A WHOOPER SWAN'S DIARY: 08/27/19

THE STORY OF JOHNNY WHOOPER SWAN We go to school trusting our parents. We meet a teacher there who stands up front with a big desk, and a pointer. She or he trains us in an authoritative manner. We attach mentally to a life long need for authority in order to live lives successfully. Right so far? In my case, at the age of 25 I was ready to enter the practice of law where I hoped for success and a happy life finally. Very shortly, very shortly, I became anxious. There was a foreboding. I was made more uncomfortable with each experience. Law work is nothing like what I was told it would be. The system is corrupt. But I still cling to my expectation that career success is necessary to my happiness as a man. Each day my grasp of what the fuck success amounts to after all becomes more clouded, murkier. I hear songs on the airwaves and at concerts which describe my life as the life of a fool. What am I becoming? I want to rip off my business suit to run naked in the street with my hair on fire! But I am too afraid. In strange, weird (weird comes from a word meaning wise), fragmented steps I go about a journey of my own believing myself to be the first man to have failed in such a total way which journey works so as to break up my career, end a marriage, and start an entirely new way of relating with my two children whom I love deeply. Almost magically I meet a woman who is a career counselor who asserts a beautiful message that I am made to be joyful in my work everyday and at all levels. This understanding sets me on a completely new course. It is no longer a world of systems to me but an undivided one of unlimited beauty. It reminds me of a painting. A true masterpiece. I am drawn from within to learn the truth about my identity and nobody else can teach me that. From this point onward I will use thinking capacity for mastering mechanical processes and follow my heart, which includes my whole nature, which includes your whole nature and that of every human being for all the rest. I’ll go by the name Johnny Whooper Swan who does not explain itself to anyone. By my fruits shall I be known. Watch me soar!

Tuesday, August 27, 2019

ON PLANNING

Whooper Swan spoke:

Today, I want to suggest to you that people plan only because everybody else is busy planning and plan for no other reason.

That is a mouthful, as my mama said.

People respond rather forcefully when told by anyone, Oh, me? I do not plan my life. They feel threatened by such a person since they are always planning, a favorite skill, which might be their only skill, actually.

That is another mouthful, Mama.

Think about it.

Say, I dream of a picnic I once attended and decide I want another picnic experience. I plan one. Right? Imagine with me for a few moments the steps a picnic planner will likely follow. To us, now, such a way is seen to be a wise exercise. Correct? Takes time, though. Also, an investment of energy. Also, an investment of personality in the nature of hope for a good picnic that brings about a feeling of being a good planner. Correct?

I want to ask a simple question. Why do people not just live letting life itself bring what will delight them, instead? At the beginning people did it that way because infants had no other way. So, my second question is: Do we know that an infantile way is not up to our image of a proper standard for an adult? It is certain we abandoned that one. Correct? Why? Do any of us remember actually choosing to abandon the infantile way?

One of Sigmund Freud’s early pronouncements was that the infantile way must be abandoned. He thought that the infant unrealistically assumes that whatever he needs will be delivered as if by magic. Mother taught him that by her motherly ways. Then, did she stop delivering gradually over time? Or, did what was needed from her by the infant alter more or less naturally? And Mother knew that?

Finally, this I ask, Do we know that a divine power is not in place ready in every moment to deliver our adult needs and we are busy planning only because everybody else is busy planning, and since we know it, we believe nobody will come to my picnic unless I am connected to the world-wide planning machine and that would be disastrous?

From where did this fear of not having friends arise? And why are the best picnics referred to as Happenings? And, was Mother an agent of a divinity that does not abandon us?

Here is another mouthful: I suggest you do not know but that if everyone of your plans should fail, it will not be the finest of all possible blessings.

Ultimately, I say: you are already as happy as you are ever going to be. That is a mouthful and the best reason to cease the practice of planning for you only plan away joy.