mining for good: the act of adaptation

"The Buddha can be found in the machine too" -- my favorite line from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The author is responding to the popular sentiment that whatever is spiritual in the world is only found in nature and that the creations of man crudely cover over and destroy all that is good and holy in this world. I found the statement above particularly appealing because it challenged the perspective that I had held for as long as I could remember.

When I was nine years old, my family moved from the woods of northern Minnesota to a bungalow in a Los Angeles suburb. I wasn't happy about the move. All I wanted was to go back home to the trees and the lake, and my grandparents and my cousins and aunts and uncles. But we didn't go back; I stayed in LA for the next ten years. The entire time, I pined for what I had lost, looking back, looking back. The pain of this memory was made more accute by vacations back to the place that I always considered home and my natural habitat. I never felt like I belonged to the city of angels in any way, nor that it belonged to me in any way. We remained strangers, and I must admit, I felt oppressed by this alien world.

Still, Los Angeles was not hell, and I looked, unconsciously, for the Buddha in the machine. What I found was surfing, the church, and some good friends. The surfing that is undeniably a part of Los Angeles became not only a refuge and a joy for me; it became a lifestyle, a force that would shape my identity for years to come. I was no longer an alien in a world of asphalt and smog, displaced from distant forest lands -- I was a surfer. The smell of surf wax and salt water and the posters that covered my walls soothed me more than I even realized at the time. In churches I found idealism that resonated with me; I found community; and I found people who were kind and gentle and genuinely trying to be good human beings. Finally, I had the great joy of close friendships all through those years -- I always had people close to me to sustain me and share life with me. I will always be greatful for that.

LA is not home for me, has never been home for me, never could be home for me, yet I found much there that was good. It is this goodness amidst that which I find undesirable that makes me want to explore the idea of adaptation. I vaguely recall reading somewhere a definition of intelligence that said that its mark is the ability to adapt to new situations. I like this. We adapt; we evolve; discomfort forces us to grow, not only by surviving hardship, but by discovering beauty in places that we never would have thought to look. In doing this, we find parts of ourselves that we would not have otherwise found. We have to dig for good sometimes, to mine it out of even harsh environments, because it is there.

Mining for good has not been an easy lesson for me. I have spent much of my life looking back over my shoulder to places and circumstances that I have liked better than whatever circumstances I may have found myself in at the time. One mistake I've made repeatedly is trying to force a new environment into the shape of another environment. I still wanted to be a surfer in Arkansas. The closest I got was skimboarding a flooded golf course. The tragedy is that in stubbornly clinging to the treasured pieces of past environments, I missed some of the beauty and opportunities of Arkansas. I remember now a friend inviting me to try whitewater kayaking with him. I wasn't interested -- it wasn't surfing. I regret that now.

Years later, when I moved to North Carolina, I took up whitewater kayaking, precisely because I can kayak here -- it's an inherent part of this geographical environment, whereas surfing is three hours away and terribly inconsistent. I love kayaking; it meets some sort of primal need that is close to my soul. Through kayaking, I connect with my new environment intimately. Kayaking also opens up much of the country to me: before, I never wanted to live anywhere where I couldn't surf; now, I could live anywhere where I could surf or kayak.

The examples of surfing and kayaking are subjective, very personal to me, but I believe that there is a more universal principle underlying all of this. Namely, there is joy and light and goodness in every environment. Sometimes it is all around us; other times it is difficult to find, but if we actively dig for good, I cannot help but believe that we will discover positive adaptation.