The Great Symbiosis (Essay)

For almost a quarter of a century I have been doing regular aerobic walking for exercise.  And at some point many years ago I started doing my ambulating in the Columbia, Md. Mall in the morning before the stores open, as do many others of like bent.  I find that this aging body can endure the rigor of it better if it is not exposed to the elements outdoors and if the surface for walking is level.  A tendency toward vertigo and worsening eyesight make hazardous any foot traveling up the city’s bike paths, since the pavement is so sloped.     

Switching to the Mall has brought me into contact with many more human beings than I ever began to encounter when I was fast tracking through the woods near my home.  This makes it more difficult for me to maintain the degree of insularity toward which my introverted nature inclines me.  One might walk for forty minutes on the path and never encounter anyone.  In the Mall fellow troopers are impossible to miss or avoid.  Over the years I began making it a point to greet just about everyone I pass, even though they are strangers to me.  Usually it is a simple “Good morning!”  Sometimes it is “How are you?”  Occasionally it is “Blessings on you!” or “Welcome to the new day!”  Only In three situations do I withhold my greeting.  I do not speak to maintenance workers or any of the other Mall employees while they are doing their jobs, not wishing to distract them from paid labors.  Nor do I speak to anyone reading, texting or talking on a cell phone.  They are entitled to their privacy.  Also when two or more people are engaged in conversation with each other, I feel it rude of me to barge in or interrupt their exchange, so I pass on without speaking, unless they interrupt themselves and speak to me first.  But I try to include in my greetings anyone who is alone or any two or more people together but not engaged in conversation. 

The reactions I get are ever so varied.  Some speak back, some do not, but in every case it is the face that sends the message.  I even have these facial messages catalogued. 

         

There is the STONE FACE.  Its message is “Don’t you know the world isn’t like that?  Hasn’t anyone ever told you?”  Or the SICKLY BEMUSED FACE:  “Where did they wind you up, in a toy factory?”  Then there is the INDIFFERENT FACE, tantamount to saying, “It’ll take more than that for me to see the bright side of life.”  Sometimes the indifferent ones do not even make eye contact; they go to a lot of trouble pretending they do not see me.  The CURIOUS FACE makes me squirm a little.  It says “I’m a collector by habit, myself.  Maybe I should collect you.”  I have even encountered the ROBERT DENIRO “TAXI DRIVER” face:  “Are you talkin’ ta me?  You’re gonna say good morning to me?  You’re talking to me?”  Thankfully only once or twice has that ever happened!  

All these I have described thus far comprise a very small minority.  In most cases it is better than that.  Like the FACE-SAVING FACE that seems to be confessing, “You know I’d never initiate this ‘Good morning’ routine myself, but I’ll respond in kind – anything to keep up appearances!”  There is the CONCEDING FACE: “All right, I’ll acknowledge your greeting this time; just don’t do it when you come around again.  Once is enough!  Don’t wear it out!”  The BEGRUDGING FACE is cute: “Okay, I guess I know when I’m trapped, but don’t ask me to go home with you.” 

Then there is the BLUSHING FACE: “I know I ought to be doing what you’re doing too, but why do you have to make me feel guilty about that?”  Spoken with a smile!  And I just love the SURPRISED FACE.  You say “Good morning”, and the face looks back at you and replies without saying the words, “Oh, you startled me!  And I don’t startle easily.  Can you be for real?”  And thank God for the GRATEFUL FACE: “Oh, good morning!  Thanks for making it good.”  And the DELIGHTED FACE: “I was just going to say that (‘Good morning’) myself.  You beat me to it.”  Not very often, but sometimes I am fortunate enough to get the LOVING FACE, the one that says, “Thank you, you’ve made my day.” 

The rewarding thing is that many regular repeat walkers have gotten so used to my greeting that they anticipate it when they see me approaching.  They are already smiling and saying “Good morning” back with their expressions.  You can tell they appreciate it and would feel cheated, if I did not do my usual.  A few times I have been greeted with such a big smile by someone that I have slowed down my walking and acknowledged them for it.  “Thank you for that smile.  It does a lot for me.”

Above war, hate, barbarity, and anarchy, above the jungle hell, there is, as I see it, a four rung ladder.  The lowest but certainly most important rung that gets us out of that primal state of savagery is tolerance – live and let live.  “I won’t bug you, if you don’t bug me.  I won’t stand in the way of you doing your thing.  I won’t attack you or exploit you or kill you or endanger you.  Of course, I won’t help you either.  I won’t go out of my way for you, but I will tolerate you.” 

Then the next rung to which we can rise is friendliness.  Not friendship, that’s another matter!  But friendliness, politeness, neighborliness, occasional give and take, respect. 

Above that, more difficult for people to attain, is the third rung, what we call compassion, random acts of kindness, specific things done for specific people, answering to a need simply because we are on the scene or have the capability and we care, a predisposition to heal and help. 

But then there is one more rung on this ladder, one that even exceeds compassion.  I call it a sense of irreversible kinship with any and all, and its accompanying element of urgent involvement and imperative.  It is the attitude that anyone else’s suffering is my suffering as well.  As John Donne put it, it “diminishes me.”  Their survival is my survival, their struggle is my struggle, their destiny is my destiny.  It is not “Oh pity poor them over there.”  Rather we own the suffering we see!  It owns us!  A sense of the ownership of other peoples’ lives and destinies!  “Send not to know for whom the bell tolls.  It tolls for thee.”  On the fourth rung you cannot say, “Suit yourself; it’s no skin off my nose.”  You know that it very much is skin off your nose too and that of the world.  It is the unmistakable realization that we are all bound up in the same bundle of life, as God’s creation. We surrender up the distinctions that separate – all of them. 

We visit the fourth rung only off and on.  I have to say that it is impossible to carry this mind- and heart-set with you all the time.  We cannot always choose it.  There is the moment when it seems to choose us. We catch it here; we catch it there. 

Poets and musicians and song writers sometimes are inspired by this ideal.  Take note of these beautiful words to the song “The Heart’s Cry”, from Riverdance: 

Where the river foams and surges to the sea 

Silver figures rise to find me

Wise and daring Following the heart’s cry.  

I am that deep pool, 

I am that dark spring.   

Warm with a mystery I may reveal to you in time. . .

See the eagle rise above the open plain 

Golden in the morning air 

Weaving and soaring 

Watchful and protecting. 

I am that shelter, 

I will enfold you.

I do not know how it sometimes happens for me there at the Mall during my walking, but some mornings, not most, just now and then, all those faces – the callous, the resistant, the ambivalent, the suspicious, the startled, the embarrassed, the overwhelmed, the grateful, the glad – all of them become parts of the mirror image of myself, even though I know almost none of their names and never see them under any other circumstances.  I feel a bundling with them, a symbiosis, and I am warmly blessed by it.

How do we reach rung four?  The only way is to be faithful on rung three, be compassionate, do for others, share ourselves and our resources as we have opportunity.  That we can choose, and by choosing it and choosing it and choosing it we create, we cultivate the climate, the mental and emotional and spiritual climate in which those transcendent moments on the fourth rung can take place.

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com

I welcome feedback.  Direct it to bobracine@verizon.net