Life: where do we go from here?
Sunday May 10th 2009: As my computer broke down coming home after a short journey, life was put to a halt. Well, maybe it’s not the right way of expressing it, but in an opening sentence like this, I think it’s as close I can get. My computer broke down all right, but I didn’t stop breathing or anything like that. But even so, I was not able to continue as usual. These kinds of interruptions always come in a bad time, like if good times never existed. I didn’t lose any data, as I had everything rather properly backed up. However that is not the issue here.
Have you ever felt being pushed out like standing aside of the spiritual community and not being able to follow? I have felt that many times and have been sort of getting used to it. Like recovering from a computer crash I sometimes have to recover in spirit too and why not by taking a walk in the park. If you lose your personal computer you lose contact with the world technically speaking and everything about our society today is about staying connected one way or the other. Some people say they can’t live without their laptop and they are probably right. If it’s a computer, cellphone or any other device extending communication I don’t think that matters that much; it just has to be something people can hang on to.
So I took a walk in the park. It was a beautiful spring day with the cherry trees in full bloom. At noon a day like this there usually are a lot of people gathering there, having their lunch sandwiches outside in the sun. Many of them were of course talking in their cellphones at the same time they were eating. I had brought my cellphone too but I kept it hidden deep down in my handbag and as such I wasn’t really connected, in mind that is. Even if it had rung I probably wouldn’t have answered, I just didn’t want to talk to people at that time. So not wanting to talk to people, I go to a place where people gather the most.
I of course could have stayed at home alone or found myself a deserted other place in town, but that was not what I was looking for. I wanted to be among people on my own, I wanted to feel and register. My computer crash had sort of thrown me off a train and if I had wanted, I could have climbed right on back again as if nothing had happened. But I didn’t want to do that, I didn’t feel like it. I have learnt to listen to my feelings and not violate and run them over with some stupid brain activity mechanically reminding me what in thought it thinks is good for me. I needed space, some distance, so I went to the park squeezing in with people.
There in the park I made myself off line and moved into some sort of stand by mode disappearing among people. The chance of getting noticed in a crowed is none compare with standing alone in a desert. “Do I want to follow this crowd or not?” was my first thought and then I start to seek for values. It’s not so much what people do or represent in our society that I look for; for me it’s much more a question about integrity. Some people take up, or demand, a big space just by their physical appearance; however, many times they emit no integrity at all. But I also see quiet silent people standing behind with an integrity making their space far wider than any noisy fast talking guy.
This sort of crowed train was like passing before my eyes as if I were standing on a nowhere deserted station platform as I walked through the park. Should I jump on it or should I…. Nää… I like standing here, it feels good and anyway, there is no last wagon on this train, which I already knew and had experienced before. I think that many times we are so afraid to be left behind that we do anything to hold on to our position and in our achievements to be noticed we need to force our way into the first wagon behind the engine where the noise is at its loudest. There in the first wagon people further fight their way to be standing in line nearest behind the leader, the engine making us move.
As the train, wagon by wagon passes me, I’m further and further put away from the environment I learnt to know. “Scary” maybe, but I’m not that easily scared anymore. I have fallen and been pushed off that same train many times before and perhaps that has made me open my eyes making me able to see a little bit more.
If I have integrity and am able to stand alone, the wagon I enter (it could be any wagon) still will travel the same way following the others. The space that integrity brings me make me able to breathe regardless of position and there will always be a seat available for me like if no one ever discovered it before. I didn’t choose to restore my computer’s old state of function; instead I have chosen to set up a new one from scratch based on what I have learnt so far. I haven’t climbed the train yet, I’m still walking in the park enjoying the sight. I haven’t and am not going to lose contact with people I care for, their and my integrity will see to that.
So what is this integrity thing?
Where is this train taking us?
Does the time when we get there matter?
The engine: it makes us move, yet we have only seen the back of it?
And anyway, who laid these tracks we run on in the first place?
