Surfing with Sartre by Aaron James

Author:Aaron James [James, Aaron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2017-08-08T00:00:00+00:00

“Be Like Water”

As a plant turns toward sunlight, as the bees buzz in teeming fields, as the seasons progress, along with the times, change is said to be the only constant. Adaptation is the centerpiece of modern science’s theory of living being, the theory of evolution by natural selection. And beyond science, a go-with-the-flow ethic seems only appropriate if change is the way of things. We adapt so as to grow and evolve, or rise to the struggles that the Lord hath placed before us, by embracing change, being ready for it, without lashing out in anxious indignation about the loss of what was and was supposed to always be.

Bruce Lee, the martial arts superstar, advised us to “be like water, my friend,” by which he meant both in self-defense and as a way of being. The rub is that people are only like water, even as they’re 90 percent composed of the stuff. Consciousness flows like a fluid, but Sartre’s idea of freedom can sound as if our selves were entirely up to us, to be reconstituted as our will’s instrument. Yet no one can change all at once, all at the same time, in nearly every area of life, not without losing his or her bearings completely. Any virtue of adaptability, as a general trait of good character, can ask only so much change from a person, who is by nature a fleshy, structured, and relatively fixed sort of thing. A person, after all, isn’t an object designed for a purpose that can be ever further “adapted” for any old end, as when a hammer is used as an art display or doorstop. When a person adapts to a new situation, the change must follow from his or her minded state of being. No matter how much flow shapes one’s personal growth journey, we’re all conservatives in some measure: we agree there’s such a thing as being asked to change too much, too quickly. To stay open, to learn and keep learning, so as to adapt to the unfamiliar, a person must be in a relatively assured position, banking on much that is sweetly normal, regular, consistent, and rather comfortable in ordinary living, at least for the time being.

When we must change, to “be like water” is to adapt well or skillfully, with fluency. Yet how far this brings self-transcendence depends on what sort of “adaptation” is called for and whether it can be done for its own sake.

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