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by Mike Reeves-McMillan
News: A very considerably revised and expanded version of this work has been shortlisted for the Ashton Wylie Unpublished Manuscript Award.
This is for Rosemarie, in celebration of her courage in illness and her return to health.
Life is fragile,
Fragile as a Rose:
Soft petals, dessicated by heat,
Burned by sudden frost.
But life is a paradox,
A paradox like a Rose:
Fragrant elegance
Balanced on a woody stem
Defended by inevitable thorns.
A hardy perennial,
Resurgent after pruning:
Life is strong,
Strong as a Rose.
A number of factors led to this book. Now that I think of it, all of them involved women; it is a book with a number of female fathers, who planted seeds in me which I nurtured, as a male mother, eventually giving birth to this. (A somewhat tortuous metaphor, and I apologise.)
One of the female fathers was my friend Fern Horst, who remarked during one of our email conversations: "I don't think I've ever met someone who makes such an effort to improve himself and does it successfully like you do." I replied, of course, that I'd only been telling her about the successes, not all the plans I've had and never followed through on.
Another was my friend and colleague Rosemarie, to whom this book is dedicated, who expressed enthusiasm for my piece on the Art of Serenity. (I lent it to her while she was being treated for leukaemia.) A third was Kristin Herman, who attends the same church as me, and who spoke there one day on dreams and their usefulness for self-understanding; and that was what really crystallised the factors into the idea of a book on ways of becoming.
Other good women friends include Alison, with whom I have had many enjoyable philosophical discussions over a period of years which formed much of the basis for my growth in self-knowledge; and Erin Reeves, first my friend, now my wife and my companion on the journey, always someone with whom I can discuss my strivings and wonderings assured of an empathetic hearing which adds to my understanding. Erin's mother Charlotte has responded to the beginnings of this work with enthusiasm and insight, and some of her ideas have modified mine. My friend and colleague Lee Bisset has also modelled to me a fulness of living life which has taught me a lot.
Ironically - or perhaps predictably - almost all of the books which I have referred to are written by men. Perhaps men are more inclined to write about ideas, while women are more likely to have wisdom which is discussed, and applied, in the course of everyday life. Thank God for both genders, in any case, and for friendship between them.
I'm rather a discursive writer. I use parentheses a lot, and some of my friends mock me unmercifully about my subordinate clauses, which I'm trying to cut down on (there was one, and here's a parenthesis). It's because I think of everything as connected to everything else.
Hypertext suits me down to the ground, because if I come to a particularly long and elaborate digression, I can just put a link to it and people don't have to follow it if they're not interested. So that's what I've done throughout this book - sometimes using the word "digression", sometimes not. Most of these have been written in the course of this book, but others are pieces that I wrote earlier and which are relevant to some point I'm making (because everything is connected to everything else).
If I ever publish it on dead trees, I'm going to have to have a whole bunch of appendices. :-)
You may find it helpful to go all the way through the main argument first, only following digressions if you're particularly interested; and then, if you still want to, read it again, this time following all the digressions. It's up to you.
The Journey in Four Directions is not a linear journey. Happily, hypertext is not a linear medium, and I have attempted to structure this book in a way which (while still being navigable) reflects the fact that we often journey in several directions simultaneously.
The other structural feature I should mention is the occasional paragraph called "Scylla and Charybdis". These names, of a vicious whirlpool and a dangerous rock located close together in the Mediterranean Sea, have become famous through Homer's account of Odysseus' encounter with them. Too close to the whirlpool, and you would be sucked down; too close to the rock, and your ship would be wrecked. Only by steering a course between them could you escape.
These paragraphs, then, highlight the extremes to avoid in the particular area I'm discussing at the time. There's more about this in the section on balance.
There are also a lot of "flip sides" or "other sides" in what I will be saying. Most things in human life have their shadow, and often we see things more clearly if we acknowledge their shadow side also.
This is a work in progress, because although it is not an autobiography, it's based on my life, which is a work in progress. Eventually, I hope it will be a multimedia piece. It will have scenes out of movies. It will have snippets of songs. It will have photographs and digital art and analog art. It will have coloured diagrams. It will have applets (perhaps in the diagrams). It will have an option which will read it aloud to you.
At the moment, it mainly has hypertext, and not nearly as much of that as it's eventually going to have (I hope). It will have book reviews, and poems, and quotes from emails and letters, and things I haven't even thought of yet. Mainly it will have my ramblings, because it's a very personal work. It would be nice if, like Pascal, you thought at the end, "we are astonished and delighted, for we expected to see an author, and find a man." (Pensées, i.29.)
It's kind of a postmodern scrapbook, really.
A great deal of my personal growth has happened with the aid of books. Perhaps this is partly why I'm writing one.
