wonderwander
May 5th, 2008 at 10:04 pm (spirituality, travel)
(this is a sam flores print - thanks, sam, your work is always so close to my heart)
The more I integrate back into my life in the city, the more I realize that my priorities have certainly shifted, that my desire for more steadiness and connection are still here, and that I’m fulfilling that desire in a way that’s surprising to me. I’m making decisions differently than I would have four months ago. In some ways, the wishy-washiness of my decision making style has dropped away; sometimes, this results in me having less tact - but it also results in me getting what I want, or closer to what I want, from non-ideal situations. Empowering, certainly. And I think, ultimately, once I’m more comfortable with it, this will be a significant and worthwhile change.
It is hard, though, being a month out from traveling, especially now back to work, planning for the details of school, choosing the responsibilities I’m willing to incorporate back into my life. The surrealness (and really, the realness) of the wondering/wandering supertwin combo seeps out of my perception day by day, becoming more of an intellectual exercise than any real and present experience. My stories turn into packaged goods, complete with branding and 30 second elevator pitches. And the speed and individualism and consumption I see around me already becomes so normalized. So normal!
Yes, I know that this is how it works. Yes, I understand that this is how we integrate, that we can’t really fight it. Yes yes. I know. I find it all so interesting to watch it unfold, though. Let me mourn the loss.
I’ve picked up my meditation practice again, after a four day silent retreat up at Spirit Rock in the woods and the meadows (with the wild turkeys, and lizards, and hawks, and crows, and frogs, and the delicious, sweet, rich, full silence). It was a last crescendo of my surreality before returning to San Francisco to reconstruct what we all mutually consider the real. And now that I’m carrying that practice back with me, (over the mountains, down the highway, across the Golden Gate, through neighborhoods, into my parking lot, through the front door, on the zafu), I watch.
We are fascinating creatures, thinking we know so much. In my humility from traveling, I declare “I don’t know anything!”, (thinking I know so much about humility), and then, voila! I’m back where I started, thinking I know so much.
So. Sit. Watch. Forget to watch. Bring it all back.
Be humble and lose all humility simultaneously. Bring it all back.
Love. Care. Have gratitude. Lose it. Find imperfection. Bring it all back.
Laugh and rejoice in the paradox that it is to be human; it’s a gift so easily forgotten and so sweet to remember.