Wisdom is where you find it, and HBO's Deadwood is a continually surprising source of inspiration. In Episode 19, written by Jody Worth, Al Swearengen (masterfully portrayed, as always, by Ian McShane) gives a tough-love pep talk to Merrick, the local newspaperman whose office has been vandalized and printing press destroyed. Merrick is distraught and wants to abandon the entire enterprise, but Swearengen filters an almost Buddhist acceptance of life-as-suffering through an ornery refusal to give up:
Pain or damage don't end the world, or despair, or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back.
So much of the advice we receive promises to solve our problems, but I'm hard-pressed to think of a really important problem I've faced that has been fundamentally solved, never to return. Far more valuable than any proposed solutions are the life experiences that have (slowly, and with great difficulty) prepared me to face an unending series of problems with equanimity, patience, compassion--and the determination to cause a few problems of my own when necessary. I'm hardly at Al's level of enlightenment, but I'm working on it.
