No Instructions

Buckminster Fuller once compared Planet Earth to a spaceship hurling through the universe, and simultaneously noted that Spaceship Earth failed to come with an instruction book. I am noting the same thing about Human Beings today. Alas, we fail to come with an instruction manual! Oh, we've attempted plenty of self-help books, but they woefully miss the mark.

Perhaps there is a reason for this. Perhaps there is a reason that I have studied and find it simple enough to make the dog "sit" and "stay." She even knows how to "leave it," when I hold food out, until encouraged with an "Okay, take it." But if I can teach the dog these simple commands, why is it that I haven’t been able to train myself to resist that last piece of chocolate covered almond?

No, really, I am joking but I'm not. I think about a baby in its crib, intrigued with the movement of his or her own fingers and toes. The baby, I suspect, is close to something we seem to have lost as adults: the magic of who we are at our essence! Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and see a complete alien! How odd these thoughts, these likes and dislikes, these fingers and toes! Who is this body I inhabit and how does it work?

So, what's the point? Maybe our life is really the writing of that missing instruction manual. Maybe the only way to learn the operating instructions is through trial and error, through mishaps, through grand adventures and through highs and lows. Maybe if we'd been given the instruction manual in the beginning, we'd never have created our messy and wildly exotic lives.

At the heart of entry is a call to give up trying to figure it all out, give up seeking the right answer in a book or a guru, and be fully present to the unfolding of the moment. "Ah, here I am. It is Monday at 3:00 pm, and we're on page 4514 of the Instruction Manual." And, if that is the case, my lessons for the afternoon are around taking out the garbage, walking the dog, and finishing the proposal I've been procrastinating around. To quote a Buddhist teaching,
“Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water”. Knowing these are the vital lessons, perhaps I will pay closer attention. The future of Spaceship Earth may depend on my learning today's lessons, on all of us learning them, and quickly!

As I’ve already said, we’re sailing at the edge of the map here, and without instruction manual. I am comforted by the words of a sign my father used to have hanging in his office. It read: “Orville and Wilbur Wright didn’t have a pilot’s license.” There is always someone who has to go there first, without a map. That would be me and that would be YOU in this case, if you are reading this.