“Sinking Into”

                Wind chills, head spins. The alarm clock shatters in tinny glass shards inside my head. I scramble awake, though my body is curled into a rock.  Stiff and clamoring for a warm shower, only to be cascaded with the pouring cold. Shampoo un-rinsed-in-hair, getting out, rising, rinsing, drying, shaking myself. Hastily, I consolidate the pile of clothes on top of the sink into the semblance of a dressed man. Then shave, dull shave, money save. I sink into the moment.

                I sail into the different pieces of today: school work, appointments, a Mandarin class, some errands, some emails. It looks chaotic from here. Is it? I lurch and sometimes I stumble. The city clenches its fist like a chef-sized iron fry-pan waiting to catch fire. Cold and shambling buildings threaten to topple over with the tiny puff of a loaded whisper-wind. The pressured clamor of Monday commuters make their way back to the streets after a peaceful weekend. Which one of these scenes, one peaceful and the other unruly, are the real picture? I sink into the moment.

                In her book The True Secret of Writing, Natalie Goldberg has this to say about the seeming chaos: “our lives have their own trajectory. No matter how hard you try to orchestrate your day, it seems to have its own composition. A large or different structure is operating through us” (p.88). In a later passage, Goldberg refers to the everyday accidents of life as “lucky interruptions”. How are they lucky? Don’t we deserve the peace of the cushion, the quiet ripple of a quiet lake?

                There are days when I want everything to not only go well as planned, but I want everything to be meaningful as well. Sometimes, that might already be two too many ‘wants’. One thing I remind myself is that self is a fleeting and tricky thing. What I wanted one day will change the next day, and I will wind up wondering why I wanted it in the first place. The endless pursuit of desires continues, ignoring the way these wants tend to shift over time. It doesn’t mean that one should reject the situations one is in. On the contrary, for me, it is to realize that many of these situations come from previous choices and actions that have already passed. It’s important to know that the choices often come from a specific intent. Even if they don’t seem that way now, I need to respect that previous intentions and actions put me in this place I am in today. In doing so, I can learn to accept my choices and realize that other choices can be made as well. This is balancing: accept the conditions as they are now, but know that some of them could change in the future.

                If I can see that the suffering of the moment is the result of always wanting what is not here, then this moment becomes all I really need to face. This is like sinking into one’s own chair, not trying to look out the window to see when the next train is going to come. When the wheels have already been set in motion, it is good to recognize that this is where I am.

References

Goldberg, Natalie (2013), The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life with Language. New York: Atria