So, Sow, Sew

What are we doing here? To me this is an epistemological question as much as a phenomenological one, which is to say less pedantically, it is what it is. Being and doing aren’t so far apart, for better or worse. You are how you express yourself, but you’re also a lot more than you’ve believed yourself capable of until you have.

There is you and your incipient, becoming self. I sometimes refer to it as Future Chris, in keeping with the ghosts of A Christmas Carol, and of course there is the source of all out troubles, Past Chris. And because I’m often screwing Future Chris with my decisions and I’m well aware of my ambivalence about Past Chris’s decisions, particularly, perhaps, Deep Past Chris, I have a certain level of trepidation about how Future Chris will see me. So I try to tread softly. Deep Past Chris would track mud all over the house. The crimes of youth.

But this overly philosophical opening is leading somewhere. I’m a big believer that intention is a big part of creation, though even as you are doing it, not all of your reasons or material is going to be conscious to you, and the idea is you kind of go with it, and trust it like an improv partner. There’s a thing called the 10 year rule which is that 10 years from now you will look ruefully on some of the misconceptions and delusions from your past that you now have stepped clear of.

I suppose that’s a fortunate thing because to not change feels kind of awful to me. The excitement is more often in the thing I dreaded or was hesitant to try but enjoyed more often than the thing I’ve done repeatedly. (Listen I’m not complaining about bars. In particular.)

In the end, you want to feel that you are growing. That, to steal from Flannery O’Connor, everything that rises much converge. That’s sort of a hopeful perspective. Things can rise and crash in on themselves, rather than converge or perhaps form a Hegelian dialectic. But the idea is that, in some way because we are learning creatures whose weakness is disguised by our ability to plan, it’s important we be moving in some direction. Have a purpose. Something we are…. well, doing, for lack of a better generic action word.

The psychologist Erik Erikson believed are life was framed by eight stages throughout our life, from birth to death, and there is a hierarchy of sorts caused by the passage of time much like Maslow’s hierarchy built on awareness and acceptance. I hope to talk about them both at some point in the future, but more on that in a moment.

Eriksons’ last stage is generativity versus despair. The first is trust versus mistrust. In my opinion none of these conflicts are ever fully foreclosed. You can be a trusting person and have that shattered, and, I suppose those who harbor basic mistrust can be won back over. But it’s the opposite of good work if you can get it. The thing is that just as the first stage persists for all of your life, and there is a sort of progression inasmuch as the better you do in the prior stage, the more emotionally capable you will be to undertake the next one, the last stage has a building salience across your life.

You don’t always hear the hum but it grows louder as meaning and purpose push against life’s entropic random intermittent grace and malevolence. Can tragedy befall you and you not grow bitter? Will success lead you to revert to a selfish spoiled 12 year old? The paths you choose early contribute perhaps a bit of a higher perch to plan your journey.

But I believe we get cowed. We stop taking risks. Stop exploring. Collapse on the couch. It’s certainly easier. And the known comfort often outshines the unknown possibility that many more times than not is something mundane.

I think often on a story Arlo Guthrie told me about his dad Woody. He was just a little boy at the time, and woke up thirsty one night. He walked from his bedroom into the kitchen and tripped over his father, who was asleep on the floor. Woody explained to his son, that if he slept in the bed he might not leave.

Sometimes we have to make ourselves a little uncomfortable to be who we need to be. And you may have no idea who this future you is supposed to be, it can just happen to you. It’s why you show up. Anything can happen if you show up. Nothing changes when you don’t.

That is to me, the idea behind the first part of Sew:YKnot. It’s about sowing seeds without an idea what will sprout. It’s about putting yourself out there to your neighbors, your friends, strangers and trying to sew some community. It’s about just creating something without any expectation beyond the process.

YKnot refers in my mind to my tendency to get caught up in my emotions and thoughts about things to the point of paralyzation or at least procrastination, a lazy frogger waiting for that perfect perfect opening. In the words of Joe Pernice’s “Flaming Wreck,” about a high strung fellow who finds peace as his plane spirals down: “Is it once, is it twice, is it perfect now?”

So this post, this incipient site, this moment of beginnings that may not lead anywhere but is a fine path to stride regardless, that’s sort of what I want Sew:YKnot to embody. An idea of taking some risks because we’re awful actuaries. Because nothing is in the eye of the beholder, and transforms from eye to eye, until magically it meets the right one, perhaps unlocking another mystery. Life’s most precious cargo is the mystery of what might change life at any moment – for better or worse. But there’s no turning back, Past Chris won’t have you and Future Chris hasn’t arrived. You’re alone, but you’ve got yourself and that’s more than you suspect. Sew up and see what you can’t create. (Failure is a great fertilizer.)