Ponderings 2016

I came across this stream of consciousness writing today. I had not read it since I first wrote it back in 2016. I've waded through it today and tried to make it more readable. The original was not capitalised and it was comprised almost entirely of fragments. Perhaps it might have worked as poetry? My use of phrasing and punctuation is victim of artistic license, alas, but I encourage others to ponder these questions too. I don't have the answers but they are things that need to be pondered. It is our privilege to ponder in this way, is it not?

Where does one begin to tell a story? Stories all begin at the beginning of time and none of them will end until the end of time. Things that happen in between those two extremes are but snippets. None of them complete in themselves but always, always part of the bigger picture. And we become so enamoured with those snippets. They take on the importance of the whole story; the appearance of the whole story. Yet there is always more to add… more coming or more that came before. Does everything, every happening take on a special significance in our lives just because we decide it is so? Such is the power of our minds, our brains, that we can take a tiny insignificant thing; a word spoken, a sideways glance, and endow it with such mammoth weightiness in our lives. Yet all are as nothing if we choose to make them so.

This simple fact gives us a great deal of say in how happy we are with life. We can choose to put some apparent enormity in terms of human relationship or human communication into the box marked 'nothing'. Then it can be closed in, made to disappear into the ether as it were, as a lantern floating silent into the night sky. Higher and more distant with each passing breath, until it disappears from sight, perhaps even from memory. Ah such power we have. But do we use it? Some of us perhaps and some more than others, but I think it is probably true that most of us are unaware of the power this gives us…or at least we forget. We forget to use it even when we know it is there.

Ah such silly creatures we can be. We are mostly so engulfed by what is happening around us that we forget. Who we are and what we are capable of. What our true talents are. Instead we fuss and worry and ruminate over vast tracts of 'nothing' in our lives. He said. She said. They think. They want.

Hang on! What do you want? Do you want to give your life away like that? Do you want all your power to lay dormant while you waste your energy trying to justify your own thoughts and inactions? Or your actions or the actions and presumed thoughts of others? Seems a bit of a waste really doesn't it? 

What if you actually stopped a while and thought about what you are made of? How really amazing it is that you even exist in this time and moment and that you are so much a part of everything else as everything else is also a part of you in some way. If you can accept that every story begins at the beginning of time and that it ends not until the end of time then is not every single thing a part of that?

What if you could really comprehend that and begin to see that it is all really a magic symphony being played out by the energies that exist. You play a part in it all. Your thoughts, your actions are all part of the whole. But the whole is so immense that how can you rightly place such significance in your ruffled feathers?  Your offence at not being invited? Being passed over for a job or a part in something? For not winning the prize? It is part of the experience. How often do things that seem so bad, that we believe are the end for us in some way, turn out to be catalysts for some new happening that we might then call a blessing?

We experience tragedy in our lives and see it in the lives around us. How do we determine that something is a tragedy? Is it determined by the magnitude of hurt, physical and emotional, or by perceived ripple effect? The ‘what might come next’? We tend to create futures before they have a chance to happen. Have you noticed that? We create six possible outcomes and experience all the worry and emotional response to those outcomes before anything has happened beyond the present moment. From there we create our own distress and pain. Is it possible to live life any other way? To take back, not so much control but, our birthright to be just part of it all and not the centre. Not the focus but just a thread in the great weaving of life; a tiny fine thread amongst millions, no billions of others. Weaving this way and that, in and out of each other. Worrying, wondering. Wandering. Sigh.

How can we make sense of being part of a world in which we are both so big and so infinitesimally small? How can we internalise the knowing of both so that we can live in a way that is more comfortable. Disease. Dis-ease. It is rife. We are uncomfortable with our beliefs about ourselves and about life. 

We compare ourselves with others who have done more or less than us. And determine our personal worth in accordance with our discoveries. We compare ourselves with others who have more or less than us, and determine our personal wealth in accordance with our discoveries. We compare ourselves with others who inhabit different bodies, who are fatter, thinner, browner, yellower, pinker, taller, shorter, fitter, less fit, and determine our value in accordance with what we discover. We compare ourselves with others who have more education or less education than we have, and determine our capabilities in accordance with what we discover. Who chooses the rules we use for working all this out? And why do we follow them so willingly? Blindly even. 

