I’m a slow reader with a piss-poor attention span. I don’t really know how to skim, and I tend to like words too much to want to skim. I sometimes think I like poetry because it’s manageable. I’m a little more than half-way done reading Siddhartha – a book most people could read in a day. My penchant for being easily distracted typically limits me to half an hour with my nose in a book before I need to get up and do something else. Last night I timed myself as I read – nine pages in about 15 minutes. Even when it’s a book that I really enjoy (I was loving Veronica), I’ll only read for an hour and then I might go a few days before I pick it back up.
I read Siddhartha years ago when I was in college. I remember the vague premise – a spiritual hero’s journey… the search for enlightenment. I decided to re-read it because it’s also about experience and finding meaning. The chapters I read this morning were “Samsara” and “By the River.” At this point in the book, the spiritual man Siddhartha has lost his way and gotten caught up in the everyday world of commerce and vice. In doing so, he views his work and his play as a game – neither of which he’s terribly passionate about, but more along the lines of riddles to be solved. He’s good at commerce for the sake of being good at it, but it does not bring him joy. I should also mention that he started down this path after meeting a woman who said he would need to be well-dressed and give her gifts. It would be easy to judge these things – pursuit of materialism and the pursuit of the woman by our own standards, but the broader picture is that all experience is about learning. Sometimes we may have to be materialistic assholes in order to eventually renounce materialism.
For most of my life I was told that experience is the worst teacher…. that education and reading, especially from those that have already grappled with big ideas, is the best way to learn. Siddhartha seems to be about the balance between the two – learning from masters and also learning from living through ordeal. I suppose that is every heroic tale – there’s almost always a mentor and a series of ordeals that lead to a rebirth and a return. While Siddhartha learns a lot about love and the anxieties of everyday people (merchants, beggars, etc.) he renounces it all, and having lost himself contemplates drowning himself in the river.
As I’ve read, I’ve tried to think about some of the things (mostly grief) that I needed to experience to have any semblance of understanding. I’m not sure I’ll be any better prepared for it, but I think I can understand someone feeling it better than I used to. Even my very recent experience of working in a pretty toxic work environment has given me a better idea of the stress that other people face everyday. In some respects, I was fortunate in that I could take the risk in confronting it – there are lots of people who just have to suck it up and deal with it.
Yesterday I wrote about some of the people who have described themselves as being broken. At it’s most rudimentary it’s saying “I used to function, and now I don’t” – or at least not as well as I used to. Standing at the river, Siddhartha realizes his greatest strengths (the ability to fast, think, and wait) are all gone. This seems like an important question to ask someone when they say they are broken… in what way? What part or parts are different? I’m usually a curious person, but almost every time I’ve been confronted with that phrase, I’ve been afraid to ask that question (maybe it just seems like it could get too messy). Instead, I’ve either tried to comfort by saying something like “we’re all broken” or I’ve tried to identify by saying “I understand, here’s how I’ve felt broken before.” The motives, are pure enough – to connect with people and ease their pain… but maybe what they really want is to be able to express their brokenness. As Siddhartha is contemplating how he is broken, he is seeing his reflection in the river. The river doesn’t try to identify with him or comfort him, it simply allows him to see himself.