
It is a ritual I have done a number of times, a source of aid I have turned to enough times that I had somehow managed to forget that “the ancestors” were people, and while as a collective entity possess wisdom beyond their living limits, our ability as a species to create truly new and epic problems is one of the reasons the gods themselves haven’t grown bored with us and found a new game.
I had a question. It’s a family thing and honestly none of anyone else’s business so I shan’t be sharing its particulars right now. What is important is that it was a bit of a sticky question, the sort of thing that I could honestly have used some direction on.
I turned to the ancestors for their wisdom, and I got it, but what I got was not what I had hoped for. What I got honestly caused me to burst out laughing from my sleep, then sink into a deep cold depression. A few cups of coffee later I had two things; a much better appreciation of the problem, and a new understanding of the ancestors.
I laid out my problem to my ancestors for their guidance. What I got was first a look at the problem, then a whole bunch of colouring in around the bits I either had glossed over for reasons of embarrassment, or had forgotten to include for reasons of incompetence. Then I got a view of a couple of real land mines along what I had thought were possible routes to solutions that first, I had no clue were there, and second, were way beyond my ability to keep from going off, or defend from the attendant damage.
Then I got a very clear message. “Well, shit.”
My ancestors truly did grace me with a far better understanding of the problem. It wasn’t as bad as I thought, it was actually worse, as I seemed to have managed to overlook a few things from either optimism, or fear of admitting I was this far into the land of no good options and striding forward.
Their response quite simply was shining the light of their collective knowledge and experience on my situation, allowing me not the glimpse of the bad things my little flashlight of insight picked up on its own, but the whole glorious field of FUBAR the full shining moon of ancestral wisdom revealed. The verdict? Well, shit.
Sometimes you don’t get a pat on the head. Sometimes you don’t get a magic “get out of mistake” free card. Sometimes you get your faint fear that you may well be a$$hole deep in alligators replaced with the clear and unequivocal wisdom of your sacred, and not so sacred ancestors; “you are actually balls deep in the Daintree river, and those are five meter salt water crocodiles. By the way, they seem really interested in you. I hope you are luckier than bright.” Good information, not so much with the helpful, but good to know.
They were people. They are part of a wonderful collective of our dead and thus with a store of knowledge and wisdom that makes some of their earthly decisions seem harder to explain, but they are pretty much made of the same stuff that we are. Human problems are not like godly problems; ours are way worse.
Seriously. We can screw up anything. Any parent of a bright child will understand that intelligence doesn’t prevent stupid decisions, it changes the pallet of bad decisions from one or two, to twenty or thirty choices so spectacularly bad that actual stupid people would not be able to think of them. Human problems are like the pain scale, we are continually redefining the ten, redefining the stupidest possible. We are the brave frontier of bad decisions, and our ancestors, while proud somehow we keep managing to breed before succumbing to them, may occasionally be as gobsmacked as we are by the particulars of the strange and utterly new trouble you have created.
Go you! Well done, the ancestors are indeed looking forward to seeing how this plays out.
This would be one of those times to offer to the gods. When your particular luck holder stops laughing, and offers some advice, take it. The laughter? Take that as praise. Our gods track record in stupid choices is something that both allows them to laugh with us, and keeps them from being smug enough to laugh at us.
We offer many things to the gods and ancestors, even unintentionally. If you reach out to your sacred ancestors for aid and get something as disturbing as “Well, shit.”, or “How in the nine worlds did you think that was going to work out?” do not despair. Try very hard not to repeat, but do not despair. They were not that much brighter when they were alive either.
Now back to my regularly scheduled FUBAR. My ancestors are interested to see how it plays out.