Last year on Labor Day, he went to a festival at Party Park. (The name is fictitious, but this is a true story, honest.) For a substantial fee, you could drive your car to a spot, pitch a tent, party all weekend, hear twenty bands on three stages. Everybody got high (via various techniques), and had lots of stories and photos and memories to share with friends who didn’t get to go. It was intense! Nitrous oxide in black balloons for $5, foodsharing, weed- and booze‑sharing, story telling by the campfires throughout the night ‑ everybody felt really alive.
Here’s the punch line: about four in the morning, he had to relieve himself, and wobbled toward a Porta‑Potty. Blam! His toe slammed into a piece of concrete block half‑buried in the ground. The pain was excruciating... but weirdly familiar. Through his fog, he grasped it: he had actually done the exact same thing the previous year: almost broken his toe – the same toe, the same concrete block – all this pain, exact replay! What's up with this?
I’m not reading any significance into this coincidence. It makes a good story because it illustrates the repetitive aspect of partying: after awhile, getting exhilarated this way takes on an oddly “Same Old, Same Old” tone, regardless of how you vary the cast of characters, the locale, or the chemicals.
Here’s my point: when the partying atmosphere engulfs us, it cripples us. Another influential example is the evening news. Like partying, "the news" (whether TV, radio, or print) features fast talking, repetitive clichés, and the promise of insider tips. But sooner or later, the tragedies and the heart-warmers begin to look and sound similar, grow less and less essential, become a sleazy entertainment that, like sugar, only gives us the blues, without enlightening us one iota. The irony, of course, is that it actually isn't News at all!
Consider a Media Fast. I tried it, I’m still trying it, and I like it. I go long periods without watching the evening news, and can’t see that I am less caring or less engaged in the world. I don’t read newsmagazines unless I’m in the waiting room at the dentist’s. I’m even going long periods now without listening to my car radio.
I seem okay so far ‑ less bored and restless ‑ I really don’t miss the party all that much. And it doesn't seem to miss me much, either: rarely does anyone notice how ignorant I’ve become!
Drunks fear the
police, but the police are drunk, too. People in this town love them both like different chess pieces.
Rumi
The Soul of Rumi
Unformed people delight
in the gaudy and in novelty.
Cooked people delight
in the ordinary.
Zen saying
