Religion Is A Defense

It was when I was approaching Gallup, New Mexico that I saw the blue plastic shelter beside the road about a half-mile outta town. There was some people inside it. I saw a pair legs sticking out from underneath it, and that was about all that happened. I don't know exactly why that very brief glimpse would create such an indelible memory. It was a hooch, man, just like any other hooch anywhere in the world. This one had a cover over it, but I've stayed in a many of them that didn't.

I've never ridden the rails, thus I was never a Hobo, but only a bum. Being a Hobo was a little too high on the social ladder for me. I'd have to give myself airs. I lived the life of a homeless beggar off and on for about 7-8 years. Doing that influenced me more than I can tell. It subsumes the rest of what I call my life.

One of the biggest reasons I hitch-hiked around the country so much was to meet all kinds of people. Riding the rails wouldn't have done the trick for me. I wasn't out there bumming around to meet other bums. Neither bums nor hoboes. I avoided them like the plague. I had the feeling the other seekers avoided me too. We're not seeking what we can find in the Other. I write that, but in truth, how can one gnow what they're seeking for. If such was so, then why on Earth would we be seeking?

It's that business of giving oneself airs that was the problem for me. I found that I couldn't afford to do that to any degree, because once I got back on the road I was going to have to let any attitude that led to the least bit of bragging could cost me a meal or a safe place to stay. My needs as a human had to be right out front for everybody to perceive or some people were liable to think they needed to teach me a lesson or two.

I got the most out of my bumming around when I was reduced to having two basic needs fulfilled. Getting food to eat without stealing it or taking it from a more helpless person, and finding a safe place to lay down and sleep. When I got uppity and started wanting more than that from people they usually shut me down.

A lot of people picked me up hitch-hiking because they wanted a stranger who didn't know them or anybody they knew to talk to about their troubles. I listened to a lot of people over the years. I've had many drivers tell me they had driven a long way past where they were initially going in order to get their whole story out. Listening to people's stories was the one guarantee I'd get something to eat when they were done. They felt obligated I guess. I owned a little part of them. I knew things about them that nobody else in the world knew.

The secrets people told me were so trite it was almost unbelievable. They drove themselves crazy over the most mundane, banal events I could imagine. Stuff that most anybody else wouldn't thing twice about, but here they were driving themselves nuts over something that didn't amount to a hill of beans. People will do anything to think they're special. That, they're important to somebody about something.

One of the most important questions a person can persistently ask themselves about their own careactor is whether what they're doing is to make themselves feel important or not. The need for self-importance is one of the most destructive forces the individual can embrace. It makes a difference whether you're doing what you're doing for-yo'self or for-the-other. It's an ongoing proposition that has to be addressed moment to moment. There ain't no end-all or be-all to it that a person can take for granite, and rely on it as some sort of religious tenet that stays the sa-me constantly.

"Religion is a defense against the experience of God." ~Jung