As one of the "outlaws" on a vacation with the wife's entire family -- her parents and her three siblings, all spouses and all 12 grandchildren, for a grand total of 22 -- I can state as an axiom the following: if the relationships between more than half the grandchildren are good, any family vacation, barring natural disaster or bad service, will be a success. Dreading this Mexican vacation though I was, it turned out to be fun, relaxing, easy -- all the qualities usually lacking in a much-anticipated family event.
Travel is stressful, and the One True Wife, God bless her, is an unhappy traveler. With a little medication and a lot of patience, we got her through the experience unscathed, although the cab ride from the hotel back to the Puerto Vallarta airport yesterday almost made her part ways with her breakfast.
I am a weak link in this great family, in several respects: I'm the only stepfather, the biological father of only one of the 12 grandchildren, and the only in-law in the family business. This gives me a detached insider's view on the workings of this strange and wonderful dynasty I've married into. I've also scaled back my involvement in the business and returned to being a full-time student (all the more shocking when I saw pictures of myself and realized, again, how old and puffy I look. Pictures will follow).
This gives me a more cerebral view of the visceral twists and turns that define the relationships in this family. So while most others were listening to their iPods or basking in the sun, I was reading Spinoza's Theological Political Treatise, a much better read than its turgid title would indicate. Although he wasn't talking about family vacations, Spinoza clearly understood the dynamic that starts in the family and ripples out into society. To wit:
"[H]uman nature is so constituted that what men conceive by pure intellect, they defend only by intellect and reason, whereas the beliefs that spring from the emotions are emotionally defended."
This axiom applies to family dynamics, especially on vacation, where nothing is conceived by pure intellect and everything is emotionally propounded and defended.
"God's decrees and commandments, and consequently God's providence, are in truth, nothing but Nature's order."
When you watch stingrays surfing waves right at the shore; giant lizards eating bougainvillea blossoms; pelicans in huge, lopsided "V" formations flying overhead; and turtle hatchlings surging instinctively toward the waves at sunset -- even while man-o'-war birds circle overhead -- you begin to see that life is encased in its own un-becoming, fighting against the very thing of which it's made. You see that beauty is created when different forces collide -- that something always dies so that something else can be born. You see that nothing has the essence that your narrative imposes on it: everything is just itself, and the story you tell yourself about it is just embroidery draped over the real thing, which is always changing, always surging toward life and falling away toward its opposite. Spinoza says that miracles don't really exist: they're just the poesy of our ignorance lending grandeur to an undying pattern we haven't yet grasped. If this is so, then the only miracle is Everything, and its Source, which remain beyond our grasp until our consciousness is reabsorbed into Itself.
"Philosophers . . . place true happiness solely in virtue and peace of mind, and they strive to conform with Nature, not to make Nature conform with them; for they are assured that God directs Nature in accordance with the requirements of her universal laws, and not in accordance with the requirements of the particular laws of human nature. Thus God takes account of the whole of Nature, and not the human race alone."
When you're on a beach -- even if that beach is crowded with aggressive, lounge-chair-hogging alcoholics and their pudgy, sullen offspring -- you see that the incredible order and rhythm of Nature is neither kind nor brutal: it simply keeps being. The beach is the edge of our consciousness; our memories reach back toward that distant ancestor's first step onto the sand. We are but a small part of that order. We're unique among creatures only in this: we know so much about how the stars and planets move, and yet we still think it all revolves around us.
"It very rarely happens that men relate an event exactly as it took place without introducing into it something of their own judgment. Indeed, when they see or hear something strange, they will generally be so much influenced by their own preconceived beliefs -- unless they are strictly on their guard against them -- that what they perceive is something quite different from what they really see or hear to have happened."
This shows that Spinoza understands not just the nature of human psychology in general, but of the Jewish family in particular.
"Furthermore, as men's ways of thinking vary considerably and different beliefs are better suited to different men, and what moves one to reverence provokes ridicule in another, I repeat the conclusion already stated, that everyone should be allowed freedom of judgment and the right to interpret the basic tenets of his faith as he thinks fit, and that the moral value of a man's creed should be judged only from his works."
And yet, as insightful as Spinoza may be, the quote above shows that he never went on a family vacation to Mexico. If he had, he would never have claimed that everyone should be allowed freedom of judgment. If they were, no one would ever get home from the beach.
Which, come to think of it, wouldn't be all bad.
Whether or not you make it to the beach, may you see beauty in all things that move into and away from Being, and may you forgive yourself more often.
Happy New Year to all.
--T.A.