The Law of Savanna
I have about a thousand things I want to cover and share, and it is difficult to keep the threads all together. The reason I decided to keep this blog going is to act as an ongoing stream of consciousness for me, even if it is nowhere near real time. I don't want to write everything into a longer form and be limited by the need to keep the organization tight. I want to record where I wander to, and markers for what I think. Hopefully you the reader will get something out of all my words and thoughts and see your days better for it.
So today I am going to correct one of the best-known platitudes ever created; the Law of Undulation by C.S. Lewis. He is one of my heroes - I wrote a book I named after his, as a barely legible and poorly reasoned extension in a limited sense. So for me to criticize his work is a heavy weight, yet I must. He is utterly wrong about the Law of Undulation.
Only a few of us are lucky enough to live in the roller-coaster world of undulation, with all it's peaks and drops and loops and barrel rolls. Yes, there are a few times in your life when you may experience tremendous and powerful highs, and a few times when you may face crushing lows. I am certainly not disparaging their occurrences, for they remind us of not just the nature of life, but of the world to come. This makes them very very valuable.
But this is not how and where most people live. The live rather in the Law of the Savanna, the type of savanna that we traditionally think of, with open grass and limited tree cover. This is really the world most of us inhabit most of the time myself included. I am incredibly familiar with the savanna, as I have lived here a long time. It is in many ways more challenging than the Undulating Life.
The Law of Savanna is different; it warps the size of all other events, making them seem far away and distant, for the savanna is a vast open plain. It is enormous; in every direction it stretches to the horizon, swallowing up that which was so painful when fresh. They say time heals everything, but that is simply not true. The Great Savanna of Life does not heal, it merely numbs, and like an OD on painkillers it numbs everything.
Furthermore, the Great Savanna is made up of so many things; the pain of loss itself, the passing of time itself, the meaningless of the place itself. The Great Savanna is in fact a lot like a million parallel universes, with different people on different plains. Some mourning the loss of a loved one after decades; others a life of disconnection in which they question whether they will ever love or not. Loneliness is found here, and desperation. The Great Savanna is not for the weak of heart. Or maybe, that is precisely whom it is for.
But no matter where you are on the Great Savanna, the result is always the same; a horizon that extends for massive distances in all directions, without landmark or character or flow. One direction seems the same as another in every which way, and many are they who simply wonder the plains in circles. The homeless alcoholic on his 50th birthday can tell you all about the savanna. He knows what it is too see the rest of his life like that he has already lived. So too the lonely, the broken, and even the defiant.
Our issue is not our ups and downs. It is rather that we are here, wherever this is, and we can discern no reason to choose one way over another. And the Great Savanna encompasses all, as most of us will spend our time on this great plain, even if we are just passing time in front of a Playstation. Life is not as cruel and unyielding as much as it is never-ending, long and tedious and dull and lifeless but for the tough grass we chew.
It is the never-endedness of it that catches us by surprise. I know very well what it is like to spend decades hoping for breakthrough that never comes. Others know the emptiness of childlessness, or difficult or dangerous or monotonous career and home life. The Great Savanna swallows you up, and is never required to let you go.
Of course a few do escape. They hit the lottery, find the loves of their lives, or become famous in all the right ways. One day, they find that the have wandered off the grassland into lush and fertile land, the kind of place one can build a life. I wish I could tell you that I have a great secret to getting off the Great Savanna, but alas I do not.
But I can say this; to find activities that are meaningful and projects to complete may open doors to leaving the grassland. And if you wish to live somewhere else, you must practice it. We make doctors and lawyers and accountants practice for many years before they can work in their craft, because we know they must be transformed by their practice into a doctor or lawyer before they are one.
Likewise, we must school ourselves. If you want a family, then you must become one who knows how to love deeply, and if you are like most savanna dwellers you lack such skill. Even should you find the village for which you seek, you would just walk away when you realize that it is real and demands of you and not a dream. Why else would so many people divorce in our world?
