Day (-1)
7/18/2024
Today, I feel compelled to explain Closest Neighbors (CNs) in more detail since the story I am about to share with you, dear reader, revolves so heavily around ideas for how best to love them.
In the Bible (based on generally-agreed-upon American Christian standards), the ten commandments were relegated to the position of an archaic relic—you, dear reader, literally think of them as being written on stone tablets—so that a new commandment could take their place. It was (and still is) a simple commandment. There are three parts to the commandment (based on my reading of it), but ultimately, they are connected together (like a trinity!): Love God; love yourself; love your neighbor. All four of the gospels include some variation on this same theme. In Luke, the focus is turned from your neighbor to your enemy, but the Jesus-character in that gospel is too perfect to be useful to us-here-lowly human beings. To explain CNs (eventually), I am going to paraphrase the idea for my own uses here: If you love God, then you love yourself, and if you love yourself, then you love your neighbor. And I see no reason that it should not work in the opposite direction: If you love your neighbor, then you love yourself, and if you love yourself, then . . .
Okay, that ellipsis at the end of the previous sentence / paragraph was purposeful because this is not a lesson in Christianity. If it were just a Christian lesson or, more specifically, an American Christian lesson, then I would probably tell you to focus on the “love God” part, which is tied together with the first commandment (from the 10 commandments). This first commandment turns God into a unified oneness that challenges both the possibility of other gods and the idea of willpower. You, dear reader, if you want to be a good Christian can focus on loving God and / or Jesus and can ignore the other, overlapping parts, which are slightly more practical. Loving God and loving Jesus (ideas that are often conflated) can both take place from a distance, but loving your neighbors happens right next door. You can do something to prove (preferably to yourself) that you love your neighbors.
Before explaining that shit, I want to focus on a parallel idea. In the Tao Te Ching, you, dear reader, need make it no further than the first line to get a lesson that—I feel—is buried in the Christian texts: “tao k’o tao fei ch’ang tao.” Here is my interpretation: the way that is your way is the same but is also different from the Way. You, dear reader, could also write: “the path that is your path is just one small, but representative part of an all-encompassing path” or “the god that is your personal god is the same but is also different from the one GOD.” This is the link between spirituality (something personal) and religion (something shared).
(I want to pause here to reference the gospel of John, which posits a version of Jesus who takes a mystical / mysterious approach to sharing his lessons. While trying to explain the way for his disciples to love each other, Jesus tells them, “You know the way . . . I am the way and the truth and the life” (14:4-6). So he mixes the commandment with metaphorical directions on a map, ultimately hinting at the ideas of death, resurrection, and salvation all in one massive breath. I will also add here—since I’m already digressing—that I interpret each of the gospels’ tones as being unique: Luke is the story of “perfect Jesus;” John is the story of “mystical Jesus;” Matthew is the story of “popular Jesus;” and Mark is the story of “frustrated Jesus.” Yes, these are oversimplifications, but ultimately, I feel like that’s what people both want and need; likewise, they / we need one commandment because ten was way too many. I, for example, command myself to strive towards honesty over striving towards love, but the two can certainly go hand-in-hand.)
Okay, let’s return to my main point.
The parallel between the one commandment in the Bible and the one idea in the Tao Te Ching should be clear, but to make it more clear, I will rewrite the commandment once more: If you focus on loving your neighbors, then you’ll see the result in the form of self-love or happiness, and then . . .
Yes, the ellipsis was purposeful again. I hope that this last interpretation hints at what is practical and avoids what, ultimately, is beyond our comprehension. To find how best to love your neighbors, you seek evidence in how you feel: if you’re angry or sad all the time, then you probably don’t love your neighbors. If you’re happy, then you’re probably doing it right . . . right? And now we can return to the idea of CNs, a constantly chan—
T.C. interrupted my writing, which he was obviously reading over my shoulder, to tell me, “Just love your mother.”
“That works too,” I told him, “but it might be best to interpret the word ‘mother’ more broadly, more ambiguously.”
“Why would you do that?!”
I pulled out the Bible I keep on a shelf under my primary writing desk, and pointed out two passages in the gospel of Mark, which is my personal favorite of the four: 3: 31-34 and 10: 28-31. Then I said, “I’m not the first to do it.”
T.C. sat at the second of three desks in the attic at my parents’ house and read over the two passages several times, which—I feel—is worth doing whether you’re an American Christian or not. It’s fair and reasonable to toss out most of the Bible since trying to take the whole thing in will almost certainly lead to a contradiction, but there are parts of it that are worth reading, little snippets here and there.
With T.C. properly preoccupied, I can (hopefully) get back to the important point I was trying to make. I am writing to you, dear reader, about the commandment and the tao (the way) to basically draw a line between the practical and the impractical, the tangible and the intangible, and / or the real and the divine. That’s all I’m doing. In Islam, I believe the focus (in terms of the real) is on charity. That’s one of their pillars: if you give enough to those who have less than you, then you’ll be happy with your life, and then . . .
