Preferences Are Like...

I talked through 30 minutes of my lunch hour today. It's a gorgeous day here in Philadelphia & I wanted to get out and walk. I got all the way into my car, started the engine, and released the emergency brake before I realized that driving to the park would cut 10 minutes off my outside time. I turned off my car and decided to walk around the Navy yard here where I work. Instead of seeking out the tree-lined avenues, as usual, this time I decided to go wander around the mothballed ships. This is a departure from my normal preference for trees and birds and nature, as far away from all things trashed, despoiled, rotting and depressing as possible.

Which got me to thinking about preferences.

My preferences ostensibly make up my identity. They say who I am in relation to the world. I prefer nature. I prefer interacting with people, I prefer a healthy lifestyle, I prefer freedom, etc. But out of relation to the world, I am me, even if I am catatonic. I am identified through this body, which seems to be breathing me until it is done (beyond it I assume I am infinite, but that belief is another preference...). Experience shows that the body breathing any given being gives not one hairy rat's ass for karma and political affiliation. And the truth is, none of it really even matters.

Yesterday I sat in a planetarium with my daughter looking at pictures of a nebula that was the dying emission of a star just like our sun. None of it matters because one day our planet and all of its fossils and trash and dioxins and pyramids and mysteries will be a cloud of colorful gas floating in space. All of the energy we put forth to save the planet is more about saving our species, or saving life in general. But the truth is that no one here gets out alive, and the universe will go right on infinitating, whether or not there are whales or politicians or planet Earth. Remind me, what is it I'm taking so seriously again?

Somehow this manages to be simultaneously meaningless and liberating. I will go right ahead on taking my vitamins and doing yoga, because it is my preference to do so. I prefer the way I feel when I do it. But none of it - NONE - is worth fretting over. What is, is what is. I may prefer spring to winter, but it will not make a single flower bloom in January. I may prefer bluebirds, but there is a flock of blackbirds on the ground before me. I found today that simply observing what is there to observe is a source of great wonder. Maybe even greater than the joy of discovering a preference fulfilled for a fleeting moment.

Those old ships rusting across the street there, they were entire worlds to hundreds of young men who floated out to sea on them. They are massive forms, held in place by ropes as big around as my arm, and chains bigger than my thighs. Amazing that we invented these things and that they float. Amazing that they were invented to make war. And that most of our inventions came from a desire to make war or money. They seem to be what fuels our curiosity. I wondered if we would ever invent things for their own sake, or for the benefit of all. But that's another preference, too, another story.

I got lost in all the things I prefer - weeds growing out of cracks instead of smooth pavement, 80 degree days, so on and so forth, ad nauseam. And it hit me that instead of creating more joy in my life, my preferences actually limit joy by creating such a narrow set of circumstances for me to experience it within. And for that matter, joy itself is a preference, and makes any other emotional experience one that I would rather reject. How many times have I felt bad for feeling bad, for chrissakes? And why does fear get such a bum rap? It's like my greatest teacher. Why the hell don't I welcome it?

For now my preferences are still with me. I will want to have honey drizzled on the base of my neck by beautiful and intelligent foreign men in loincloths, until I don't. But it's wildly liberating to see it for what it is, instead of some powerful force whose opposite I waste all my energy on resisting.