This is a hard one for me to write about. First off, I'm a man, so speaking ill of my gender is difficult. As truthful and straightforward as I might like to be on the matter, the fact remains that I was raised by womyn and for male influences, a long string of sub-par men seemed to come and go from my life. I tried to spare my own children the difficulties of single parent homes, but cycles seem to repeat. As a youngster, my ideas about discipline were heavily skewed by institutionalized sexism, which continues today; no one ever pointed out the fact that every mother on the planet knows more about discipline than virtually any man ever could. Making sure that your babies get nutrients and food enough to allow them to grow up to the best of their abilities takes a level of commitment and follow through that most bachelors could never handle.
My daughter raised (is raising) two exemplary children, but they knew more about discipline at three than I understood before I was twenty. Daily rituals technically fall into that category and for some, just making it through shit, shower, shave, toothbrush, take time to groom, etc. is as much as they can handle, but the discipline I am speaking of is not what I learned about first.
Football. My stepdad (on paper) was a football star in his own mind, he had won a full ride scholarship to play, but enlisted instead. He shot himself through the fleshy part of his arm to get out of 'Nam but woke up addicted to narcotics in Colorado Springs missing everything the arm above the elbow. My mom married him after knowing him just 72 hours. He tried to teach me discipline, through his frustrated coach wannabe style. Confronted with a round boy of seven, he would say "Discipline is what you need!" I would do drills that he learned in high school, running in place drills where I would change direction in response to him moving the ball, jumping for passes, rolling, then immediately getting up and running in place, then rolling the other way and jumping up to continue running in place, he would have me run into him like a tackling dummy. During calisthenics he had me jumping, doing the large and small circles with my arms and I did thousands of squat thrusts and in his way he was teaching me the discipline he had learned of in the only way he knew.
The discipline that I know today goes beyond having to do the job of a single mother, it is that plus working to build community, heal the natural ecosystems that surround us, live, love and leave as much of a positive trace as possible. When I learned Leave No Trace ethics, that is perhaps when I began to think about discipline as "adulting". Bear in mind that the word would not exist for over two decades, but the reason the word exists today is to describe something specific, that people now need to talk about. Taking complete responsibility for passing across the Earth without leaving a trace is perhaps the most sublime way to travel. It is based on discipline. It is a bit like the cardinal rule of theater technicians, especially props, return everything exactly as you found it. That takes extreme discipline, maybe that is why I liked it so much as a camper.
Through the not-for-profit corporation my wife and I started, we have planted 60K trees, over three million tree seeds and countless forbs. The last six years we have been creating and using biochar which directly sequesters carbon in the soil. It will last for more than thousands of years and will continue to enrich and stabilize the soil the whole time. It truly sequesters carbon in the scale we call, geologic time. It takes discipline to make your body do things, the more important the things you do are, the more discipline is required to stay the course, continue and advance your trajectory, working it, living it, breathing it. Like the discipline of Pranayama yoga or keeping fish, ritualized action leads to meditative states of consciousness that reinvigorate our stores of energy to pour back into our discipline. It is as if the joyousness feeds upon itself and great realizations can come in each moment that would be unattainable attending to the mundane. I humbly submit to my role as charmaster, the discipline that consumes me.
My daughter raised (is raising) two exemplary children, but they knew more about discipline at three than I understood before I was twenty. Daily rituals technically fall into that category and for some, just making it through shit, shower, shave, toothbrush, take time to groom, etc. is as much as they can handle, but the discipline I am speaking of is not what I learned about first.
Football. My stepdad (on paper) was a football star in his own mind, he had won a full ride scholarship to play, but enlisted instead. He shot himself through the fleshy part of his arm to get out of 'Nam but woke up addicted to narcotics in Colorado Springs missing everything the arm above the elbow. My mom married him after knowing him just 72 hours. He tried to teach me discipline, through his frustrated coach wannabe style. Confronted with a round boy of seven, he would say "Discipline is what you need!" I would do drills that he learned in high school, running in place drills where I would change direction in response to him moving the ball, jumping for passes, rolling, then immediately getting up and running in place, then rolling the other way and jumping up to continue running in place, he would have me run into him like a tackling dummy. During calisthenics he had me jumping, doing the large and small circles with my arms and I did thousands of squat thrusts and in his way he was teaching me the discipline he had learned of in the only way he knew.
The discipline that I know today goes beyond having to do the job of a single mother, it is that plus working to build community, heal the natural ecosystems that surround us, live, love and leave as much of a positive trace as possible. When I learned Leave No Trace ethics, that is perhaps when I began to think about discipline as "adulting". Bear in mind that the word would not exist for over two decades, but the reason the word exists today is to describe something specific, that people now need to talk about. Taking complete responsibility for passing across the Earth without leaving a trace is perhaps the most sublime way to travel. It is based on discipline. It is a bit like the cardinal rule of theater technicians, especially props, return everything exactly as you found it. That takes extreme discipline, maybe that is why I liked it so much as a camper.
Through the not-for-profit corporation my wife and I started, we have planted 60K trees, over three million tree seeds and countless forbs. The last six years we have been creating and using biochar which directly sequesters carbon in the soil. It will last for more than thousands of years and will continue to enrich and stabilize the soil the whole time. It truly sequesters carbon in the scale we call, geologic time. It takes discipline to make your body do things, the more important the things you do are, the more discipline is required to stay the course, continue and advance your trajectory, working it, living it, breathing it. Like the discipline of Pranayama yoga or keeping fish, ritualized action leads to meditative states of consciousness that reinvigorate our stores of energy to pour back into our discipline. It is as if the joyousness feeds upon itself and great realizations can come in each moment that would be unattainable attending to the mundane. I humbly submit to my role as charmaster, the discipline that consumes me.
No comments:
Post a Comment