Adventures in Dollyland

Sometimes, amusement parks can be tense, stressful, crowded, and make me wonder why I put in time, money, and probably dignity into the adventure while trying to make a kid smile or bring back my youth. In the case of Dollywood, I had none of this anxiety. I was thinking about August.

It’s a strange month. It’s still hot most of the time, so it feels like summer. But year after year, it seems that it is a month full of new beginnings — the beginning of the fall, for example. Or it could be the beginning of a school year. Or it could be the last chance month before the busyness of September kicks in, and life resumes, helping the month live up to its etymology; August means “venerable.”

In any case, I said my tearful goodbyes to my parents, my shared smiles with my sisters, grabbed two of the kids and hit the road. The first stop was Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, TN. I expected it to be overwhelmingly crowded, even though it was a Thursday. I thought it would be a concrete parking lot, even though it is pretty close to the Great Smoky Mountains.

Let me retract — I had no expectations. I didn’t know what to expect. All I know is I started saying “Thank you” and smiling a lot more, which I think was due more to the location than anything else. This is odd, because while everyone I met was smiling and said “thank you, have a wonderful day,” Tennessee is one of the least happy states. I guess the pocket of Pigeon Forge is a bubble in the happiness scale.

Then, as I am prone to do, thought more reflectively. Isn’t every disappointment in life caused by some expectation being set? But it’s not enough to lower expectations. They have to be eliminated, which is I guess the principles of Shoshin, or a beginner’s mind.

In the beginner’s mind there is no thought, “I have attained something.” All self-centered thoughts limit our vast mind. When we have no thought of achievement, no thought of self, we are true beginners. Then we can really learn something. The beginner’s mind is the mind of compassion. When our mind is compassionate, it is boundless. — Shunryu Suzuki-roshi

My (and not a fundamental) philosophical problem with Shoshin is that it’s impossible to have a beginner’s mind without having a deep sense of empathy coupled with positive energy. It’s hard, likewise, to create positive energy while erasing preconceptions acquired over a lifetime. The ferris wheel is an example — we know it spins around an axis. We know that it has a series of stops and starts. We know that there’s a peak, generally with a view of something. If you weren’t Elf (Will Ferrell), it would be hard to ride the ride with new energy each time.

And yet it moves and creates some kind of joy, resetting expectations each time.

Onward, though, Dollyland is over. And we’re heading West. Next, I’ll write about East of Eden.