The most fascinating
thing about a young adult’s life is that it is always changing. There is so
much room for improvement, for seeing things differently, and for trying to
understand the inner self. American poet Walt Whitman and British philosopher
Alan Watts demonstrate in their writing how the world around us is in constant
flux, how we learn to absorb information and then decide how we will allow it
to change us. When I began my first college writing class, I felt as if I was
quite the cultured person, but I soon caught on that the people around me and
the forum style of the class would allow me to grow a lot more than I imagined.
Our many discussions of texts, especially in regard to our identity, gave me an
opportunity to reach a higher level of understanding. The variety of my peers’
responses to both Asian and Western appreciations of the spiritual side of life
has made me open my eyes to just how much I was unaware of. These glimpses into
other lifestyles, priorities and “techniques of the sacred” have allowed me to
see things much differently.
Walt
Whitman in Section One of “Song of Myself” writes, “I celebrate myself, and
sing myself, / And what I assume you shall assume” (Whitman 1.1.1-2). By
Whitman saying I, he speaks about his own person, but he also insinuates a cosmic
(or Vedic) self that is not higher or lower than anyone else; rather he asks us
to see the self as universal, something we are all a part of: “For every atom
belonging to me as good belongs to you” (Whitman 1.1.3). I view this as a
brilliant escape from the demanding trap of the ego in which I must create,
denounce, and defend a position or a personal identity in order to be
comfortable or taken seriously. Whitman knows that we as individuals understand
each other better when we are all involved, and that is a huge motivation for young,
susceptible individuals trying to make sense of who they are. In Section 24 he
calls himself “a kosmos” and adds this moral dimension, “Whoever degrades
another, degrades me / And whatever is done or said returns at last to me”
(Whitman 1.24. 1; 8-9).
Indeed,
the motive of “Song of Myself” strikes me as an appeal to the reader to think
beyond the either/or of our perceptions. As fellow Taking Giant Steps blogger
Emily Baksic astutely writes on Leaves of
Grass and its relation to Lao Tzu’s Tao
Te Ching, “The yin and yang accept the flow between one’s life and the
universe counteracting together. The yin and yang represent the integration of
opposites not merely as polarities, but as complements” (Baksic, Par. 5). Though
we may split the universe into good and bad, we need to see how opposites
attract and create a larger whole in and of itself. Whitman caused me to recognize that we are all individual
entities sharing space in the same universe. No one is anything more, and no
one is anything less. To insist otherwise feels like an unnecessary defense
against our own urge to grow our souls. When one works with another, dates
another, or speaks to a stranger, one can gain so much by putting oneself on
the same level as the other. It is not worth putting oneself above or below another, just
because one is speaking to an individual of a certain status. One must find
oneself in others to truly grasp all the dimensions of one’s identity.
As Alan Watts would say, regarding
our need to make all these distinctions in status, we are “putting legs on a
snake” (Watts, 11).
After
reading Chapter One of his The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You
Are, I observed that Watts and Whitman are essentially singing the same
song, each for their own generation. Watts’s reading of Vedanta, the end of the
Vedas (knowledge), makes us as humans wonder if what we know is not what we
actually need to know in order to be
“in the know” (Watts, 9). Watts suggests that we must dig down deeper---beyond
the masks of our personalities and the social conventions we obey without a
second thought---into the taboo of the world, search a little in the unknown,
and work on figuring out what the others refuse to tell us. Maybe there is
“some inside information, some special taboo, some real lowdown on life and
existence that most parents and teachers either don't know or won't tell”
(Watts, 9).
Watts
caused me to consider that life has more meaning than what we just see on the
outer surface. We have to interrogate the taboos of our society and run with
what the world does not want us to know. Watts states that we are “flesh or
plastic, intelligence or mechanism, nerve or wire, biology or physics” (Watts,
39), a “human race leaving no more trace of itself in the universe than a
system of electronic patterns” (Watts, 37). Watts asks us to look at each
occurrence that happens in life differently. As he puts it, “Taboos lie within
taboos” (Watts, 9), and that is where we need to search in order to find what
we are missing. These hush-hush, inflammatory, unpopular, or alternative
readings of the world are what students need to learn for themselves. I
gratefully entertain the notion that I am not merely a separate self, alienated
from others, alone and afraid, but part of the greater whole in which my
individual soul (Atman) is none other than the universal soul (Brahman).
