Relieving the Sufferings 
of Samsara

by Steve Charney

"The vast space between the atoms that make up everything, 
spaces so huge that billions of neutrinos pass through the earth every second 
and rarely hit anything. 
Look out!" 

Astrology. Numerology. Palmistry, miracles performed by gurus, ESP. I believed in them all. I ate it up and it made me feel spiritual and special as if there was magic in my life. And then one day watching a sunset, I felt the earth under my feet. An immense globe curving beneath me, I was spinning through space, circling another ball so hot and huge that a million Earths could fit into it. Space was in here, not out there, and I was surrounded by miracles. I was a miracle. I didn't need a system, a religion, a book or a group to educate me to this. I just needed to keep my eyes open and get out of my own way. 

Granted I was young and stupid but you get my point. 

Now fast forward to a few months ago when my contract was terminated at WAMC, the public radio station out of Albany, for playing a record from 1932, the lyrics of which contained a racial slur. Remember me? Steve Charney? I’m a ventriloquist on the radio. I have been since 1980. My children’s show Knock On Wood has musical guests and authors, and I perform original sketches with my dummy Harry. I also play songs on the guitar and piano and feature lots of old time and contemporary comedy records. It’s fun. 

By the way, you'll note I use the present tense. Even though I'm no longer at WAMC the show still airs on WNYE in New York City five days a week. I also plan on taking the show to other stations and possibly even television. 

But getting canned by WAMC was still a blow to me. WAMC is a monster of a station (you can take that any way you want) and I lost a large part of my income. Besides, most artists and entertainers would give their right arm (mine was usually in Harry) for the chance to present their art in front of a large audience every day. But my main fear was not getting sacked, it was that the label "racist" would be hung on me and I would be unable to get work elsewhere. Anyone who knows me knows that I could be saddled with a lot of well-deserved monikers—lowlife scum, selfish bastard, egomaniac—but racist is not one of them. I honestly did not hear the lyric in the song. The purpose of Knock On Wood was never to be controversial or inflammatory. I just like to make people laugh. 

So how do you deal with losing a job you love? 

Do me a favor and sit down for a second and think about what I'm about to say. 

Are you sitting? Of course you are, who reads magazines standing up? Now, think about…15 billion years. The immensity of it. It's hard to wrap your mind around. That's how long the universe existed before you were born (assuming you're not a creationist). And it will continue for at least that long after you die (unless you're like really healthy). And here you are... alive! For this one incredibly brief moment. We've won the lottery, man. This is the big one. What are the odds that we would be here not in a hundred years, a million years, a billion years, but right now? That billions of atoms would form the inconceivably complex system known as (your name here)? 

And what great or rich person in history (Katherine the Great, John Rockefeller, Zorro) wouldn't give up everything they ever had to be where you and I are? Because we've got it all over them. We're alive and they're not. It's amazing we don't all walk around every minute of the day with our mouths open, awestruck. It's an incredible, mind-blowing event that has happened to us and words can't describe its enormity, its majesty. Screw astral projection, screw mental telepathy. This is the miracle. 

We also have the great fortune to be given the most amazing organ in the known universe (calm down, boys, I don’t mean that one). I'm talking about the brain. It's the great gift. It makes a VCR for Christmas pale in comparison and we didn't even have to decipher a foreign-language instruction manual to use it. It's just sitting there right behind our eyes. Can you feel it, trillions of neural synapses, creating your own personal reality? 

Or how about birth? It's an infinitely complicated, intricate process where intelligence plays no part (hey, let's not get into the God thing right now, okay? We're talking about how I relieve stress). 

I've got a million of 'em. The billions of creatures too small for us to see (in the sand, on the beach, on our rugs and floors, in our bodies). The vast space between the atoms that make up everything, spaces so huge that billions of neutrinos pass through the earth every second and rarely hit anything. Look out! They're going through your body right now! 

Last summer I was on Martha's Vineyard on a hot late afternoon and I was standing at the end of a long line waiting to buy an ice cream cone. Suddenly I had another epiphany (like that earlier one watching the sunset, only this time I wasn't young. Stupid yes... young, no). It dawned on me that these people waiting for their ice cream were the end product of billions of years of evolution. This is what it's all come to. A long line of hot, sweaty, impatient, tired, pasty tourists in Bermuda shorts. 

So are you getting the picture? This job I had. This job I lost. It’s not cancer. It’s more like a flu. I’ll find another. Maybe better, maybe worse, but next to the big picture... well, you get the idea. 

I like to think like this. It helps relieve the sufferings of samsara. And when that doesn’t work, I take out Harry and we laugh like hell. ++