It’s basically the same idea even though Muslims might focus on giving tangible money as a means of loving one’s “poorer” neighbors, which is an idea that wouldn’t necessarily work for me. Overall, I feel like it’s best to leave it up to you, dear reader, to determine how you best love your neighbors, but I would argue that you need to really feel like you’re giving, which means giving more (love, time, money, etc.) than you take. Then you’ll be happy. Then you’ll get that spiritual / religious feeling (that PMA, positive mental attitude) that allows you to imagine (believe in or have faith in) your oneness with God, Tao, etc.
There is a fatalistic edge to this idea, which can be viewed as a positive thing; perhaps all of it (even how you feel) is beyond your control. Ultimately, I will argue that there is a balance between willpower and fatalism. There is something that will make you feel good about yourself (and not just in terms of a temporary pleasure). In other words, there is some way for you to love your neighbors that will result in you loving yourself and gaining that spiritual / religious high that allows you to overlook the fact that, for example, American Christians have had, for two elections in a row, two of the worst imaginable candidates possible.
“You’re making this ugly,” T.C. said. I turned around, and he was reading my political gibe.
“You’re right,” I said, “I apologize . . . My point is that an individual can overlook the ugliness if he or she or it learns how to love his or her or its neighbors.”
“You’re just saying a bunch of jibber jabber,” T.C. argued, and he was right; I was just generalizing.
* * *
So now I will attempt to give you, dear reader, some background on myself to explain what I believe to be a decent method for loving your neighbors. All I did (in life) was to clearly define who my neighbors were (at any given point in time) and to give them my love. And this is where the term “closest neighbors” comes into play. CNs are, in my eyes, the people who are closest to you at any given moment in time, and I mean this in terms of proximity. Right now, for example, I am living in a house with my mother, father, and one of my adult nephews. But I view those terms, those titles, as being somewhat meaningless. So my mother, father, and nephew are not my mother, father, and nephew but are my neighbors. They are, more specifically, my closest neighbors, my CNs. Whenever I was living at one of my siblings’ houses (with their children), something I did many times in the past, then they and their children were my CNs. And that’s all there is to me and to my lesson for you, dear reader. I drifted around a lot in the past, living for month-long stretches at various individuals’ homes. And I loved the people I was living with as my neighbors, while, to a certain extent, treating them as I wanted to be treated, which means dealing with them in an honest way (or not at all.) In comparison, I treat my coworkers as my neighbors and love them by specifically not talking with them, living by the old maxim: “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”
“I get it,” T.C. said. He was still reading the Bible passages and seemed to be referencing them.
“Yeah,” I said, “so you’ll notice that Jesus did not, in any version of his character’s story, ‘command’ others to love their mothers, siblings, or children. Instead, he lumped everyone together and—”
“He told all the people sitting around him that they were his mothers and brothers,” T.C. interrupted.
“Yeah, he told the people who were closest to him, his CNs, that they were (right then) taking on some part of the roles that formerly (when he was living with them) belonged to his literal mothers and brothers (and sisters). Later on, he adds children into that mix, which is probably the most difficult thing to do: to view children as neighbors and to relegate their importance to a level based on proximity instead of, for example, genetics or blood or past interactions. ”
“He says a lot more about children,” T.C. added.
“So does Paul, who was, in a sense, less of a character than Jesus.”
“What’s that mean?” T.C. demanded.
“Just that Jesus appears as a character in a story within the Bible, which means 3rd person POV, while Paul’s letters are written from the 1st person point of view. Plus, in terms of historical evidence—”
“Don’t get into any of that jibber jabber here!”
“Jibber jabber?” I asked, laughing.
T.C. shrugged. He was obviously trying out catchphrases so that, presumably, he would be memorable.
But I didn’t need catchphrases to remember him; in fact, I wanted to be able to forget him in the future. He was not always going to be one of my CNs. He was, right then, one of my closest literal neighbors and was the only one of my neighbors who I was close to on a regular basis, which meant for at least twenty minutes a day for five days out of every week—unless you count my co-workers as neighbors, which is not exactly fair for one major reason: I don’t get a full night of sleep before going to work, so I turn my brain off while I’m at work and can’t communicate with them even if I want to.
As for T.C., soon we are going to be getting much closer to each other.
“I’m not sure how much closer I want to get,” T.C. said. I couldn’t tell whether he was joking or not.
“I don’t expect much from you.”
“Well, I certainly can’t fly like a thunderbird,” he said. (That was, I presume, another attempt at a catchphrase.)
“No,” I replied, “but I am going to rely on you much more than I did in the past. I’m going to place my trust in you, and that is how I will love you.”
“Love me . . . I’m not even sure I like you!”
And it was true. What I wanted from T.C. was meanness, and while I might have interpreted the meanness as love, he probably did not see it the same way.
“I love my kids,” T.C. said. “I like my friends, and as for you, I just barely tolerate your jibber jabber.”
“I call it poetry,” I argued.
And then I wrote some jibber jabber
and rolled a die to decide
what to do next in life.
* * *
(written on 7/19/2024)
The roll of the die, based on the "values" I arbitrarily assigned to the numbers right then, told me to stop writing, go shower, and then to go do some shopping. I needed a new cooler and wanted to pick up some jugs of water to take with me as I continued on my adventure / path / way, which was going to occur as a literal road trip.
