He said that our elders are like mountains all around us, capped in white like snow, and that we walk in their valley, growing slowly to become mountains ourselves. It was a metaphor. “We never grow to their size,” he said. “They keep growing ahead of us. Eventually they are so large we cannot see the tops of them. They disappear into the heavens and converse with the spirits, speaking down to us in rumbles of thunder and great shakings of the ground.” I didn’t ask him if he believed this literally. I was sure it was only a system of symbols. “Do you honor your elders?” he asked me. I thought about it for a few seconds and nothing much came to me. I remembered my grandpa, thought about my father and my mother, my grandmothers. Do I honor them? My mind was foggy with too many metaphors and symbols. It took a few minutes to arrive at anything real. “People are people,” I said. “I love who I love. I’ve learned things from all over, from older people and younger people and people beside me on the road. I think I esteem all of us equally.” He didn’t reply immediately, and I suspected I had annoyed him. “It’s a good answer,” he finally said with a little shrug. “Someone must have taught you well.”
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about sculpting on a potter’s wheel, it’s that you have to touch lightly. You cannot beat the pot into shape while it is alive on the wheel. You press it gently, suggesting a change to it. In the end, the pot might not even notice your influence. It may think the change was its own idea. This is fine, better really. The pot has to live with the shape long after you walk away. Better that it feel ownership of and peace with each curve and groove. Looking at a pot, no one sees the potter.
Turn your children away from you toward the road ahead. Turn yourself away from them toward your own road. Their life is not about you and your life is not about them. Each of us is a voice of encouragement for the other, a teacher and a student, a hand of help for the hard times. None of us is a destination for another. We are fellow travelers, helping one another on the road. It’s a metaphor, a system of symbols.
Hello, friends. I hope you are the most joyful people who have ever lived, and with good reason.
Later. Love.
