Reclaiming The Afternoon Road To Inner Peace. Today, The Trump Hour.
by Jon Katz
Rebirth To The Afternoons
Donald Trump has given me a valuable gift, he has reminded me that time is precious, that a spiritual life requires discipline and consistency, that it is essential to understand distraction of we are ever to find any kind of inner peace. He is helping me to claim my precious afternoons.
I love H. L. Mencken, the grumpy media and social observer who wrote about the great boobs and hustlers and charlatans of American politics, he called them “Boobus Americanus” and said there are always enough dumb and angry people in our country to keep them in business. The function of American business, he said (this was before the corporate era) was to screw most of the people, and from time to time, the people wake up to it and get ticked off and turn to some loud mouth rascal who claims to speak for their true interests, and perhaps does.
He would have so loved to see Trump and write about him, I have to confess to being pretty mesmerized myself.
We may not see the like for some time, and I think I completely get him. By dint of his big and foul mouth, he seems brave and alive next to the tepid and cowardly opportunists along side of him, hollow men and women all. They are doing polished theater and he is doing improv theater, yet he seems to be the only one who is actually alive. Hateful things come out of his mouth, yet he doesn’t seem as hateful as most of his more polite colleagues, and that is a fascinating thing.
Some personalities are just wondrously and uniquely American, they could not exist anywhere else. I’ve been to England a few times, and I just can’t fathom Trump leading any political poll there. But back to the point. Trump has helped me to see that I have lost control of my afternoons, and need to get them back.
“The whole aim of practical politics,” wrote Mencken more than a half century ago, “is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
How prescient. That is also the story of modern media and much of corporate life in America today. Yesterday afternoon, done writing, I sat down with my Iphone and earphones and a beautiful novel, Infinite Home by Kathleen Alcott. It was around 6 p.m., I had worked hard all day and I have long flirted with the idea of a late afternoon spiritual hour, a time of meditation, reading and listening to music. I have wanted to do it for years, I have yet to do it. I was eager to do it yesterday.
Why not, I often wonder? Because I am too prone to distraction, a great spiritual failing.
Instead of reading my book yesterday or listening to my music, or settling to mediate (Red loves to meditate quietly with me, Fate is not yet this evolved, and she is with Maria most of the day), I picked up my Ipad and read a long and quite intelligent analysis of the Trump phenomenon and what it says about him and the rest of us that he is still so popular.
I can’t say I learned one thing about him, and upon reflection, I can’t say that I really care either. Whatever I am reading about in six months, it is not likely to be Donald Trump, and if he is still around, I’ve already read enough. He is loud and colorful, but when you get to the next level, there is no next level.
A half hour later, finishing my reading, I realized I had given away my afternoon. If you read Mencken, you will know that Trump is not new or different from any of the other boobs and barkers that have shaken up American politics from time to time – Long, McCarthy, Bryan, Wallace. He is fascinating, but just not that important. Why did I give up my afternoon hour for this?
I realized this morning, lying awake in bed, that I have lost control of my afternoons. I unconsciously slipped into a number of different patterns – anxiety and distraction will do this. I get up early to write and write for hours in the morning. I need to do my chores, run errands, answer messages, do my sheepherding. After that, I am free, especially in the hour or so before I make dinner.
I love to read and listen to music, I find I am rarely doing that at all. It is so easy to pick up the Ipad or browse through the smart phone, there are always texts, messages, stories, photos, videos, news. A boon to people like me, with a fractured mind.
I saw that in the afternoons, I was in danger of becoming the person Pope Francis cautioned about when he wrote in his encyclical that “Many people today sense a profound imbalance which drives them to frenetic activity and makes them feel busy, in a constant hurry which in turns leads them to ride roughshod over everything around them. Nature is filled with words of love, but how can we listen to them, amid constant noise, interminable and nerve-wracking distractions, or the cult of appearances?”
Did the Pope foresee Donald Trump, the loudest nerve-wracking distraction of all, the leader of the cult of appearances, and did he imagine me giving up my sweet and contemplative hour to be distracted by him?
Not today, not again. Here is my plan for today. After making lunch, blogging, working a bit on my book, giving Fate a quick sheepherding lesson, checking on the animals, feeding the dogs, it will be about 5 p.m. I take my Joseph Campbell book, The Art of Life, the Pope’s Encyclical, “Laudato Si,” Infinite Home, and I will go to the Round House Cafe.
There, I will order an Iced Decaf Coffee and a muffin, I will sit at a quiet table in the rear of the cafe and read my books. I will bring my Iphone and maybe listen to some music in between. I will have my hour, today and from now on.
Mr. Trump reminded me that he is not my business, and has little or nothing to do with my life. I don’t care to be alarmed or made clamorous by yet one more cynical and cruel windbag. If I do, that is my fault, not his. He is quite honest and open about who he is, and a number of people seem to care for him and message. Our politicians are so weak-minded and timid and cynical that even hate and stupidity seems stirring in comparison.
Good luck to them all, perhaps they will eat one another.
So I am moved to get my hour back, and to keep it, every day that I can. Stay tuned. Every hour I do this will be a big seed for inner peace. That’s how spirituality works. I may call it the Trump Hour, just to keep me motivated.
