This is Turtles All The Way Up: a guide to living a chaotic good life. In this issue, I write about the tensions between contentment, transformation, and optimism within uncertain times. These words are intended to inspire positive change, so take what resonates and leave the rest. If most of these words resonate with you, share them! And if you haven’t…
The origin of the name Turtles All The Way Up comes from an old koan that appeared in the West in the mid-1850s.
I first heard it as a joke:
A man of science, disenfranchised with the secular life of obsessive knowing, seeks the consult of the universe itself. Synchronicities and happenstance lead him through hardships, relationships, and the seemingly insurmountable task of climbing a mountain. On the third day of his climb, he happens upon a cabin where a person in simple garb lives in contented isolation. “This must be my guru,” the man thinks.
He approaches the hermit and asks “oh, wise one, please help me. My passion has lost its direction and I know not where else to go. I know so much that is true in theory, yet knowledge alone cannot sustain my journey. What must I know about the world we live in?”
The guru ponders.
After an hour, he tells the seeker “The world rests on the back of a turtle.”
“Wow,” the man says before taking to silent reflection.
After five minutes, he asks a follow-up question “What does that turtle rest on?”
The guru ponders again, for another hour. He then tells the seeker “The turtle that carries our world stands upon a much bigger turtle.”
Without pause, the man asks “But what does that turtle stand upon?”
The guru, taking only a minute, responds “That turtle stands upon an even larger turtle.”
“Wow, hmm. But what does that turtle stand upon?”
“That turtle stands upon another turtle, even larger than any that came before it.”
“That’s all well and good, but what does that turtle stand—”
“Listen buddy: It’s turtles all the way down.”
Upon research, it seems like this version varies from the common story beats. The version I know conflates with another koan in which the sage tells the seeker that the meaning of life is a bowl of cherries. Then, when the irate seeker responds by telling the sage that the sage's words make no sense, the sage replies “Okay, have it your way. The meaning of life isn’t a bowl of cherries.”
For our turtle man, I like to imagine he found contentment with the guru’s answer. Beyond contentment, I imagine he kept climbing! Having never before considered an idea so jointly asinine and wise, his own loss of purpose seemed trivial. After a life of “knowing,” he found refreshment in “not knowing” and exhilaration in the infinite ways people “don’t know.” His deficiency wasn’t from lack of intelligence, certainly. It was out of a severe lack of illogic. Never was his heart or gut consulted about the world he was discovering. The mind mocks such “turtlely” answers without a second of appraisal, out of fear that some other deeper wisdom might latch onto it.
Such origin stories do not need peer review. Sometimes they just work. Some stories create peace, others create violence. Any of these stories can be justified by what we stand upon. And from where we stand, we serve what we believe is above all: even more turtles.
Why must our origin stories be the ones enforced upon us? Why must we accept only pain inflicted within our culture built on trauma? The answer might not exist, but if it does, it requires dreaming. Belief in what is possible is a constant process of dreaming, and dreaming is a constant process of forgetting what we accept is the limit of reality. In a sense, seeking “the turtles all the way up” is seeking the self-made origin story.
Our origin story ought to be one based on our personal truths, discovered through our engagement in the world. It is not informed by dogma. To transcend dogma is the goal, and also Step One of the journey.
I write these words during a historic era of atrocity. This is not going anywhere soon. There is a privilege in having the space to dream physically/mentally/emotionally/spiritually. At the same time, things do not have immediate signs of getting better without rapid change. If you are waiting for the perfect time to change, you missed it, but the good news is that you don’t have to wait any longer.
If you find yourself at the crossroads of despair and dreams, I ask you to do the unthinkable thing.
Dream well.
May the turtles always have your back. And/or watch over.