It was a bright and uncommonly clear summer morning in the Scottish countryside, the kind that gives a man a chance to hold a conversation with himself, to reflect on things he considers of value and importance. The air was fresh and the sun warm and welcoming. I walked over a low slung hill and through a thick wood teeming with bracken. Twenty minutes later, the forest path surrendered to a swathe of sweet smelling honeysuckle and wild rose and just beyond, a half dozen Jersey cows grazed unhurriedly in the reassuring sunshine.
It was a perfect day to be alone…
“What took you?” asked a familiar voice, interrupting my reverie.
The Tweed Piper regarded me lightly and grinned. He was leaning up against a sturdy waymarker where the path divided, pipe in hand, a well-worn hat pushed back and askew atop his head. An equally worn rucksack sat at his feet. Above his tall frame, I noticed the wooden sign pointing back from where I had come towards where I might go.
“I stopped to smell the roses,” I answered with a wry smile. Pointing to the signpost above his head, I asked, “Trying to decide which way to go?”
“It doesn’t seem to matter which way I choose,” he replied with his usual aplomb, “I always end up at the same place.” His eyes held me in steady regard, but I could see a mischievous boy behind his gaze. He always offered me an unobtrusive challenge to be unpretentious, but this morning, I thought, I’d take the initiative… until I saw his eyes. He knew I had something on my mind.
“Kind of like the world at large,” I said, unabashedly taking his prompt. “No matter what is said and done, we always seem to end up at the same place: dissolute, divided, and distraught.”
He gently tapped his pipe against the post and removed a small tin of tobacco from his coat pocket. With slow and deliberate moves, he filled the bowl and kissed the dried leaves with a match. Gazing off into the distance, he slowly drew a breath on the pipe stem and released a puff of smoke into the air where it wafted lazily towards me. I was reminded of quiet evenings sitting on the front porch with Grandfather listening to a chorus of crickets, the smell of his pipe comforting and protective…
“Aye, but there’s a difference between getting lost on purpose and just being lost,” he said at last. “The world needs direction, no doubt, but drawing attention to our differences is not much of a place to plant our flag.”
“But the world is going mad,” I protested. “If we don’t resist the madness, we will surely fall from the brink.”
“Maybe so,” he shrugged, “but what are you resisting? Another person’s view of the world? How will you change a lifetime of manufactured prejudice?”
“I can try…”
“Do you really want to? Do you want to pick up a sign and protest at city hall? It’s not a problem if that’s where your heart is. Do you want to set up a kiosk in the middle of downtown and hand out leaflets? Perhaps you want to superglue yourself to the pavement in the middle of a busy thoroughfare? There is always the question of who benefits and who is harmed.”
“I can’t just sit idly by doing nothing, waiting for Armageddon.”
“Armageddon refers to a battle between good and evil… is the world black and white?”
“Well…” I paused. He was right. Life was rarely black and white. Good and evil often depended upon whose side you were on. To the lioness, the gazelle is a rightful meal, but ask the gazelle and you’ll find a different perspective.
“Right action benefits everyone in the long run, but you need space between you and your cause to see it. Otherwise, emotion becomes the loose cannon that sinks your ship and may very well sink the ships of others. A duller blade there never was found than on the axe of a determined do-gooder.”
“In a sense,” he continued, “you take a step forward without knowing where the road is going, but if you take that step with clear sky between your ears, you’ll go where you’re needed.”
“I don’t know,” I challenged. “Right now, you have three different directions you can go and each one has a different outcome. One direction takes you back to where you came, one to the loch up a ways, another takes you to the farm over the hill. If you have no direction, you may not end up where you want to be. You might even end up nowhere at all!””
“I never said you don’t have direction. I said you need space between where you are and where you think you want to go. Only in that space can you see what’s best for all. You are concerned about where the world is headed. Without clarity, you’ll be taking action on your opinion. Everybody has one. What makes yours special?”
“Okay,” I argued, “but there’s the problem. One person sees the forest as stacks of lumber, another finds a stairway to the infinite. How will these ever meet?”
He drew on his pipe and let the smoke slowly escape the corner of his mouth. “There is no ‘bad’ direction just as there is no ‘good’ direction. A tree can become a shelter for a family, a warm fire against the cold, and a heartfelt card to a friend in need. What’s the problem? Yet, a tree is a living thing… it’s alive with Life. To cut it down, there will be consequences, just as there are consequences if you don’t cut it down. To know the consequences before you act, sell the stock you bought with your emotion.”
“This doesn’t make sense,” I said, though not completely convinced of my own words. Another perspective was dawning.
He continued. “Too often, people occupy a place on the fringe for no reason other than their emotional investment. Emotions offer human beings an incredible utility; a chance to touch the Divine. When they become hijacked, however, whether by hormone or habit, emotions become instruments of destruction and suffering.”
I remembered a story once, of a man who wished to cut a limb off a large tree — only he sits with his saw on the wrong side of the cut. When he finally saws through the wood, down he goes with the limb.
“I see,” I said after a thoughtful pause.
“So, which way you headed?” I asked.
“To nowhere and everywhere,” he answered, putting on his rucksack and adjusting its straps.
“Mind if I join you?” I asked with a smile. “It seems like just the place I’d like to go.”
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