Smohalla’s reverse Wisdom
While reading this summer I came upon this odd quotation from Smohalla, (1815-1895) a dreamer-prophet of the Wanapum tribe, a branch of the Nez Pierce people located in what is now the state of Washington.
“My young men shall never work.
Men who work cannot dream,
and wisdom comes in dreams.”
I was startled by this admonition against working and the reason behind it. This is the opposite of any advice I received as a young man or given as an old man. I have been pondering Smohalla’s counsel. What did he mean?
First, I think he was addressing the shadow side of work, what we can’t see, what we don’t want to see, what we choose not to see regarding work. Obviously, we need to get some things done. Hunting. Gathering. Studying trends. Making sales calls. Filing reports. A daily string of accomplishments. But according to this tribal elder, work can be a distraction which disrupts the flow of dreams. My guess is that the Bureau of Labor Statistics would not see that as a problem.
Second, I think Smohalla means that a society needs a small group of people protected from the busyness of daily life, people with no ‘to do’ list, people who are not focused on the immediate and the practical, people encouraged to nurture freely wandering imaginations unhampered by pragmatic considerations. Work is goal driven and requires concentration, the practice of focusing our attention on one thing only and ignoring all the rest.
Third, this is not ‘do-nothing’ advice. Smohalla advises us to make space/time in our minds so that unsolicited thoughts might enter, thoughts not part of a logical sequence leading to a conclusion, but thoughts out of the blue, bringing us a strange new world beyond the obvious. The deepest experiences do not reveal themselves straight on but at an odd angle. Thinking outside the box requires living outside the box, at least some of the time. This might be a good practice for the elders of our day, both men and women retired from the rat-race who have time on their hands. With a bracket around busyness, daily bask in the infinite wonder of being and report back to those who don’t have the time. There’s more to life than Larry the Cable Guy’s motto: “Get ‘er done.”