Shangri-La
By Bill Barksdale
Almost everyone has heard of a place called Shangri-La. A mythical place. A kind of utopian paradise where people live in happiness and harmony with themselves and nature. Shangri-La was invented by author, James Hilton in his 1933 book Lost Horizon, later made into Director Frank Capra’s haunting film of the same name.
As a filmmaker, Capra often seemed to be searching for what is good and fine deep inside the human spirit. His films (It’s A Wonderful Life and State of the Union - both made shortly after World War II) examine the innate courage and decency of one person to prevail over greed and cruelty.
In Lost Horizon, Robert Conway is abducted away from his strife-filled life and finds himself in a strange, remote paradise hidden in the Himalayan Mountains. Here he meets the ancient High Lama, Father Perrault. In Capra’s version, screen writer Robert Riskin wrote the High Lama’s words, “Look at the world today….What unintelligent leadership! A scurrying mass of bewildered humanity crashing headlong against each other, compelled by an orgy of greed and brutality.”
In her novel, The Kin Of Ata, writer Dorothy Bryant portrays an angry, successful, reckless man who is speeding away from his cruel and mediocre life, a life which has no meaning. After a catastrophic accident, he suddenly finds himself inexplicably transported to a strange land where the people live seemingly simple, introverted lives but things are not what they seem.
Much like Dorothy Bryant’s character, Father Perrault had been seeking meaning to his life, and found a simple answer: Be kind. Is there any more profound guidance than, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”? Much creativity and wisdom can flow from this advice.
The idealistic purpose of Shangri-La was to be a depository of the best of humanity so that if human blindness and madness destroyed civilization, there would be a community that could seed a renaissance to rebuild a broken society. Of course, with today’s powerful and insane weaponry, chemical and nuclear pollution - a world without humans to decommission and decontaminate its waste would likely end the life of our magnificent planet altogether - a sad and asinine legacy for humanity when we have the potential for a much better outcome.
Thich Nhat Hanh writes in his book Anger “Anger is a zone of energy in us. It is part of us. It is a suffering baby that we have to take care of.”
As I’ve quoted many times before, the Realtor® Code of Ethics begins “Under all is the land.” As we create community we build upon that land. Our very life itself depends on our good stewardship of the land. This fact is something no rational person can deny. When we get lost in tribalism, politics, greed, the compulsion for dominance – one over the other – we lose site of the reality that there is only one. And by “One” I mean the planet, all life on it and all that includes.
In Lost Horizon, Robert Conway says “There are moments in a man’s life where he glimpses the eternal.” We can’t spend our individual and collective existence escaping. We must be moving toward something better. In my lifetime it has never been more important than now that we, as the human race, begin to consider what we are moving toward. That begins with listening to one’s inner truthful conscience.
We hold a great gift in that we are intelligent and creative beings that share a unique planet in the vastness of the universe. We have the choice to evolve and get better, or we can throw away and destroy the gift we share through hubris – arrogance. James Hilton wrote Lost Horizon between World War One and World War Two. Our own great country, The United States of America, was nearly ripped apart by the Civil War. Lately I’ve heard news commentary speculating of a second Civil War. What! Will we really head foolishly into such a hellish future? Or will we, as a nation of diverse people, come to our senses and choose wise goals and wise leadership?
Will we need a Shangri-La to reseed the world or even our nation? I hope not. Under all is the land. I hope we humans can evolve as a nation and a world to the next level.
Richard Curtis, in his movie About Time, said “I just try to live every day as if I deliberately came back to this one day. To enjoy it as if it was the full, final day of my extraordinary, ordinary life. We’re all traveling through time together every day of our lives. All we can do is do our best to relish this remarkable life.”
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