upcoming mutual aid or community event that still needs extra hands? I especially want to shout you out. I don't have a huge body of followers, but I do have a radio platform, and know we can do better for each other than just liking and sharing posts of satirical art.  

I'm not bashing the art--we need the art, and the artists behind it. We also need action. Even if that action is just looking out for your neighbor.

Bed Music by Boen Balo, from the album “Keep on Keeping on.

Opening theme “Bad Hombres” by Doombalaya.