Jim Taylor's Soft Edges

Wednesday January 31, 2007

While cruising rather mindlessly along a cross-country ski trail the other day, paying no attention to anything except the glory of dark green spruce trees almost buried under burdens of pure white snow with a brilliant blue sky arching overhead, I realized how comforting it was to have groomed grooves guiding my skis along.
        I'm not a skilled skier. When I'm not in the grooves, my skis wander. I have to pay constant attention to them, to avoid an unintended face-plant because the ski tips have crossed, or worse, parted company.
        As long as I'm in the grooves, I don't have to think.
        Funnily enough, driving up the mountain earlier that morning, someone on the radio had been talking about the comfort of not having to think. I caught just a snippet of conversation. I'm guessing she was a psychiatrist or psychologist.
        She said something like, "For some people, the attraction of a political party, a labor union, or a religious faith is that they can let someone else do their thinking for them."

A framework of beliefs
        Personally, I would associate that attitude with sects or cults, where a charismatic leader encourages his followers to park their minds at the door. Not with churches, in general. Still, setting my quibble aside, she had a good point.
        Religions do provide a framework of beliefs, of principles, that adherents are expected to conform to, more or less. So do political parties, labor unions, professional associations…
        A member of the Republican Party in the U.S. would hardly espouse Marxist social analysis or socialist medicine, for example. Members of the United Autoworkers would naturally oppose union-busting tactics. And no professional editor would treat spelling and punctuation as unimportant.
        Every culture, whatever it is, develops its own set of grooves.

Getting out of the ruts
        Most of the time, we slide along comfortably in those grooves. Often, we're not even aware of them until there's a crisis.
        But when I'm going down a steep hill, when my speed builds up, I find that grooves can be treacherous. Especially if they wiggle when I expect them to woggle.
        The steeper the hill, the faster I go, the more I try to get out of those pre-ordained grooves and get into the free-skating part of the track. I may not go as fast. I certainly have to work a lot harder to stay in control.
        But the difference is that I'm in control now, not the grooves someone else carved.
        And that too reflects reality.
        When life, and work, and relationships, are just coasting along, I'm content to take things as they come.
        But when the ship seems headed for the rocks, when the road ahead seems to lead past fire-breathing dragons with bared teeth, I want to take back control over my own progress. I want to prune my preconceptions to basic truths that aren't based on centuries of cultural accretion.
        That's when I want to do my own thinking.
        Grooves are comfortable. Until they're not.

Jim Taylor