How often do you question your first responses to others? Do you assess, judge, decide what others are like and where they fit on this constructed hierarchy we use, in comparison to you? Do you treat each person differently in accordance with what you discover when you do that? I suspect that most of us do without giving it a second thought.

It’s a big deal when people say they treat the cleaner, or the janitor, with the same friendly greeting as they give the CEO. But isn't that the natural thing to do? Does it make a difference who? Could it be that the janitor is more worthy of a respectful greeting than the CEO? In some cases perhaps… I will not make a judgment here. These are my thoughts and ideas. Make of them what you will. But is it really some level of self-interest that causes us to differentiate in this way?  We almost invariably give more respect to those that appear to have more power than us; perhaps because that is the position we would like to be in ourselves one day. And it seems to be true that you must be 'in' with the crowd you want to identify with, especially if you are not yet where you want to be.

But it's all so small, so worthless. Because your story, though it goes back to the beginning of time and follows through to the end of time, isn't going to make a difference! Because in the end, if there is indeed an end of some sort, there will be nothing as it has been deemed by both science and religion that there was nothing in the first instance. How foolish we are to think on these things and to worry ourselves and waste precious resources chasings ghosts and rainbows. What if we could slow down enough to see just how crazy it all is?

I know we can justify our position from this and that point of view. But that is all it is. A Point Of View. Change your glasses, change your lenses and see things differently. Can you do that? Would you do that? 

Is physical comfort the most important thing you can aspire to? It’s a big question. It is the thing most of our lives are dedicated to if you really examine it well. So what do we need to be physically comfortable? A measure of fitness, a measure of food and water, a measure of freedom from biting insects and a physical barrier between us and the elements, a measure of warmth. With these things we can then sit and ponder life. But what of those who spend their whole lives, day after day, missing out on these? Are they less than those of us who have it all? To have attained or to have been given what are perhaps the most basic needs for human life or at least tolerable human life. Many have not these things. No access to them and no hope of gaining them. What is life like for those people? What is it like to not have seen television or the internet or a mobile phone? I question this only because these things have become so ubiquitous in our society. It’s an attempt to get you to think. For many of us life comes to a standstill if the power goes off or when the internet is down…or even sluggish. We tend to live in our own world and expect that even if others have lives that are different to ours in some ways that they are just as comfortable.

Do you really think that is true? Have you ever stopped to think about it? What makes us live so thoroughly invested in our own welfare to the detriment of others? Why are we unwilling to acknowledge, or worse even consider that we might play a part in their discomfort with our insatiable desire for more comfort? What can we do to shift this? Is it indeed necessary? If everything is part of everything else, is my discontent with so much perhaps somehow also their pain and suffering from lack? Does it even matter? Can I make any difference?

It is all so big. It is all so orchestrated by those 'at the top'. I cannot judge them. I have more than I need. Life is not always easy but if I only took what I needed it probably would be. I am tired. I have a headache. I am tired of thinking and of things being so unfair. I am tired of the glitz and glamour and sparkle that are used to dress the world up to be something that perhaps it ought not to be. The Plastic Fantastic.

I am tired of laminating things - of putting plastic over paper that would rot to become soil if I left it be. I am tired of computers and the constant pressure of needing to pay. Pay. Pay someone. Pay the council. Pay the electricity company. Pay the phone company. Pay for fuel for the car. Pay for clothes and all this stuff that really only puts a barrier between me and life and living. It is time for change of some sort. It begins with me.

I have been sitting at the computer all day waiting for what? Outside the sun is shining. Outside the birds are singing. Soon the rains will come and there will be no sun for days, and I will have missed this opportunity.

Be kind. It is all you.

Kerry 

Postscript: The irony that I have played with this on my personal laptop and will upload it using my personal wifi and that I am sitting on one of the five chairs in my room which I inhabit alone - all 30 square metres or so of it...does not escape me. I am grateful. I am also deeply sad that there are such inequities in our world. I am curious to see how you will respond to this. Perhaps you will think I am mad?