Where I quote or mention a book, I will normally (if I have the book or know the details) put full bibliographical information in the bibliography. I have asterisked the books in this bibliography that I found especially helpful and recommend (sometimes with reservations, which I note underneath). Any link from a book title normally leads to the bibliography, which is organised by author's name.
Some of my incidental quotations come from Dr Laurence J. Peter, originator of the Peter Principle and compiler of Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time. Unfortunately, he does not include bibliographical references (partly because a lot of the quotations are not from books), and so where I use one of his quotations there will be no such reference, just an attribution to the person quoted.
Unless otherwise noted, the Bible translations (at least of the New Testament) are my own. Why did I do this when there are far too many English translations already? Largely because I wanted to bring out particular points which are evident in the original text, but may be less obvious in the standard translations to which I have access.
I am a Christian, and a fairly orthodox one by historical standards. Don't let this put you off.
One of the things I have become, through the processes I describe in this book, is more open-minded towards the insights of non-Christian, and non-western, thinkers (the two terms are not synonymous), and I incorporate some of these into what I will present.
Having said this, I am a Christian, and inevitably much of my motivation for change, much of my belief that change is possible, and much of my resource for change arises from this fact.
This is not to say that non-Christians, even those hostile to Christianity as they perceive it, cannot benefit from this book. However, I will, without apology, refer to the Bible and to Christian writers and thinkers throughout. You will inevitably exercise your own judgement as to the wisdom contained in these sources, as you will towards my own poor wisdom (and as I did towards them also, and towards the other sources which I also quote). My hope, though, is that you will benefit from these insights, and to that end I have tried to write in such a way that even if you know little or nothing about Christianity, you will still be able to follow what I am saying. For example, as well as using the usual abbreviated standard for referring to Bible passages (which Christians are familiar with, but which is confusing to those who have never used a Bible), I have also written out the references in a fuller form.
Occasionally, I will address some remarks particularly to Christian readers. Feel free to skip these sections, which will be clearly marked - or to read them, if you're curious.
I express skepticism about various things in the course of this book, some of which are almost regarded as Scripture in some non-Christian (and Christian) circles. While I am not a deconstructionist, I'm happy to use the occasional deconstruction to put things into perspective within my own framework of belief - which is to say, sometimes the doubts I express arise out of my Christian worldview. Where this is the case, I state it if I am aware of it.
My approach in this book reflects several of the things that concern me about the Christian Church, and my desire to avoid them myself.
One is the arrogance of believing that you have all the answers. Only God has all the answers.
One, closely related, is believing that nobody else has any of the answers. I have freely used non-Christian insights, and I explain why in my digression on The Appeal of Eastern Thought to Western Minds.
One is the ghetto mentality of writing (or singing, or marketing, or whatever) only for your coreligionists. As I remark in my Note to Non-Christian Readers above, I have tried to write in a way which is accessible to people without a Christian background. Sometimes this may involve my explaining something you already understand. Please bear with me. I'll try to mark these sections off so you can skip them if you like.
Some Christian readers - perhaps many - will think I go too far sometimes. Some will condemn me as a New Ager, and this doesn't really concern me. (Look at my Statement of Faith if you want to know what I believe.) Others, I hope, will start to transcend, or continue to transcend, the too-frequent Christian mentality of having nothing to learn, nowhere they need to grow, and no concern for excellence in everyday living - all of which are fundamentally at odds with Christianity as I understand it. (See my digression on synthesis and synchretism.)
For some years, I have been learning and growing, seeking wisdom and personal change. The reasons and motivations have been varied; probably the basic one is that I enjoy learning. It struck me eventually that I should assemble some of the insights I have attained through this process into a book, so that others, perhaps, can get a boost in their own process of becoming.
What do I mean by "ways of becoming"? I mean insights, practices, techniques, disciplines and attitudes which enable us to become different from what we are now - with a difference that is for the better. I mean approaches which make us more integrated, more whole, more skilled, more civil, more interesting, more likeable, wiser, kinder, broader and deeper.
To live in time is to be part of a process of becoming. (I believe, unlike the process theologians, that as God does not live in time he is not subject to the process of becoming; he alone simply is. I have a digression on this if you're interested.) Some people, however, cease to participate actively in the process around their early twenties. The rest of their lives are spent in passive becoming - becoming more solidly what they already are, perhaps, and more completely what the people around them are. They leave the spring behind and never return to it; they are summer people, comfortable and unconcerned, devoted to leisure; or winter people, hard and cold, dormant without hope of a new awakening; or even autumn people, fruiting, but also decaying. They are not renewed. If you meet them after ten years, nothing much will have changed inside them, however much their outer circumstances have changed. If you know them well, they will be like J.R.R. Tolkien's Baggins family: "people considered them very respectable. . . because they never had any adventures or did anything unexpected: you could tell what a Baggins would say on any question without the bother of asking him." (The Hobbit, Chapter 1.)
Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed.
- Irene Peter.
I want to continue becoming until they carry me out in a box, and I assume you feel somewhat the same, or you wouldn't be reading this. But also I want to do this in the context of everyday life.
It is easy enough to concentrate on becoming in solitude and seclusion. (In fact, one of the reasons I chose at one time to live alone is that it makes it easier to concentrate, easier to be serene.) But our true challenge is to become fuller people in our day-to-day lives; and in this, being with others can help as well as hinder - can help, in fact, far more than it hinders.
As Charles Williams put it:
"Much was possible to a man in solitude, but some things were possible only to a man in companionship, and of these the most important was balance. No mind was so good that it did not need another mind to counter and equal it, and to save it from conceit and bigotry and folly."
- The Place of the Lion, Chapter 15.
Balance (balance in movement) is a large part of what I will present in this book, and balance is one of the things produced by being with others, listening to others, discussing with others - including those with whom we disagree.
If you are (in any sense) a hermit, keeping only your own company, or if you keep only the company of people who are like you, you will still become (everyone who is within time becomes); but what you will become is only more like you already are. Sometimes, paradoxically, to become more fully ourselves we need people who are not like ourselves at all.
Marriage or close friendship are the best matrices for this. I have friends with whom I have a lot in common, but who are also unlike me in many ways, and over the years of our friendships (17 years, in two cases) we have become more like each other as we tug each other closer to the centre of our opposite poles. It's as if we are in free fall, holding on to opposite ends of a rope, and rotating about its centre, held apart by centrifugal force. When one of us pulls on the rope, exerting an influence to draw the other closer, we both move closer to the centre as well as closer to each other. (I think I have my physics wrong there; if anyone can help me with a better metaphor, please let me know).
So that is what I mean by "ways", and some of what I mean by "becoming", and I have also explained the "everyday life" part of the title. You may still be asking "becoming what"?
As a Zen master might say, that is both the right question and the wrong question. It is crucially important and utterly unimportant. The journey is everything, and the destination is everything, and there is no destination.
Which if you are anything like me is an answer that will irritate you no end. What I mean is that what you become is important, but that you become something is also important (as with the Principles of Direction in the Art of Serenity); and you do not become something in order simply to be that thing, but in order to continue becoming - that thing, or something else more than that thing, or something else different from that thing for which having become that thing is a prerequisite. (If that was too abstract, stick with me: illustrations coming up.)
If to travel hopefully is, as Kipling said, better than to arrive, then we are all fools to travel hopefully - because we will be disappointed when we arrive. But one thing I have learned in my becoming: the product is not the only important thing. The process is also important.
Often we want the product without the process, and this is sin in us, the first sin, according to the Bible. Adam and Eve wanted the knowledge of good and evil. Do we think for a moment that God would have withheld it from them? He created them to be like him. But they wanted the product without the process - perhaps one reason that a fruit was chosen as the symbol, because a fruit is a product, not a process. (If anyone's interested in my views on whether this story is literal or mythical, I have a digression on it.)
One thing I have become, and am still becoming, is more appreciative of processes. This book is a work in process, just as much - exactly as much - as my life is a work in process. I'll update it from time to time, and if you want to receive notice of the updates, please let me know.
Often, these processes are painful. Often, they aren't what we thought they were when we set out on them. Often, the product isn't what we wanted. But even then, I've discovered, we can build on the unwanted product - in fact, it's an essential step in our process of becoming.
Which brings me to my favourite Star Trek episode. Captain Picard (who I identify with rather; he has a similar personality to me, though he expresses it differently) is dying from damage to his artificial heart, and the powerful alien Q gives him the opportunity to go back in time to the event which led to his having an artificial heart - a barroom brawl when he was a newly commissioned officer - and change the decisions which led up to it. He does so, and finds himself back at his present age - a timid, unpromotable lieutenant, who hates his job and is never going to get anywhere. He's missed out on the lesson on the value of life and the need to live it to the full which his brush with death taught him, and pleads to go back and put the decision back the way it was.
That was a parable for me of my life's worst experience and what I learned from it. I realised that if I was given the same choice, I wouldn't change my decision, even though it was a bad one and led to horrible pain and suffering for me (and some for other people as well).
I still haven't answered "becoming what?". I think it's a question you have to answer yourself, if you can. I hope this book will help.
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This whole work and all its parts are copyright 1997, 1998, 1999 to Mike McMillan. Use for profit is reserved to the author unless otherwise arranged.