on her she wouldn’t cry all the time!”
“Well, I didn’t know she was in a picky mood,” his wife answered. Doors slammed.
Another time in the parking lot, I watched a banged-up TransAm pull up beside my bike. A man, around thirty — with a Confederate-flag bandanna on his head, tattoos, and a torn, sleeveless shirt — flung his door open, slammed it, and yanked open the back door. He pulled out a small boy, who looked to be around six, and pulled down his pants. “Ouch,” the boy protested.
“Just stand here and piss because you won’t fucking wait!” hisdad said, and then: “Hurry up!” But now the boy couldn’t go. His dad shook his hips, and the boy’s urine finally flowed and pooled around the back tire of my bike.
“Damn it, you don’t even say thank you,” the man said as he pushed his son, whose pants were still half down, back into the car. They hadn’t seen me.
As I biked away from the Quick-N-Easy, my tire left a short trail of urine. I had a 12 × 12 permaculture retreat, but where did this family go? Tires squealed and the family’s car raced past me, the wife smoking a cigarette. Her son bawled, her husband fumed, and she cast a vacant stare out the window, all of us breathing the odor growing around us on a dull wind: the stench of chicken factories.
5. WARRIOR PRESENCE
WHAT IN THE WORLD DO YOU DO?
This is the question I started asking myself at the 12 × 12. In Jackie’s permaculture paradise I felt increasingly energized by pulsing growth, humble simplicity, and the gentle sound of No Name Creek. But bike a mile up the road in any direction and it was Cormac McCarthy’s road. This dichotomy begged the question: How could I maintain Jackie’s level of positive energy under any circumstance?
I wanted to talk with Jackie about it, but she was Grey-dogging west, without a cell phone. So I emailed her, and a few days later she replied with the phone number of a friend’s where she was staying, and I immediately biked to a pay phone and called her.
It all gushed out. I told her not only about the chicken factories and the conflicts at the Quick-N-Easy, but about an inner dilemma: As an aid worker, I am confronted by global inequality all the time. Just as the Flat World chicken factories and industrial parks suck the presence out of me, so too does the pillage of the Global South’s forests, mines, and oceans in order to fuel our Northern economies.And many of the countries in the Global South try to replicate this awful example.
At first, Jackie didn’t say anything. I could tell she was listening deeply. I continued, suggesting that perhaps I needed to do more , more to help those in need. This has been my typical response: join the battle; ship metric tons of food to internally displaced people; combine community ecotourism with political advocacy; research and expose corporate greed.
Finally, I was all talked out. Still, Jackie didn’t say anything. In the silence I remembered what she’d told me when we’d first met, and repeated it aloud now: “Don’t do, be.”
Jackie let out a little laugh. “Well … yes…” she said.
I frowned and said, “But isn’t that what you told me?”
Jackie began to speak. She spoke for a long while, and what emerged was a unique approach to living in today’s world, a blend of spiritual passion and secular practicality. I later came to synthesize her approach in very simple terms: see, be, do.
First, she explained, see the problem. It could be anything: resentment toward a family member; a homeless woman by the curb; a government plan to fund a bigger nuclear bomb instead of better schools. Often we look away from problems — we’re busy earning a living, going to the ball game, or being depressed. This, Jackie told me, is a core error. Every one of these so-called problems is there to teach us. Either we face it, and grow toward that higher level of consciousness, or it comes back again and again, in one form or
“Well, I didn’t know she was in a picky mood,” his wife answered. Doors slammed.
Another time in the parking lot, I watched a banged-up TransAm pull up beside my bike. A man, around thirty — with a Confederate-flag bandanna on his head, tattoos, and a torn, sleeveless shirt — flung his door open, slammed it, and yanked open the back door. He pulled out a small boy, who looked to be around six, and pulled down his pants. “Ouch,” the boy protested.
“Just stand here and piss because you won’t fucking wait!” hisdad said, and then: “Hurry up!” But now the boy couldn’t go. His dad shook his hips, and the boy’s urine finally flowed and pooled around the back tire of my bike.
“Damn it, you don’t even say thank you,” the man said as he pushed his son, whose pants were still half down, back into the car. They hadn’t seen me.
As I biked away from the Quick-N-Easy, my tire left a short trail of urine. I had a 12 × 12 permaculture retreat, but where did this family go? Tires squealed and the family’s car raced past me, the wife smoking a cigarette. Her son bawled, her husband fumed, and she cast a vacant stare out the window, all of us breathing the odor growing around us on a dull wind: the stench of chicken factories.
5. WARRIOR PRESENCE
WHAT IN THE WORLD DO YOU DO?
This is the question I started asking myself at the 12 × 12. In Jackie’s permaculture paradise I felt increasingly energized by pulsing growth, humble simplicity, and the gentle sound of No Name Creek. But bike a mile up the road in any direction and it was Cormac McCarthy’s road. This dichotomy begged the question: How could I maintain Jackie’s level of positive energy under any circumstance?
I wanted to talk with Jackie about it, but she was Grey-dogging west, without a cell phone. So I emailed her, and a few days later she replied with the phone number of a friend’s where she was staying, and I immediately biked to a pay phone and called her.
It all gushed out. I told her not only about the chicken factories and the conflicts at the Quick-N-Easy, but about an inner dilemma: As an aid worker, I am confronted by global inequality all the time. Just as the Flat World chicken factories and industrial parks suck the presence out of me, so too does the pillage of the Global South’s forests, mines, and oceans in order to fuel our Northern economies.And many of the countries in the Global South try to replicate this awful example.
At first, Jackie didn’t say anything. I could tell she was listening deeply. I continued, suggesting that perhaps I needed to do more , more to help those in need. This has been my typical response: join the battle; ship metric tons of food to internally displaced people; combine community ecotourism with political advocacy; research and expose corporate greed.
Finally, I was all talked out. Still, Jackie didn’t say anything. In the silence I remembered what she’d told me when we’d first met, and repeated it aloud now: “Don’t do, be.”
Jackie let out a little laugh. “Well … yes…” she said.
I frowned and said, “But isn’t that what you told me?”
Jackie began to speak. She spoke for a long while, and what emerged was a unique approach to living in today’s world, a blend of spiritual passion and secular practicality. I later came to synthesize her approach in very simple terms: see, be, do.
First, she explained, see the problem. It could be anything: resentment toward a family member; a homeless woman by the curb; a government plan to fund a bigger nuclear bomb instead of better schools. Often we look away from problems — we’re busy earning a living, going to the ball game, or being depressed. This, Jackie told me, is a core error. Every one of these so-called problems is there to teach us. Either we face it, and grow toward that higher level of consciousness, or it comes back again and again, in one form or
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