Notes From My Journal: Chapter Thirty-Seven

Notes From My Journal: Chapter Thirty-Seven

      Krisnhnamurti says that education is the noblest profession. But he maintains that our present system of education is a prime factor in making our world one of greed, violence, and constant war. He says, “Conventional education makes independent thinking extremely difficult. Conformity leads to mediocrity.” And, there is no question in my mind that the educational system is producing a nation of mediocre students, who grow into mediocre citizens. Of course, this is not only true in our country, but true worldwide.

    “If we are being educated merely to achieve distinction, to get better jobs, to be more, efficient, to have wider domination over others, then our lives will be shallow and empty… Though there is a higher and wider significance to life, what value is our education if we never discover it?” asks Krishnamurti.  I think how hard I struggled to work in lessons that would point to this higher significance, and how my efforts were never supported by anyone in the establishment except maybe for one principal, Fritz.

     I set my book aside to think for a moment, and see an oriental lady taking pictures at the window that looks over the apron. “Those are R.I.T. buildings in the background, she tells me and explains that her daughter graduated yesterday.

      “Yea, my granddaughter graduated yesterday, too,” I tell her. We discuss their majors and the lady tells me that her daughter had found a job and is staying in Rochester. She asks if I would snap a picture of her standing at the window with the R.I.T. buildings in the background. She shows me how to work the camera, and I take a couple of snap shots.

      Wow, I didn’t think R.I.T. was that close, I tell myself.

     Back at my book, I read, “In seeking comfort, we generally find a quiet corner where there is a minimum of conflict, and then we are afraid to step out of that seclusion. The fear of life, this fear of struggle, and of new experience, kills in us the spirit of adventure; our whole up bringing and education have made us afraid to be different from our neighbor, afraid to think contrary to the established pattern of society, falsely respectful of authority and tradition.”

    My God, I tell myself realizing how closely this applies to my own life. From the moment I began thinking about this trip to New York all I wished for was for it to be over, and for me to be back in my nice comfortable bed, writing, reading my books, and working the garden. Worrying about money… worrying about making flight connections, worrying about finding my way around… What the hell is wrong with me?  I ask myself and realize that my fear of life has killed my sense of adventure.

     I think about Halo and Frank leaving for their cross-country drive, planning their trip to India, how fearless they are. Is it just old age? Can I recapture that feeling of adventure? I ask myself. I get up from my seat and pace around the boarding area. I could have spent more time in Rochester, walked the Erie Canal, shot up to Buffalo.  And what do I do? I hang at the stupid airport for five hours… What is wrong with me?

     When our plane finally arrives I’m happy to be boarding with the business class passengers. I find my comfortable leather seat just a couple of steps from the pilot’s cabin. I stretch my legs and buckle my seat belt. Though I have an aisle seat, I lean over and watch the ground fall away as we fly the take off pattern. In the fading daylight I watch the East Coast cities grow smaller and smaller as we climb to thirty some thousand feet. “Scotch and water,” I tell the attendant when he asks what I’d like to drink. I’m telling myself that this is the good life as I sip my drink.

     The guy next to me is a computer technician for the Atlanta Falcons.  We discuss the Falcons and Raiders for a minute or two and then he goes back to his computer screen. I lean over to study the passing clouds and glimpses of the ground below. After my second scotch and water, I lean back close my eyes and wonder what it’s all about. I have to get out of my comfortable corner. I have to work harder at my writing or find something else to get me going again. Just what is it that I need to be in life? What is it that I’m cut out to be? I ask myself for the hundredth time.

     In no time at all, we are making our approach. I lean over to watch the ground rushing up, take a deep breath, and feel the bump, bump, bump down the runway.

     The terminal for my connecting flight is right next to where we disembarked. I walk past several crowded fast food joints wondering if I shouldn’t get a burger, but the lines are long, and the prices are high. In less than an hour, I’m climbing into my window seat. There is an older couple seated in the other two seats. Good, I’m thinking they might not mind my getting out to use the restroom in mid flight.

    Take off is smooth and just as thrilling as ever. I watch the ground move away as Atlanta shrinks smaller and smaller. Above us to the north several stars send down their light. It looks like the Little Dipper, I tell myself as I crane my neck. The attendant brings drinks and snacks. I take a sip or two of my coke and tell myself I better not drink any more. The lights of Atlanta spread out more and more and compete with the light of the shining stars.

     I doze for an hour or so. Looking out the window I see the same group of stars off to the north. There is a large city below us now. Looking from the stars to the city lights I can just make out the curvature of the earth. How very tiny man is in relationship to the earth and stars, I tell myself as I try to visualize the people who populate the cities below us. What total evidence that the Gods and Higher Level Beings do not exist in the heavens above us. If the Otherness can make contact with man, it surely is not in any way the same as man can make contact. Even God could not see the individual man with the sense of sight from this distance. Man is too small, too finite.

     The Work says that the Kingdom of God is within you, that the Otherness exists in the invisible world of the Spirit. It must be so. This invisible world is just as vast, in face more vast than the material visible world, more vast than what I see above and below me. How to enter it? How to enter it? I ask myself.

      As we begin our descent over the San Joaquin Valley, I can just make out the lights of Livermore. I see tiny little cars on the Five-Eighty Freeway. Looking for San Francisco, I’m wondering just where we are. I figure we must be over Oakland or Hayward, but I can only make out dark areas interspersed small lights. Are we over the Bay? I ask myself. Then I see clearly the San Mateo Bridge with light traffic going both ways.

    In a minute or two we are on the ground. I give Anne a call and find that she is waiting near the baggage claim area. “You won’t believe the hassle I had getting in here,” she tells me.

     “I’ll see you in a few minutes,” I tell her happy to know that she made it all right.

     At the baggage claim area I discover that Anne parked at Terminal Two. She tells me that there was no parking space left at Terminal One. When I get Halo’s I find that the zipper is broken. So, there I am struggling with a broken bag with clothes hanging out in the windy San Francisco night. “There’s no end to it,” I tell myself picturing my warm safe bedroom just some eighty miles away.