GRWM: A day in the life of you(and so me)

The personality and the impersonality of it all

I have never admitted it. Not ever! Well, not until now! But I used to steal pens from my classmates back in junior high, what I now know to be middle school. It was almost a rite of passage. No one I knew could keep a pen for more than a month before it was stolen. Mine were stolen too. So, I took from others in return. And in those moments, I felt no guilt, no shred of guilt. In this moment however, I am bewildered by this memory. Random! I know. But still, it may have been triggered by another thought— the sight of the pen I’m currently using to write this. This has been the longest lasting one I have ever used. I have written everyday consistently with it for at least three years now.
What I haven't done as consistently is take care of my kitchen, which right now is a total disaster since my cousin, spending the weekend with me, left. Unsealed bags close to the oven, two knives that weren't returned to the drawer after opening Amazon packages, Amazon packages that should be trashed but still left on the countertop, a bottle of sundried tomatoes that should be in the fridge and not the countertop, sprinkles of coffee grounds begging for attention, 3 bananas left not hanging, a disassembled wine opener that would serve anyone better if assembled. A nagging thought…, no— probably the 216th iteration of the same thoughts of "you should just clean all of this up. It's been two days". I have no idea why thoughts of the state of my kitchen haunts me while I sit outside writing. But I write on.

I write on but my attention shifts as I notice Gustavo, one of my neighbors, walking his dog in my direction. Even from nearly 300 meters away, I recognize him—not by his face, but by his pitbull: white with a brown patch near its neck. He’s coming closer, and with him, a sudden uprising of thoughts.

"Get up before he comes too close”, I witness these thoughts.
"I don’t like small talk… I really don’t like small talk." Another thought surfaces, urgent, insistent.
Then another, pleading in my name: "Just get up, walk the other way."

Thank you, Veroll Sterling for this photo

And another, claiming: "I’m such an introvert. I’d rather not talk to anyone." A thought so confident in its own truth, as if it knows who “I” am. “I” would have believed this thought years ago. But “I” have other thoughts that visciously visit me from time to time.

In writing, in observing, in reflecting on the assortment of all these thoughts, it’s almost too fascinating noticing how illusory and sneaky this “I” thought is. Understanding the impersonality of all phenomena takes careful examination. Thoughts, the wind, emotions, the clouds, the rotation of the sun, the growth of hair follicles. Everything! Seeing that everything is happening for no apparent reason takes a different way of looking at all that’s going on. But obviously, that would require a see-through of what one truly is and what the mind is.

I am suddenly bombarded by a cocktail of emotions. Gustavo just passed, the scent on him catches flight with the wind and sifts into these nostrils. Even Milo lifts his head up to catch the remnants of the scent. This fragrance brings up a sense of nostalgia. Paradoxically, and almost like some cosmic joke, the idea of walking away before he reached here has been met by the intense feeling of longing— longing for warmth, for companionship, for fellowship. And then, suddenly, sorrow becomes the next emotional wave. None of these strong emotions did I create. None of them do I control. A wift of cologne so powerful it awakens an emotion that seeks to unearth memories— thoughts of another day and time. In the past I would get so lost in the dampening of my mood. But it’s amusing now. That I can feel these deep emotions that really are causeless, this is a miracle! What is the mechanism of feeling? What are emotions? What really are they. My heart aches so much with this feeling of longing as I write this. I’m not as interested in the thoughts as I am in the feeling— this energetic movement of somethings within the vast space of a body that doesn’t look as vast. It says ‘my heart aches’. But it flutters in a joy that I can’t explain. It’s like the other day when I went to the cinemas to watch Mofasa. While watching this Lion King sequel, I felt the anger and bitterness towards Taka(Scar) as he betrayed Mofasa. Yet I was super excited to witness the grandeur of the production.

Since I adopted him almost 4 years ago, Milo has known this bench to be a place of peace and relaxation. He also gets a lot of attention from the neighbors, the way I now give attention to the mechanism of thought and sensations. Staring at him, I feel the sorrow arise again. He knows it's time to go home because of the more frequent stumps of my feet as mosquitoes begin to bite and my readjustment on this bench. Almost telepathically, I know he pleads for more time. The sadness I am witnessing is a resultant of thoughts about a belief that I can perfectly read Milo’s emotions. Projections! Another quality of mind! Interesting!

A familiar sensation creeps in—the urge to check my phone. It’s quiet but persistent. It’s a gentle tug, a small voice nudging at the edge of awareness: "What’s happening in the world? What are people saying? What’s the latest thing to be outraged about?" My hands almost ready to fumble on its own to my side pocket of my handbag to respond to the mind’s quest. It’s so ridiculous! Amusing to watch! And…how predictable it is. As if I, sitting here on this bench, would gain anything—any real power, any real insight—from scrolling through an endless parade of other people's opinions. The mind wants to be fed. It always does. It is insatiable. Always wants to latch onto, to feed on, to smear, to cover, to dissect. Oh how cute it is! Yet there’s no mind. No one has ever seen the mind. Yes, we have witnessed thoughts. But who has seen a mind? Who knows its shape? Who knows its color. Who has ever said yes to its location? But we have witnessed thoughts. We know of it’s nagging. We know of its pull. We know of its hunger. I’ve seen this hunger before. It’s not real hunger. Well, we call it hunger but like physical hunger, it’s just another impulse— another passing storm in the ever-changing weather of thought. I leave my phone where it is and now notice an almost healed scar on my ankle. I was never even aware that I bruised there. Yet it’s dried up and on the precipice of hiding its existence. And I had absolutely nothing to do with this healing. No input, no choice.

Like you, I have not had many choices in life. I didn’t choose my birth. I didn’t choose my race, my gender, the family I was to be born. I didn’t choose to have finger nails designed the way they are. Hell, I didn’t even choose to come to this bench to write all of this. Most things(if not all) now seem to be choicelessly happening. Not to me! Choicelessly just happening.

“But you made these choices. What do you mean?” No I didn’t!

“But you did!” No I didn’t.

You see what I am talking about? Did I choose to see things this way? I didn’t. If you saw things differently, did you choose to see things differently?

So, no I didn’t choose my choices. For colloqual conversations, I would say I did. I would take responsibility but this is my concession to this illusion of choice. And yet, it’s not me who conceeds. Maybe this is what the writer and apostle to the people in Philipi meant when he wrote, “…for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure”. Maybe this was what the Greek poet, possibly Epimenides had said and Paul saw inscribed as “In Him we live and move and have our being”.

Today in the Morning Meditation Group, we talked about a passage from Virginia Woolf’s book, Moments of Being where she writes, “Hamlet or a Beethoven quartet is the truth about this vast mass that we call the world. But there is no Shakespeare, there is no Beethoven; certainly and emphatically there is no God; we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself.” And I resonate! My choicelessness or no choicelessness, my belief in a God or no God, my assertion of something or nothing all of these dualities are just part of the music. They are part of the dance. It’s like fireworks. Each spark thinks itself fire. But the observer sees it and thinks it to be beauty. Our humanity is not human. The human condition is not what it seems. Instead it’s God’s handiwork— where there’s no God and there’s no handiwork.

Oh, this aliveness! There’s a reason why we are alive. No, there’s no reason why we are alive! Aliveness needs no reason and it needs no intellectualizing. Aliveness is a mystery that does not need to be resolved. It is the magic. It is the joy unto itself. Who cares about stolen pens. This one works just fine. ‘Til it doesn’t. How beautiful!

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"We are so engrossed with the objects, or appearances revealed by the light, that we pay no attention to the Light." Ramana Maharshi"

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