Politics vs. What is Important 2

Posted on February 24, 2004 in Anxiety Attitudes Blogging Reading

A passage from Iris Murdoch’s The Sovereignty of Good expresses well what I was getting at the other day:

I am looking out of my window in an anxious and resentful state of mind, oblivious of my surroundings, brooding perhaps on some damage done to my prestige. Then suddenly I observe a hovering kestrel. In a moment everything is altered. The brooding self with its hurt vanity has disappeared. There is nothing now but kestrel. And when I return to thinking of the other matter it seems less important.

The kestrel is not the alternative. The kestrel is where we contact the vastness of the universe. I use hummingbirds and the curved red tiles of the roof across the street to place my sense of self in the context of the bird, the clay, and the sky opening into unseeable space.

Politics must be seen in perspective. To make rational decisions, we must calm our anxieties. We must take that series of deep breaths, we must watch the hummingbirds flitting up to the feeder before we act on the angsts that jab and claw at our equanimity.