A Few Words, by Way of Introduction
“But do not ask me where I am going,
As I travel in this limitless world,
Where every step I take is my home.”
― Dōgen
Most of us these days have been brought up to appreciate a certain element of “utility,” which a quick online search further defines as “the state of being useful, profitable, or beneficial.” Being useful is generally seen as a pretty good thing, and you may even have been encouraged, at some point in your life, to go make yourself useful. Chances are, it was as much an admonition, or a warning, as it was a positive call to action. We value usefulness, in our systems, in our technologies, and in ourselves, and we fear the alternative.
Being useless, we’re convinced, means being ineffectual, ineffective, and hopeless. In our modern-day world, one where life is based so heavily on commerce and the demands of the marketplace, uselessness is also associated with a lack of profitability. A useless product, discovery, or invention can’t readily be monetized, and a useless person – or one labeled as such – probably isn’t living up to his or her economic potential, or contributing as much as others might like to the gross domestic product.
There’s nothing wrong with hard work, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be useful. But it’s also all right to ask what we want to be useful for, what we want all our work and our effort to be about. We can’t be afraid to question commonly held ideas about what is and isn’t useful, or what is and isn’t a waste of our time.
It’s natural, as human beings, to make judgments – cold and hot, long and short, good and bad, holy and profane. But when we reduce either things or other people to nothing more than our own perceived sense of their usefulness – and of how that usefulness might benefit us – then we’ve objectified them and basically cut ourselves off from any chance of meaningful relationship.
There is a fundamental interconnectedness that underlies our apparent separateness from everything around us. When we see the world – or our fellow human beings – primarily in terms of utility, we lose that underlying connection, and we lead poorer, lonelier lives as a result.
This site, in part, is about reforging that basic sense of connection – with the world around us, with other people, and also with ourselves – as well as about exploring, both playfully and seriously, the “here and now” of our lives.
About the Author
Hello, and welcome. Glad you could stop by.
My name is Michael Esterheld. I’m a writer, a rambler, a coffee lover, and a feckless dreamer, hailing from both the East and the West and currently living in Houston, Texas, where love and luck have brought me for the time being. I’ve been writing most of my life – stories and songs, essays and poetry, news articles and notebook scibblings. I’ve always written for pleasure, and I also find it a useful way to explore my own thinking and the world around me. I sometimes write for a living as well, though that’s a tale for another time.
Like you, I’m just another wanderer along the way, trying to get my footing, discover a road or two worth walking down, and hopefully learn a thing or two while finding my way to wherever it is I’m headed. In the meantime, as Dōgen so perfectly puts it, I’m just trying to make every step I take my home.
For a few more words of general introduction, and a little more about what I’m doing here, head on over to the site’s first post. If you’re curious about the site’s name, you might enjoy reading about The Tale of the Useless Old Tree (Take 1).
I’m glad you’ve dropped by, glad we can travel on together a little ways down the road. The company and the conversation might be nice (even if the solitude isn’t really so bad). I hope you find something on this site to inspire or challenge you, or to encourage you, or just to quiet the voices of fear and anxiety for a bit.
Feel free to connect, if you’d like, via Twitter or Instagram. You can also reach out via the Contact page.
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