Happy Spiritually Evolved Thanksgiving

Has Thanksgiving happened already? I can't remember, because I hate America. AMERICA AND ALL ITS HOLIDAYS.

In any case, for Thanksgiving here's something worth reading by Margaret Wheatley called "Letting Go of Hope." It deals with a deep, genuine problem about politics: while it's easy to have a negative impact on the world, and to understand just how you've made things worse, if you try to make things better it's much harder to tell if your efforts are paying off. This leads some people to give up.

Here's Wheatley's advice:

Vaclav Havel helped me become further attracted to insecurity and not-knowing: "Hope," he states, "is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out."

Havel seems to be describing not hope, but hopelessness. Being liberated from results, giving up outcomes, doing what feels right rather than effective. He helps me recall the Buddhist teaching that hopelessness is not the opposite of hope. Fear is. Hope and fear are inescapable partners. Anytime we hope for a certain outcome, and work hard to make it happen, then we also introduce fear—fear of failing, fear of loss. Hopelessness is free of fear and thus can feel quite liberating. I've listened to others describe this state. Unburdened of strong emotions, they describe the miraculous appearance of clarity and energy.

I suspect this is the right way to look at it. The downside is it's literally impossible for most humans to achieve this mindset.

Still, it's worth having it as a goal, even if you never get there. I believe this is what T.S. Eliot had in mind in his poem "Ash Wednesday":

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things

[...]

Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

It may be significant that Eliot didn't write:

Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to start a blog

In any case, similar advice appears in the source of all human wisdom, Life and How to Survive It by John Cleese and Robin Skynner:

Cleese: So all we have to do to increase our health is to become more aware of ourselves...What can any of us do to increase our degree of integration?
Skynner: Sit still.
Cleese: What?
Skynner: That's what you have to do. Sit quietly.
Cleese: That's all?
Skynner: Well, you might meditate, or contemplate religious "myths," or pray, but being quiet is the best start.