Change your mindset. From now on, see yourself as crossing a great barren grassy plain, and make all your decisions based on going in a particular direction and practicing being a citizen of the city you hope to reach. Those habits are the only way forward, and will help you find your way back to life. Prepare to live, and one day you might do so. Live then, and do not die, and do not believe in the horizon. Believe in what lies beyond it's borders.
So today I am going to correct one of the best-known platitudes ever created; the Law of Undulation by C.S. Lewis. He is one of my heroes - I wrote a book I named after his, as a barely legible and poorly reasoned extension in a limited sense. So for me to criticize his work is a heavy weight, yet I must. He is utterly wrong about the Law of Undulation.
Only a few of us are lucky enough to live in the roller-coaster world of undulation, with all it's peaks and drops and loops and barrel rolls. Yes, there are a few times in your life when you may experience tremendous and powerful highs, and a few times when you may face crushing lows. I am certainly not disparaging their occurrences, for they remind us of not just the nature of life, but of the world to come. This makes them very very valuable.
But this is not how and where most people live. The live rather in the Law of the Savanna, the type of savanna that we traditionally think of, with open grass and limited tree cover. This is really the world most of us inhabit most of the time myself included. I am incredibly familiar with the savanna, as I have lived here a long time. It is in many ways more challenging than the Undulating Life.
The Law of Savanna is different; it warps the size of all other events, making them seem far away and distant, for the savanna is a vast open plain. It is enormous; in every direction it stretches to the horizon, swallowing up that which was so painful when fresh. They say time heals everything, but that is simply not true. The Great Savanna of Life does not heal, it merely numbs, and like an OD on painkillers it numbs everything.
Furthermore, the Great Savanna is made up of so many things; the pain of loss itself, the passing of time itself, the meaningless of the place itself. The Great Savanna is in fact a lot like a million parallel universes, with different people on different plains. Some mourning the loss of a loved one after decades; others a life of disconnection in which they question whether they will ever love or not. Loneliness is found here, and desperation. The Great Savanna is not for the weak of heart. Or maybe, that is precisely whom it is for.
But no matter where you are on the Great Savanna, the result is always the same; a horizon that extends for massive distances in all directions, without landmark or character or flow. One direction seems the same as another in every which way, and many are they who simply wonder the plains in circles. The homeless alcoholic on his 50th birthday can tell you all about the savanna. He knows what it is too see the rest of his life like that he has already lived. So too the lonely, the broken, and even the defiant.
Our issue is not our ups and downs. It is rather that we are here, wherever this is, and we can discern no reason to choose one way over another. And the Great Savanna encompasses all, as most of us will spend our time on this great plain, even if we are just passing time in front of a Playstation. Life is not as cruel and unyielding as much as it is never-ending, long and tedious and dull and lifeless but for the tough grass we chew.
It is the never-endedness of it that catches us by surprise. I know very well what it is like to spend decades hoping for breakthrough that never comes. Others know the emptiness of childlessness, or difficult or dangerous or monotonous career and home life. The Great Savanna swallows you up, and is never required to let you go.
Of course a few do escape. They hit the lottery, find the loves of their lives, or become famous in all the right ways. One day, they find that the have wandered off the grassland into lush and fertile land, the kind of place one can build a life. I wish I could tell you that I have a great secret to getting off the Great Savanna, but alas I do not.
But I can say this; to find activities that are meaningful and projects to complete may open doors to leaving the grassland. And if you wish to live somewhere else, you must practice it. We make doctors and lawyers and accountants practice for many years before they can work in their craft, because we know they must be transformed by their practice into a doctor or lawyer before they are one.
Likewise, we must school ourselves. If you want a family, then you must become one who knows how to love deeply, and if you are like most savanna dwellers you lack such skill. Even should you find the village for which you seek, you would just walk away when you realize that it is real and demands of you and not a dream. Why else would so many people divorce in our world?
Change your mindset. From now on, see yourself as crossing a great barren grassy plain, and make all your decisions based on going in a particular direction and practicing being a citizen of the city you hope to reach. Those habits are the only way forward, and will help you find your way back to life. Prepare to live, and one day you might do so. Live then, and do not die, and do not believe in the horizon. Believe in what lies beyond it's borders.
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