The Explorer

In the pre-dawn, I feed the birds their breakfast of bananas and rice.  It is a daily ritual I practice outside the terrace of my little cabin in the western highlands of Panama.

A few years ago, I was sharing this time over a cup of hot coffee with a friend visiting from Alaska.  Don Ross is a retired bush pilot now active in environmental issues and peace movements. 

In an effort to draw more attention to the dangers of global climate change and the desperate need for peace throughout the world, Don set out by bicycle from Fairbanks in the eastern interior of Alaska.  It was early October of 2009. The migrating swans were hurrying south. Winter was setting in. 

Pulling a tiny trailer loaded with camping gear behind his bike, he traveled down the Alaska Highway.  Descending through western Canada and peddling to San Francisco, he then turned east to cross the U.S. arriving in Washington DC in June.  At the age of 68, he spent nine months on the road peddling his bike and three times had crossed the continental divide, an action based on his love for the earth and a desire to make a difference. He shared his experience on a site he called “Peace Rider.” As we reminisced over cups of home-grow coffee, our conversation turned to the lives we both had created over the past decades.

 For years, I have said that all of us on this planet are artists.  Art, of course, comes in many forms:  painting, music, dance, sculpture, weaving, cuisine, gardening, and certainly many more. With the fundamental drive of creativity that resides in all of humanity, we paint lives often far better appreciated in retrospect than at the moment of creation.  Some paint lives of chaos, discord and dark shadow; others create lives with the warmth, beauty and light of a Rembrandt. Many of us dabble thoughtlessly at life, others zero in on a clear image and bring that image to fruition in lives of great personal satisfaction, service and/or beauty.

 Many of us are blessed with a rich palate of resources and colors, others with minimal material from which to work.  People with the most minimal of resources have painted exquisite and lovely lives, while individuals with great abundance have painted lives of ugliness and distortion. Think of Helen Keller or Lincoln; think of Hitler or Osama Bin Laden. 

Whatever the final work of art produced by our individual lives, we alone are responsible for that work.   If the canvas of life seems blank and dull, it is easy to lay the blame at the feet of society, culture, parents, or history. But, we alone are responsible for picking up the brush and whatever pigment we have available in the present moment, however meager or rich it might be, and creating the best selves we can be, or wish to be. 

 The art of life can stumble on by itself; but with no direction or intent, it may be a dark canvas of chaos and confusion. Whatever the result, it is still our creation.  I am always reminded of the final stanza penned by William Ernest Henley in Invictus:  

 It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.

That morning, Don compared humanity to a vast tapestry composed of billions of threads of different colors and textures.  Yet each thread, dark and gloomy or bright and radiant, forms an integral part of that tapestry. 

 Each of us is a thread in the fabric of human life, and at some deep level, I feel we are all connected.  We all influence the art of the tapestry whether we know it or not. 

 How much richer is the tapestry of life if we all try to contribute threads of brilliance and strength!   Deepak Chopra compares humanity to a vast symphony.  Each one of us contributes a different tone, an individual chord that enriches the whole.

A few years ago I put some of my own thoughts to rhyme.

THE WEAVER

 I WEAVE MY LIFE

OF WIND AND RAIN,

OF JOY AND SORROW,

OF TOIL AND PAIN,

OF TEARS AND LAUGHTER,

OF LOVE AND HATE,

OF PLANS AND DREAMS

AND WHIMS OF FATE.

OF URBAN STREETS

TREMBLING WITH NOISE

WHERE GLOWING SCREENS

TOUT ENDLESS TOYS

OF LOFTY MOUNTAINS

AND VALLEYS DEEP

INSIDE WHOSE DEPTH

DARK SHADOWS SLEEP.

OF ENDLESS HIGHWAYS

AND FORGOTTEN TOWNS,

OF QUIET FOREST

WHERE LIFE ABOUNDS

OF ARCTIC COLD

AND DESERT HEAT,

OF PUSHING ON

WITH BLISTERED FEET

OF EARTH AND SEA

AND TROUBLED SKY,

’TIL I GROW OLD

AND THEN I DIE.

IF IN SOME OTHER

WORLD I RISE,

BEYOND THIS EARTH,

BEYOND THESE SKIES,

I LONG TO WEAVE

WITH COLORS BRIGHT,

A WORLD OF PEACE

AND LOVE AND LIGHT.