Natural History

Last summer was pretty rough.

My grandpa’s kidney cancer returned, and it had spread to other parts of his body.

Short of some radiation and some palliative care, nothing could be done.

He was officially given this prognosis on my birthday, and we spent the next three months saying goodbye.

The film we watched together was the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men.

The movie is pretty good, but almost everyone I’ve met hates the ending.

Gramps was no exception. He wanted Chigurh to get it in the end.

Anyone with a sense of justice would have wanted that outcome.

But McCarthy doesn’t want justice served.

It is that biting realism that virtually everyone finds so disconcerting about it.

After all, we do live in a country in which justice is but a word bandied about.

The big investment bankers were able to tank the economy, and a scarce few of them are doing so much as community service for their crimes.

A major war was brought about with the nothing but the starkest and most naked of lies, but the politicians who promulgated these falsehoods are now treated as elder statesmen.

My grandpa was particularly worked up about the Casey Anthony trial. He watched every word of testimony, and he was damn sure she did it. It’s not a bad thing to focus so much attention onto a case like this one when the circumstances of one’s reality require a diversion. It’s much easier to focus in on the vagaries of a murder trial in Florida that to think about what’s looming ahead.

When she was found not guilty, he was not pleased. All of his grandchildren called him that day to get his take on the verdict.

He was not happy.

It seemed so indecent that she should go free.

So unjust.

One scene toward the end of No Country for Old Men really caught my attention as we watched it. I had seen the movie several times before, but I never really was as moved by this scene as I was this time.

The scene involves Sheriff Ed Tom Bell’s (Tommy Lee Jones) confession to his Uncle Ellis (Barry Corbin) that he can’t do law enforcement anymore. His failure to prevent the mayhem caused by Chigurh has deeply affected him.

He feels as if he can no longer go on enforcing the law. He’s “overmatched.”

Source.

Uncle Ellis was paralyzed in the line of duty, but it’s happened so long ago that he has an almost Zen-like acceptance of the darkness.

He tells the story of how his Uncle Mac, a Texas Ranger, was shot at his own house:

Seven or eight of ’em come up there, all wanting this, wanting that. Uncle Mac went back in the house to get the shotgun. Well, they was ahead of him. Shot him in his doorway. Aunt Ella come out, tried to stop the bleeding. Uncle Mac all the while trying to get that shotgun. They just sat there on their horses, watching him die. After a while, one of ’em said something in Indian and they turned. Left out. Uncle Mac knew the score, even if Aunt Ella didn’t. Shot through the left lung. And that was that… As they say.

Ellis tells Ed Tom that this country is “hard on people,” and it always has been. Uncle Mac was gunned down in 1909, and the film takes place in 1980.

“What you got ain’t nothin’ new,” Ellis tells Ed Tom.  He then warns him:  “You can’t stop what’s coming. It ain’t all waitin’ on you. That’s vanity.”

Ellis has had a long time to accept the darkness. He no longer stews about the man who shot him, who has since died in prison.  He’s come to accept the unjust condition of the world.

To expect it to be just is “vanity.”

That last line still blows me away. We expect the world to be right in the end, but it never is.

There is no ultimate justice.

Accepting this reality is quite difficult, but in the case of Ellis, it appears to be unusually liberating.

He no longer appears to carry the burdens the Ed Tom is putting upon himself to carry.

Justice didn’t come. It never will.

To expect it is to claim oneself a special place in history.

It really is vanity.

One of America’s national myths is that we have a right to the pursuit of happiness. Thomas Jefferson, that sage of Monticello, made it one of our unalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence.

The entire suggestion that happiness is something one chases is inherently wrong.

You cannot chase happiness.

It must be sculpted out of one’s experience with the simple realities that life isn’t fair and life isn’t always beautiful or fun and that all life  ultimately ends in death.

Accepting that one must find the goodness within one’s own experiences and within one’s own being is the first step to finding it.

I’ve not found it yet, but I do know people who have.

And they have not found it through the chase.

They’ve found it within.

Simple mortality may be the most frightening aspect of life.

To find happiness in light of knowing this frightening aspect is a great challenge. Religions have tried assuage these fears in their discussion of the afterlife.  But assuming the existence of an afterlife really prevents us from dealing with that reality.

At some point, we all shall perish and leave behind this broken, violent, unjust world.

And despite its horrific failings, we don’t want to leave it. I guess we evolved some sort of natural addiction to being alive.

But we shall leave it.  As sure as we have entered into existence as infants we will leave it as corpses.

All our ancestors, including those that weren’t humans or even apes were born into existence and left it.

Life is continuous cycle of life and death.

It’s been that way ever since life existed.

To expect some other result for our lives is every bit as vain as expecting justice and mercy in a world that has always been hard.

Rational people can try to make our civilization less cruel and unjust than what exists in nature. That probably is one of the most important things we can do with our lives. Easing suffering the suffering of our fellow humans is important for the long term stability of our societies.

But we must accept that there is no utopia to be had. Injustice and nastiness will always be with us.

Expecting anything else is vanity.

That doesn’t mean that we can’t fix things.

But as sure as we live, bad things will come.

You can’t stop it.

It’s not waiting on you.

It’s coming.

Accept it.

Deal with it.

And look for the joy and peace within yourself.