Doctortayria's Blog

I am thinking, as I often do, of the urgency in Buckminster Fuller’s words that, quoting directly from his writing in Critical Path, he held a “driving conviction that all of humanity is in peril of extinction if each one of us does not dare, now and henceforth, always to tell only the truth, and all the truth, and to do so promptly — right now.”  (p.xi) Recent reflections have caused me to remember times when I decided not to tell the truth as I felt it in order to remain agreeable, to please those around me, to feel loved. It was a survival technique. Except I learned that no one survives this method without dysfunction and terrible pain, and wish we might teach our children from the time they learn to talk about the necessity of speaking and listening to truth as each person feels it.

There is a way to state one’s truth without disrespecting the right and privilege of every other person to express and hold to their own truth. That to me is the essence of truth telling – to allow truth to belong to everyone, ourselves as importantly as anyone, and the other as importantly as ourself.  But to withhold truth and not invite it from others is to put ourselves personally and collectively “in peril of extinction,” as Bucky says.

It sounds easier in theory. In practice to state one’s truth which might be unwelcome or unexpected, and at the same time to be welcoming of what comes back that could be wholly unanticipated and difficult to assimilate means to, as Bucky quotes from poet e.e. cummings, “fight the hardest battle.” Cummings calls the truth-tellers poets, and says if you are not willing to do what it takes, then “do something easy – like learning how to blow up the world – unless you are not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight until you die.”

Like my mentor, Bucky, I urge myself and my fellow humans to take on the task of telling the truth and only the truth, and be willing to hear the same from every other. We don’t have time to play it “safe” any more. We must do this, “promptly – right now.” A prophet and a revelator, and one of the most simple and expansively loving individuals I ever knew. Bucky said it would take some time for what he was saying to register. It’s time though, I feel it every day.

In the past days there have been many insightful, painful, helpful reminders of the past, both personally and collectively, that I might chosen to dismiss as over, irrelevant, done. But a smoke of truth is filling my senses with the reality that there cannot possibly be a clear look forward without clarityabout  the past. To dismiss it is to repeat it. To see it, review it, understand and accept it allows re-creation of the future. I do not accept the idea that what is past is past, let’s just move on. No. The past is the root and pattern for the future, unequivocally. See it, and you can reshape it. Deny it and it is destined to repeat itself.

I also believe that time is an illusion and past, present and future are all one thing.

Opposites, both are true. That is the wild reality we live in.

One of my biggest teacher’s is my 3-year-old neighbor Hannah. She is wildly excited about life every single day. I don’t think she is ever anything less than thrilled with whatever she is doing. In her favor is the fact that she is genuinely loved by her mother and grandparents with whom she lives, nor is she ever hungry. But she lives a simple country life. It’s things like baths and frogs and tea parties and changing clothes every hour and her imagination that make every minute something to grin, shriek, dance, laugh and talk endlessly about. As I came home from my walk today and was diverted into playing with her, which often happens, it hit me that I believe there is an inner Hannah in each human — an innocent being utterly captivated by the multitudes of fascinations life has to offer. That living piece gets covered over with the difficulties of living life, but I think she/he is always there waiting to breathe again. I want to turn my life over in more ways to my inner Hannah, give her more say in how I decide to interpret each day. I want my Hannah to meet your Hannah when we see each other.