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Full Measure

"I keep losing and gaining my equilibrium, which is the basic plot of all popular fiction. And I myself am a work of fiction." 

Kurt Vonnegut
Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons (1974)

 Is nonfiction permitted a basic plot, and if so, what the hell is it?

I'm wondering tonight whether Plato ever fell out of favor with Socrates, and if so, how Plato might have felt about it. We expect a lot of our teachers, and I suppose at some level that's just how it goes. And perhaps that is the right and proper way of things. I can say this with some authority from both sides of the aisle--or, rather, chalkboard--because, while I have considerable experience being a student, I am also a teacher. Not of yoga, mind you, but a teacher nonetheless, with a skill set and considerable expertise, all set upon a foundation of being endlessly, fallibly human.

So I get it, falling out of favor. I also understand the feeling of not measuring up or of constantly trying to. As a student, I have found myself loving the chance to impress; as a teacher, I abhor the burden of making an impression. This is a familiar lesson for me as either teacher or student--the search for approval. Both aspects have their breaking point, and it comes, when it comes, with sudden relief. Because, suddenly, I can trust myself again, or maybe it's that I remember myself. Either way, I come to my senses. Until the next time, of course.

Losing and gaining equilibrium: These sound less like feats of fiction and more like the stuff of being human. It may be best to think of ourselves as perpetual toddlers.

One of the inscriptions at Apollo's temple at Delphi reads: Know thyself (gnōthi seautón). I repeat some version of this message in my syllabus as a means of introducing my philosophy of reading and writing to my students. I do not pretend to invoke the wisdom of the ancient Greeks, but neither would I balk at the attribution. Strangely enough, I also quote Vonnegut in that same introduction; the Vonnegut reference in my syllabus is different from my reference to him here. However, I now believe that Vonnegut, with his gains and losses, and the ancient Greeks were alluding to the same thing. Are we not, in the course of knowing ourselves, bound to gain and lose our balance? Might this not be why many things in life get compared to a balancing act, literally and figuratively? In yoga, after all, many of the inversions are taught so that we value our shifts in perspective, thus learning how to flow through them more gracefully.

Suzuki Roshi insisted that there was no such thing as an enlightened being, but only enlightened activity. What a relief! For both me and my students, and for both my teachers and me. It is much easier to acknowledge unenlightened behavior while maintaining a sense of compassion for the unfortunate soul guilty of it because, well, I could easily enough find myself guilty in the same way. Indeed, I have.

At the age of eighty-five, Florida Scott-Maxwell wrote eloquently in her memoir, A Measure of My Days, on the topic of love and hate--those notorious destabilizing forces. "I wonder why love is so often equated with joy when it is everything else as well. Devastation, balm, obsession, granting and receiving excessive value, and losing it again....Love is honored and hate condemned, but love can do harm. It can soften, distort, maintain the unreal, and cover hate. Hate can be nature's way of forcing honesty on us, and finding the strength to follow a truer way." It occurs to me that love and hate, and the myriad swings between the two, might just be the measure of our equilibrium.

Disequilibrium. Maybe this is our true nature. Alive in the tension, we believe in our ability to grow. We remain eager to try again to get it right, knowing we're sure to lose and gain along the way. We tip from one toward the other, both willing and reluctant to accumulate our full measure.





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