Fortunately,
I first encountered these two iconoclastic writers in my middle school and high
school years. Growing up a sheltered child with a mother who perennially fought
health problems, I was not able to explore as much as the other children were,
nor was I able to go spend time with friends as much at a young age, due to the
fear of contracting an ordinary illness and getting my mother more ill. With
chronic illnesses, even the simplest of colds can have severe effects on the
immune system. If I did have playdates growing up, I do not remember them
clearly. In second grade my thirst for knowledge wound up distancing me from my
peers. However, this solitude gave me a kind of freedom. I picked up an
encyclopedia in my house one day and began reading it, one book at a time. Reading
led to writing, and I learned to analyze material to find deeper meanings, but
also to find a larger understanding in every circumstance. I am thankful for
the chance to grow my interpretive antennae at such an early age. Fellow
blogger Kelsey Picciano was not so lucky: “I learned only that of the history
the school chose for me to learn; I read only the literature of which the
school wished for me to read; I knew only of the environment that the school
wished for me to be in” (Picciano, Par. 3).
In
middle school, my English teacher realized I had a knack for seeing things
differently, so she introduced me to the 52 sections of “Song of Myself.”
Whitman’s way of expressing how we as humans are comprised of experiences,
ideas, and mental states, as well as a personal spiritual understanding,
demonstrated so clearly that each person is part of one universal self in the
world. From a young age this point of view is something that I have sought to
celebrate. Likewise, in high school, my English teacher, seeing that I needed a
challenge, invited me to spend my sophomore year reading Alan Watts. Once again,
I found myself in the company of a real seeker willing to question everything
around him to get to the bottom of things. With this inside knowledge, I
realized that I was no longer going to let anyone dictate who I was becoming. I
took the chances I wanted and have never looked back. Because of these self-discoveries in middle and high school,
“I no longer find myself with a void sitting inside of me; I no longer solely
feel my physical being; I feel my existence as my own unique individual”
(Picciano, Par. 7).
In my
first semester of college, I have further realized that in order to continue my
path towards a career in journalism, I need to allow my mind to wander into the
unknowns of the world, as Watts teaches us, and that I must find myself within others,
as Whitman illustrates. My past is no longer going to define my future; rather,
my present self is going to be the guide to find out who I will become. As someone who considered herself well cultured, I found that
Watts and Whitman truly challenged my homeostasis. Whitman showed me how we are
all a part of the same whole, working to figure out what truly works for each of
us. Watts opened my eyes to see that what we already know is not all that we
need to know. We must be in constant search of what we do not know to acquire
what we still need to. I realized that my best strategy as a learner, thinker
and evolving writer is to break out of my comfort zone in order to challenge
what it is I have yet to learn.
Works Cited
Baksic, Emily. "Corresponding Ideas of Nature in Walt
Whitman's Leaves of Grass & Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching." Taking Giant Steps, 05 May 2016. Web. 30
Nov. 2016.
Picciano, Kelsey. "Forging a Whitmanic, Post-Traditional,
Bisexual Identity." Taking Giant Steps. N.p., 28 Jan. 2016.
Web. 07 Dec. 2016.
Watts, Alan. “Chapter 1,” The
Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. Share and Discover Knowledge on LinkedIn SlideShare. N.p., 25 Dec. 2015. Web.
30 Nov. 2016.
Whitman, Walt. “Song of Myself” (1892 Version)| Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 29 Nov. 2016.
Informative and interesting Blog! Beautifully written, as usual, I like the post. Thank you so much for nice sharing with us. Keep posting!
ReplyDeleteAlan Watts
Kablooey! Head blown completely off *
ReplyDeleteWatts circuitously led me to Jane Roberts and the Seth Material. She was a medium who channeled Seth, a wise being who, for me, took some of Watts key wisdoms and also did a big Kablooey, taking it into a multidimensionality I had never expected or conceived.
Brava!