On Selecting The Right Tools

It’s So Easy To Get Lost In The Possibilities

We live in a world overflowing with ‘stuff,’ and physical things (e.g. hammers) are only the tip of the iceberg. There is the intellectual, the emotional, and the spiritual. We have made incredible ‘advances’ in our understanding of all four areas, so much so that many of us are drowning in the resulting turbulence.

We have discussed the plague of consumerism and its unsustainability elsewhere, so with that as a given, let’s look at the explosion in each of our four domains, beginning with one of the things they have in common - complexity.

Being a handyman: I am a crude, amateurish maintenance man. I can hang pictures, use a simple table saw, sander, etc.; the kind of basic skills that many rookies have. A central piece of advice to those who seek to be ‘handy’ is to use the right tool. Over the decades, I have accumulated a wide variety, most of which I am reasonably adept at using.

However, as an amateur, the challenge is often deciding what tool I need for a specific task, and the more choices I have, the more difficult it can be to choose. Will plain old pliers work, or do I need a socket wrench? Do I have the right size, and will it fit into the space available?

So the variety of options I have increases my chances of success, IF I can overcome the confusion in my untrained brain. Oh, and my spatial awareness or ability to visualize is severely limited. Despite it all, I get immense satisfaction from ‘working with my hands,’ much more than I ever got from writing a 50-page research paper. But let’s move on.

So much to know, so little time: It’s called the Information Age for a reason, a very good one. The amount of information available to anyone with a smart phone or computer is staggering, well beyond the ability of most of us to critically analyze. But rather than focus on the more popular realms, especially science and technology, let’s look at a simple situation.

Daisy is the joy of my life. I am almost as impatient to make our daily visit to the doggy park as she is. I know she loves Jean and me, and I know she knows we love her. I thought I knew the signs, especially following me from room to room and licking my face, hands, and legs.

Recently, however, my phone and FB feeds have been exploding with videos about how I’ve got it all wrong. They tell me that following and licking me are coping behaviors, signs of anxiety, of not feeling connected to me. And mistreating her in any way, even by acts of omission, is the last thing I want to do. What should be ‘easy,’ giving her the best life possible, making sure she knows she is loved has now become entangled in another impenetrable web of information.

Yes, I know that the makers of those videos want to sell me something, a training regimen that will fix my mistakes. Yes, I know it’s possible to hook up electrodes to pups and read what kind of chemicals are being released during a variety of behaviors.

But do I trust people whose main objective is to make a profit, people who prey on the easily accessible guilt and self-doubt that many of us wear on our sleeves? And there is no better target than someone like me - an old, White male living a comparatively privileged life.

Forget whether acita, acepha, acte, Tylenol causes autism (maybe another essay?) or whether tariffs are a good idea (They’re not!). Uh-oh, I see a swamp opening up before us, so let’s take a detour.

Gaining control over one’s emotions: If you regularly read my essays, it’s clear that I am among the countless millions struggling with my emotions. Perhaps the most self-destructive is the aforementioned guilt, but I suffer from plenty of other maladies.

Again, the research on emotions, human and non-human, has shot through the roof in the past few decades. And again, those of us with no real expertise (almost all of us) are left to our own devices. On top of that, we all know that ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.’ Is it any wonder that the ‘solutions’ include believing in QAnon, chemtrails, astrology….; not to mention the usual subjects?

But more. What does controlling our emotions look like; what is our goal; how do we know that goal is desirable? For instance, I believe it’s a mistake to force oneself to always be ‘happy,’ to always ‘look on the bright side of life.’ (Monty Python) We not only should, we need to feel the full range of emotions, without letting them mislead or overwhelm us, in both thought and action.

Here’s where our intellectual and emotional selves interact. I watch a video or read a book or article on some aspect of emotions, with the idea of becoming more emotionally balanced and resilient. While I search for advice based on my belief that we must allow ourselves to feel every emotion, I may ‘miss’ really valuable advice from researchers who suggest otherwise. OK, you can see where this is going.

Awakening one’s spiritual self: Several months ago (a year ago?), I decided to embark on my version of a vision quest. After 55 years as a very mechanistic dialectical materialist, a philosophical methodology that fails to address much of what I have been learning in the past 4-5 years, it was time to move on.

Here we go, again. Even before donning the mantle of Marxism, my spiritual life was virtually non-existent. The closest thing I can remember is the pure joy I get from music, beginning with my years as a soprano in a church choir. Otherwise, I cannot remember a similar level of ‘letting go’ or fully immersing myself in anything. Even a successful hip check that sent my hockey opponent flying couldn’t equal the euphoria.

There is no question in my mind that the root of almost all of the angst, fear, anger, depression, guilt - any negative emotions - that tens of millions of my fellow USians are feeling is the totally unnatural, alienating culture in which we struggle.

As with most everything else, ‘cures’ have erupted like a volcano, those ‘answers’ now flowing like lava slides, trailing off into countless, tiny rivulets or sinking to the bottom of an ocean. So which rivulet does one follow? Or do we dive to the bottom of that ocean and explore? Finally, some good news. Just as there are many, many ways to live, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to how to develop one’s spiritual being.

Primarily because their outlook most closely reflects what I believe was the one shared by our ancient, pre-Civilization selves, I am drawn to the concepts described in ‘Restoring the Kinship Worldview,’ a wonderful collection of the thoughts of 28 Indigenous folks with the aim of “Rebalancing Life on Planet Earth.”

Accept, Embrace, Choose and Move on: One of the few constants in my thinking the past few years has been following this process I have described elsewhere in relation to a variety of topics* - accept, embrace, choose and move on.

The first step is a simple acknowledgment of the ‘evidence,’ or what our non-expert minds choose to believe. The second is to allow ourselves to ‘feel’ that acceptance, devoid of any negative emotions it may conjure up. Finally, having done so, we should now be able to choose a path forward; one that leads to addressing the issue with both an open mind and an open heart.

I intend this essay to serve as a return to that path, a road that has seen a bunch of trees and rocks fall onto it in the past several months, blocking my way. Fingers crossed. Peace.