Wally was bigger than the internet. You are too.

Mosaic image of Greek conqueror Alexander the Great (356-323 BC).

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Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902)

Wally was bigger than the Internet: You are, too.

The period of 1982-1994, the years of Wally's and my friendship, was certainly pre-internet. By the early ‘90s, what passed for the internet only existed between a few universities and businesses.

Today, the internet is considered an essential.

There’s no doubt what Wally Carr would have thought of it. 
Wally would be unimpressed. He was bigger than the internet. 

Seventeen years of solitude and electroshock treatments in a Long Island mental hospital during the 1940s and '50s— Wally was committed there on a legal technicality — forced him to put things in perspective.

Here’s Wally’s perspective, more genuine than the entire Internet. 

“Now that I no longer desire it all, I have it all without desire.”
— St. John of the Cross

The Swami Vivekananda re-told the old folktale about Alexander the Great’s encounter with the wisest man in India. It was the young emperor’s custom to surround himself with the wisest and most learned men of each new land he conquered.

When asked who the wisest man was in his new realm, Alexander was told about a lone sage who lived deep in the forest. Sending soldiers to retrieve the sage, the young emperor was less-than-impressed when a bedraggled, bearded old man, wearing nothing but a loincloth and a turban, was brought to him. 

In a conversation of just a few words, Alexander was dumbfounded by the surpassing wisdom of this old sage. He offered the sage riches if he would return to Greece with him. 

The old man refused. 

Then Alexander offered the sage a harem of the most beautiful women of the land.

Beginning to laugh, the sage once again refused. 

Alexander then threatened the sage with execution if he refused to be the emperor’s adviser. The old sage burst out laughing in the face of the young emperor — an unthinkable act of disrespect in the mind of those sitting in Alexander’s court. 

“Have you not learned anything?” the sage laughed. “I am immortal! What truths I possess cannot be killed! You might take my body away from me, but that would not destroy the truth, nor would you learn it by doing so!”

Alexander the Great sat silently, his court aghast at the impudent words of the motley sage.  Most expected the bearded old man to be sent to his torture and execution. There was a moment of silence. In a humble voice, Alexander then ordered the sage to be returned to his forest, unharmed. 

Wally was like the sage. He didn’t need the internet, nor its precursor, the television. He would have understood that there were great resources online, but using some sort of electric device to get to them would be too expensive and too much trouble. 

It was much easier to walk to a library or take a book off of the shelf. The truths Wally possessed could not be killed, distorted, controlled or marketed. He did not need an online connection to be wise or profound. Nor did Wally need to be monitored or marketed to. 

Seventeen years of solitude and electroshock treatments in a Long Island mental hospital during the 1940s and '50s— Wally had been committed there on a legal technicality — put things in perspective. Despite the awful treatments of the day, Wally found wisdom and the eternal by contemplating what he learned from the ancient wisdom he'd studied. 

So Wally would likely say that the internet is simply a tool, and a fickle one, at that. Alexander the Great would probably have loved the internet. The contemplative Wally, like the sage in the forest, saw the connection to the Divine as being infinitely better. 

Our ability to connect to the Divine makes just one human a lot bigger than the whole of the internet. Humans can live without the internet. But the internet cannot live without humans. 

You are bigger than the internet.

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