on selflessness

selflessness moves me in such a way i feel like a human heart muscle bleeding out all over everything i conceive. i read a news story today about a group of 200 senior citizens in japan who call themselves 'the skilled veterans corps.' they have volunteered to go into the fukushima nuclear power plant to work on repairs to the reactor that was damaged severely by tsunami and represents certain illness and death for those who approach it.

the selflessness of this act impresses me. it simultaneously makes me want to jump for joy and sob like a little baby. i felt connected when i read this story, connected to humanity.

these japanese seniors are aware of, concerned with and invested in, the bigger picture. they want to replace younger employees and work in a place few are willing to work due to the precipitous likelihood of harm. they have cited a couple reasons why they should do this work: slower cell division makes a slower cancer, and the time is right for the nuclear generation to take real responsibility for their decisions. they also make clear that none of the members of the skilled veterans corps has a death wish.

what's more is this group of 250 recognize their place in the scope of our species. they’re pragmatic. they care. this quality more than any other touches me.

thinking of them...imagining them as as retired bankers and auto workers, doctors and garbage collectors, conjuring their thought processes, seeing them reflecting on these 60-80 years they have had thus far, fat with all the joys and pain of being human, childhood and adolescence, familiarity with the amazing capabilities of their physical beings but also tasting the bitter reality of the body's frailty...

knowing they will have focused on the specifics of grown children, grandchildren embarking on their great adventure, and some even contemplating the planned obsolescence that is great grandparenthood...

knowing how their hearts must swell at the idea of being able to make such a sacrifice for their kind. i think of them so bravely signing up for the group then having a quiet moment of solitude later at home, alone. i know they are resolute and i know they are afraid though i think their fear is more like a sadness in knowing their fear of death has diminished with age which must feel like surrender. i know they also feel a peace, a humble gratitude and a full knowledge they have not ceased to rage against the dying of the light, rather they have chosen to help the species rage all the more vibrantly and effectively.

the skilled veterans corps embodies all that it should mean to be elderly. they are wise and generous. their selflessness is legendary. we do not see this much in our lives-it is what attracts me to men like bobby sands and che guevara, ghandi and martin luther king jr. these men of various causes displayed the similar trait of recognizing the greater good and being willing to act even at their own peril. that touches me perhaps because i live in a society that seems to pooh pooh that behavior valuing instead the culture of gordon gecko and celebrity investors and respect for winning even if you cheated.

the reward for selfless behavior is clear and undeniable. it ranges from being able to sleep at night to the inner sunshine of bestowing a gift on the brotherhood of man to immortality, (such as immortality is.) still, in my society perhaps a majority of people with a choice of a material windfall and more time on earth versus the opportunity to commit an ultimate act of love and goodness would choose the former and smirk, "suckah..." all the way to the bank.

i read the story in a sandwich shop on my iphone at lunch today and i barely composed myself. i sat alone in a room of populated lunch tables eating my sandwich and reading and suddenly i felt like choking. my face flushed and i felt tears well up in my eyes. real tears-tears such as i typically know only at funerals or the like. i grabbed a hold of myself fiercely and pushed the emotion from my consciousness. i soldiered on through the story but at the end when the group's leader announces his expectation the power company will accept the offer from the elderly group to work on site, because, "they need us," i felt it again. it was a sudden jerking of my emotions right to the brink of overflowing.

i checked them again and wondered to myself why such a strong reaction to a news story. this was when i thought of che guevara and how his life story affected me in such a similar fashion, (so much so his visage adorns my calf.) i am slightly chagrined by the idea of having a man's face tattooed on my body, men being so fallible and prone to err. but guevara, like king and ghandi and sands, for me is selflessness incarnate. selflessness, when i see it, the selflessness of those who would advance the envelope of human understanding and evolution, those who actively work to hammer away at the veil of our time, who are discontented by the plodding advance of our age, it moves me in every way. it restores my conviction that goodness is winning, understanding is conquering ignorance, life is meaningful.

and to mr. yasuteru yamada of the skilled veteran's corps i say, "yes sir. you are right. we do need you."