Things That Matter

Holding Hands

There is an invisible string that goes through our communities knitting one home to another and building a sort of oneness that is meant to guard us against the isolation that would otherwise enslave us all. However, and sadly too, we seem to be bent to ignoring the strength and power of this chain, we seem determined to live outside the binding of this chain so that we can live as we truly want. We were once societal beings, but now we have replaced society with individualism. We work close to strangers with whom we share laughter and so much joy and yet this great sharing never brings us to the point when we want to belong together. Our retreat is to ourselves in the comfort of what we have managed to hide from everyone else. We come from families where our goals never meet and where the lead of a single individual is long forgotten. But how will we build if our inclination is to go off and do our own? 

Embracing

So much can be taken from a short moment of warmth and closeness, so much can be given. When we dig into our hearts we are sure to find the readiness to spread out and catch something, to do something not for ourselves but for the good of another. We seem ready to receive and be received and yet we numb that readiness, we hold our hands across our chests as if to fend everything else off, as if to keep something so strongly inside. We could argue that once we shared ourselves and we were not well received or we did not receive a thing in return and in that argument we would have ignored the truth. Hearts shared are hearts multiplied, and if the price for that multiplication is a scar, a bruise, or even a wound so be it. 

Dancing:

Swaying trees speak of a freedom that lets one move without setting them off their foundations. Its as if the trees free themselves in the wind and yet they hold fast to that which makes them what they are and because they do not let go of their roots, they become stronger beings.  When we think of new ventures, we simultaneously think of the danger that will come of them, when we interact with a new person we immediately asses the cost of what may be a friendship. But even more painful is that by weighing the worth of anything only in terms of costs, we rob it of the beauty that is in it in terms of gain, the gain we may add to it and what it may add to us. Our feet in many cases are firm where they are but that is all, they never move us anywhere new and we have grown accustomed to that. When we experience another attempting the dance, we frown greatly and immediately stretch our hands to stop them. 

These things matter.

To Become One

When we first set out on our journey we follow no other previously written script but that which leads us from within, we are not in pursuit of what is out there but of what is in us. It’s as if we are moving to a destiny that is already on the inside, as if we are waiting to manifest who we are and to be manifested in the same. We can nicely call this the zone of freedom or liberty. 

This does not last long however, we soon realize that those that have gone before us have a nicely edited script by which most of life’s tragedies will be avoided and success will be largely guaranteed. It is not up to us to choose which script to follow; they have already decided that theirs is the best and that we should follow it with no reserve. We are not accustomed to stopping and asking if what we are presented with or presenting is the right way, we do not even want to question our intelligence. 

We are constantly in the presence of souls that need liberation; they desperately seek freedom from the prisoners we have made them. New associations are formed daily and the associates are often people wondering if they have made the right choice, they seek for themselves in every decision they make. They give of themselves in the hope that their giving will manifest who they are, that it will usher them into this new freedom that was once theirs. 

We have succeeded at separating who we are from what we do, we have managed to place our hearts in places where our being has no business existing and yet we have accepted this way. And sad as this may be, we never stop to ask how the prison started living in the free park or how the prisoner and the free man began this painful union. What is easy has taken the place of what is right; who we are has slowly and completely been replaced by who we have to be. And because we have given up on the fight for ourselves, we have devoted good energy to imprisoning others, binding them with the cords of convention and norms that have managed to hold us captive. 

Yes, it’s easy to stop mourning what is lost, even easier not to mourn for it because we never knew when it died in us, but should we live this way, were we designed to be imprisoning being? The most formidable human relations are liberating in themselves. In all of us is born a river and that river has a direction. We are invited to help steer it in its direction and not block it or redirect it. But it takes deep commitment and devotion to see this and to do it. Because we have developed a special skill of hiding ourselves and wading everyone off it will take the devotion of another to discover us, to free us and to help us safely get to our freedom.

Our devotion has been to ourselves, to hide ourselves and help many more get hidden and never manifest. And perhaps now is the time to set others free, to help them be free, to let them know that like us, they were born to be themselves and not separate compartments in one.

Wet Surface

We are thinking beings and even the most mindless deeds or decisions have had thoughts birthing them. Whether we feed on our thoughts or our thoughts feed on us is a complicated question. But we are also loving beings, whether its love for things, deeds, people or even self, we remain loving beings. 

There are days in our lives when our love and our thoughts are at conflict, when in order to love we have to endure endless pain, or in order to be loved we have to forego those parts and elements of who we are that we treasure the most. When we think of where we are and where we want to be, when we contrast the reward against the sacrifice, the thoughts instruct us on a different path from that of our hearts. 

Human commitments are one place that our thoughts and our hearts have been tested greatly and with many failures. We have witnessed many give their devotion away only to discover that the place to which they have invested such strength is the very weight that will crush and grind them. When we hold ourselves out to another we often come with promise that its not about us or even them but that its about us, when we first get a job, we know that we want to give it our best and learn as much as we can and be the best they have never had. But then something strange happens, we begin to realize that no matter how much we think we want to devote to the job, we will never be one with it, actually we soon learn that we do not have to give it that much. 

When we first find the one, we think to ourselves that the greatest mistake of human kind is that we, and the one, are in separate bodies, our deepest devotion is to them and we love what we have and love. But we soon realize that the one and us are indeed better off apart, that we do not have to give all we have and are to them. 

This is the sadness of human existence, that what we feel can as easily be over powered by what we know and what we know can as easily be over powered by what we feel. With understanding comes a deeper appreciation, we are not really called to love mindlessly, but with understanding. The tragedy is that we are more bent to choosing one and letting the other go than we are to have both in a balance. There are times when our fear of what may happen causes us to disregard our devotion and instead manage what we devoted to with pure mechanical hands. 

In us is the strength to walk a balanced walk, to love and think and yet remain right. We have the ability to live an unwavering life of devotion, the strength to free and be free in our devotion. When we determine to have it our way or to be intimidated by our thoughts, we choose to lose the greatness there is in redemption. The souls that have been freed are expected to free, but only those souls that have understood that freedom will truly free others. Our devotion is only as strong as we are, when it wavers for any reason, then we are that easily overpowered.