“He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.”
Lao-Tzu
Southwestern France has had more rain this year than it has in the past 100 years. Rivers have flooded creating lakes in winter wheat fields, my pond has overflowed, walking on the terrain feels like stepping on a sponge, and the small, serpentine rural roads have been impassable. Yesterday, after I took a friend to the train station, I decided to take another route back home to avoid the detours I’d encountered on the way. Every half hour the weather changed like the slides in an old, handheld stereoscopic viewer. As I came around a bend in the road I realized the Pyrenees were on the wrong side of the car. I was completely disoriented and lost. At almost the same moment I saw a flock of sheep crossing the road from one field to another. I quickly stopped the car, pulled out my camera and took some photos.
Two shepherds walked down the road towards me. We exchanged a few pleasantries in French and when they heard my accent they asked if I was English. I said I was American. They were amazed and wanted to know what an American was doing in the middle of nowhere. I told them I lived here, but had never been down this road and was lost. One of the shepherds, Joseph, smiled and said if I had a map he would be happy to show me how to get back home if his friend, Alain, could take a photo of him kissing a beautiful American woman. He said he always wanted to kiss a beautiful American woman like in the movies. I handed Alain the camera and after four comical attempts to get just the right angle, he snapped the perfect shot.
I pulled a local map from the glove compartment for Joseph and he opened it across the hood of the car, while Alain followed the sheep into the field. For the next half hour we had a remarkable conversation. I asked Joseph what it was like being a shepherd in 2014. He told me the company of animals consoled him. He said that for years he’d been formulating a theory about the difference between people and animals and he’d finally figured it out – self awareness. He said even sheep have consciousness, but what they lack is self awareness. He said, “Most people walk down blind alleys of negative, 21st century anti-dadaist ideas which keep them so preoccupied they haven’t the time to explore what goes on inside of them. As a shepherd I have attained a perfect level of self awareness because I have given myself permission to wander, to follow my sheep… Self awareness is such a rare gift. You can only understand other people and animals to the extent that you understand yourself.”
My conversation with Joseph uncannily mirrored the philosophical ideas I’d been re-reading in a book called, A Guide for the Perplexed, by E.F. Schumacher. I shared them with Joseph. Schumacher said, “All of our thoughts, emotions, feelings, dreams, secrets, fears, hopes, doubts and perplexities are invisible. They only exist inside of us.” He then asked, “How then can we know each other?… Life is a drama of making the invisible, visible.” Joseph laughed out loud and pointed at the sky. “Incroyable! Life is about making the invisible, visible.”
It began to rain again in earnest. I thanked Joseph for his help, turned the car around in the next driveway and came back just as he, Alain and their flock disappeared into the woods. I drove away with the Pyrenees on the right side of the car and a smile on my face realizing I had no idea how to get the photograph to Joseph and then wondered if I was really meant to.
