PERFECT

I watched all the catch-up episodes of the Amazing Race yesterday. It really is a great show. It is a perfect illustration of why most people choose life in mainstream society over that of a monk's or a Zen Bhuddist's.

The great thing about it is that it is set in the real world, unlike The Bachelor or For Love or Money or even Survivor. It isn't a caged-in existence. You go out and deal with real people, taxi drivers who won't accept dollars or airplanes that don't have free seats. Real situations, like getting touched in a crammed train or forgetting your bag where you kept your passports. Real choices, like choosing not to shave your head (because you're a model and a great head of hair is everything to you) or opting to take a bus over a cab. True, some situations are a bit amplified, but in that crazy race around the world, it's as real as real-life drama can possibly get.

We like that, drama. We like to feel as if we're reaching for something, to feel the highest high and the lowest low on our road to victory. We crave for the suspense, that moment when you choose one Detour over another, or overtaking another's car to get a clue.

We also like to feel like we've put a stamp on something, whether on our companions, our opponents, a place or ourselves. We want to leave marks. It's partly ego. Very few of us have overcome that aspect of existence. And you know what? We don't want to, because it somehow makes us feel good.

I don't know why. It's probably something that the human evolutionary process can explain. Some animals, in order to survive, stay still. Humans, on the other hand, stick out like a sore thumb. Even if we try to blend in, we don't. The cavemen never did blend in, and they always had to fight with lions and bears in order to survive. And they won, not only because of instinct, but because they were rational creatures, and could carve out cities from dust, build monuments in the sky, find a cure for TB. And it feels good. This is perhaps why the biocentric (as opposed to anthropocentric) perspective of ecology will never fully work. Humans are undeniably set apart from all others. We have what the rest don't have: free will. Consciousness. Choice. Reason. This is much a debacle as it is a gift. And as long as we are unable to go beyond that man-centered philosophy, we will continue to live the way we do.

More importantly, we actually like the struggle. We welcome the pain and the suffering, all the trials and roadblocks. Why? Because that is when we are able to assert our humanity. We push on and say hey, I am human and I will prevail. Even if I lose, I still win, because I defended my humanity against all those structures and standards (ironically, it was also humans that created those standards). You see it in their eyes, you see it in the way they look at each other, every time they reach a Pitstop, whether they were first or last.

We don't just stick out, we shine through. The human spirit shines through, most of all when it is pushed to the ground. It's like what Sam said in Lord of the Rings, "those were the stories that stay with you, that meant something, even if you're too small to understand." It is in this triumph of the spirit that redemption is justified.

It's in the tears, the smiles, the declarations of faith and loyalty in the hardest of times. It's when you find your one true love. It's when you are walking or doing something completely mundane, and you suddenly you feel a flash, a brightness that envelops you completely, and consumes you with the feeling that everything is one, and everything is absolutely PERFECT, so perfect you want to cry. That kind of communion happens only once in a while, especially for many of us who live in the city. That scarcity makes it all the more special. And us humans, well, we like things to be special. That's why we need churches and rituals and religion, even though we can arrive at perfection on our own.

We can't say if the lives most of us have today are any better than those lived in quiet isolation or in eternal oneness with nature and the universe. We all have our own ways of living. We can live like the monks and live perfectly. Or we can live as we do now, amid chaos and trial and error, and live perfectly as well.