Thoughts on life, the universe & everything

I've been thinking about changes in my thinking about the meaning of life, the universe & everything through time.

Hippiedom:

When I was 4 I started at a school called Guruganya (guru - Hindi for teacher, ganya - an aboriginal word for hut or home), which was like a hippie commune built around a school, with many of the students & staff living next door to the main building. I guess the values could be summed up as respect for others, including their beliefs, & valuing our relationship with everything, ourselves, others & the environment. There was also a value of serving others. Many of the parents were single mothers who were constantly placing the needs of their children above their own, & of course they weren't the only ones to do so. This placing others needs above your own worked well for the community & people around you but it wasn't going to make anybody rich & famous. In 1973 the whole school headed up to Nimbin for the Aquarius festival where my mum, my brother & I stayed for over a year where we were further exposed to hippie community life & what worked & what didn't about it. As I said, it worked well for the community & the people around you but it wasn't going to enable someone to fulfill specific life goals, although it may not prevent them from doing so.

Middle class academia:

After we came back from Nimbin we spent a while in Sydney, but then my dad got a job lecturing at Bathurst College of Advanced Education & we moved to Bathurst where we were surrounded by middle class academics intent on furthering their academic careers. Often motivated by the desire to serve the wider community as well as themselves, they generally allowed the needs of their family to remain secondary to their academic ambitions. Doing this resulted in them being more successful in my eyes at the time than putting their families first, & I decided to adopt the more selfish (in respect to ones family) values I saw as likely to lead to kudos & prestige than the hippie values more likely to lead to a peaceful community.

Over the next several years I became very academically focused, & although I made friends, I broke off the relationships where I felt they were not furthering my own goals. I wasn't really aware of the mindset I had adopted though, I was just acting on what I thought was right at the time. While at the International School I broke off a friendship with one of the most interesting people I have met (the group of 'most interesting people I have met' is a large one). This mindset continued until my second year of engineering when I broke.

Friendship:

In my second year of engineering I overloaded myself (or was overloaded) until I got Glandular Fever followed by Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. This tuned out to be a soul saver as I wasn't able to focus my energy on my career (I didn't have any energy), & so my life became focused on spending time with my friends. While I was sick the only worthwhile thing I could find to do that I had the energy to accomplish was spend time in the company of my friends, & I became close to a lot of people I had known for many years but had not associated with much. In particular I became very close to a friend who had been my best friend from 4 when I was at Guruganya, but had not had much to do with while we were in high school together. He was in my brothers class (he is the same age as me but I was in a class two years older than me & did my HSC at 16), & I became good friends with my brother & a lot of his friends, who were generally my age.

I then went through a phase of hanging out with some people who came into my life from a different direction & began to realise I needed to put some distance between me & my family for the sake of my own well being as they had a few problems. Then I moved in with some friends from a large group of friends that had met through Sydney Boys & Girls High who were mixed together with our group from the International School via mutual friends who had met at Guruganya. There were 4 of them living in a house in Leichhardt & they had all become Christians.

A Christian fundamentalist computer nerd:

I often joke that I had hippie parents so when it came time to rebel I became a Christian fundamentalist computer nerd, although it is not really a joke as when I first became a Christian I was a fundamentalist, reading Scripture far more literally than I do now (in places), derided the beliefs of those who didn't believe in orthodox Christianity (let alone anything else) & believing I needed to cut myself off from everything than wasn't "Christian." I destroyed a lot of things I regret destroying, which I believe was more a symptom of depression than of spirituality, although I don't regret losing a lot of the stuff I got rid of.

I then experienced a series of unfortunate events. Firstly my brother died. He was my friend & ally. Then I proceeded to address my pastor about some things that were symptoms of an issue over which he would eventually resign & change ministries (or at least perhaps a symptom along with that issue of unhealed wounding). This was particularly difficult to do because I had some real problems dealing with authority figures because of my life experience, & I was at my most emotionally vulnerable. I went through some strange emotional states at that time. Also my health took a nose dive & I had very little energy once again. At that time it seemed like those friends whom I had become a Christian with, whom I had separated myself from my family & friends to be with (which was not such a good thing) & who had known me for many years & not just the few that I had been a Christian for seemed to draw back. I didn't think too much about it as one had just gotten married & another had young children & I hadn't been going out of my way to stay in contact. Later, however, one of them would tell me they had stayed away because they didn't know how to deal with the conflict I was having with the pastor. This broke my heart, I felt that I had been isolated at my most vulnerable because I was doing what was right & needed to be done. I withdrew from life.

Of course I failed to mention when I first wrote this that I didn't deal with my conflict with my pastor very well & was constantly barraging my friends with criticism of him completely inappropriately. I believe one of the causes of gossip is problems addressing authority, because I found it difficult to address the issues to the person I needed to I addressed them to the people around me who couldn't do anything about them & didn't need to hear them unless I had gone to the person I needed to go to first & had found they would not listen, in which case it would have been appropriate to share my concerns with one other, preferably an elder, & see if they could see the same issues, & if they could & we couldn't make the person concerned see them, then to go to all the elder's, & if that failed, only then to go to the whole church.

A computer hermit:

In hindsight that was the comment of only one of them who was suffering from depression at the time & would be putting things in the most negative context. I have yet to ask the others what was happening, & perhaps it was more to do with children & family, & perhaps even if it wasn't & they did draw back because I was in conflict with our pastor it is understandable from their point of view, but it was devastating for me. I had found a group that was "the" group for me to associate with in order to do life, & they had withdrawn from me because I had done something that was right. I became a computer hermit & added a whole heap of psychological factors to my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

It did, however, mean that I started getting involved with Brackets & Jam again, & catching up with some of my other non-Christian friends. I even started to realise that these people I had respected had thought seriously before developing the beliefs that they had & it was worthwhile listening to what they had to say. Eventually I would develop a relational theology where the meaning of life, the universe & everything was about our relationships - our relationship with God, our family, our friends, ourselves, the people around us, people in general, the animal life around us, the flora around us & our entire environment, in something like an order of importance except 'ourselves' might really run parallel to 'family' & 'friends.' This has meant getting & keeping in touch with old friends is very important to me now. It is also a time where I have been connecting with my family on my dad's side as I attended the weddings of various cousins.

Back where I started:

In this way I have ended up back where I started, with those values I found in the hippie communities I grew up with. Now, however, they are not just the values of my particular cultural group, but the essence of what life is about. Ironically since my mum gave me a share in Beranghi for my 33rd birthday I now have a share in a hippie commune of which I have been a director & through which I have made some wonderful friends, so I'm back in a hippie community at least some of the time. Some of my friends through Brackets & Jam might still consider themselves as hippies as well.

Blessings,
Joe :-)