Plans that have potential to impact one's life course can be truncated by miniature events and minute exogenous phenomena. Those plans, when properly planned, can have incredible magnitude. We think of them. We quietly, in our minds, start building them. And, we set out a road to acomplish them and make them a reality. Life has continued taking its course. And suddenly, the surprise. The unmanageable certainty of execution is not there. Miniature catastrophes, small victories, acquaintances, all can start intruding. And then life resolves itself. And we loose sight of those plans.
In my experience, those plans tended to be simple. They did not entail building space-ships or travelling to far distant lands. Those plans tended, most often, to be about finding spaces for the soul, the mind, and the spirit to sync. To come together as one and to start thinking in present about life's future course, with the past in perspective. There can be debate about the validity of the surprise factor of like taking course once the idea of loosing sight of "the plans" when the action of "planmaking" becomes a concious activity in ourselves. Because we know and are aware that we want to head somewhere. Because we are already planning something that feels structured and most often follows a methodology. But, life can happen so quietly and events can seem to follow one another so smoothly that it is really impossible to know what is getting in the way and what is not. And, if something is getting in the way, it is even harder to put at rest the idea of dealing with it as a sepparate event that should not intrude with what was prior set out.
Plans of the mind and of the heart are, I assume, set out by all. But the degree of conciousness of those seem to follow different patterns. There are those amongst us who flow. Who just let life happen and do not give much consideration to existencial questions. Ultimately, we all do think about life and about strategizing it or simply thinking and setting priorities for existence. But, there are those of us who attempt, to the best of our abilities to go a bit deeper on the concious level. Who look at a New Year as a possiblity. Who look at a birthday as somewhat of a crossroads. Each time. Every calendar turning its page. We can dwelve in silence, in writings, in images, in conversations with ourselves just thinking deep and hard about what it is that we want? How it is that we really want to live? When it is that we want to do things? It feels as though the weight of this sort of analysis is part of us. And, often, even when attempted at, it is hard to escape.
So, we sit, walk, run, swim, write, draw. And in midst of these activities we retreat into ourselves. We flock into all directions of the heart and start thinking of the patterns of behaviour, the things that make up who we are. Where we work. Who we relate to others. How we chew. Who do we want to give ourselves to. Under what conditions. And quickly these ideas start taking up structures and all start playing with one another as we start figuring out what needs to be changed, advanced, matured, and potentially dilluted. When we retreat to search into ourselves and not to change others, we normally retreat to find the positive. Seeking a platform. Seeking a propeller. Seeking a way to extract more out of life. Yet remain pure. Yet remain constructive. Yet remain true to one's essence. I f we could only try more.
Those plans are frail and fragile. One is the only one who sets them out and one is the only one who can pursue them. One sets the course. One chooses the methodology. One really knows the weight of the priorities. Even if one's life is shared, it is in one is where the power of staying course remains. Everything else is exogenous. Everyone else is external. Our plans may be understood. They may be identified. They can be judged as essential. They can be improved with external advice. They can be blocked. Whatever the condition, it remains property, truly and wholy private of one's life entreprise. No one else's.
And so we build the course. And we start walking. Not conscious all day about that which we want to acomplish. Simply coming about to one of these plans is hard enough. I guess it happens few times in one's life. Often in youth. For the enlightened ones it may happen later as they remain open to change and opportunity. Regardless of age and recurrence, building these plans requires backbone. It is not easy to retreat into oneself. It is no handy task to pause and really look around and see life face value, from our subjective perspective, or even to look at it from the possible angles of analysis there may be. Just pausing is hard enough. Finding the time to think. Finding the courage to give this sort of matter any kind of importance. But, then again, we do. And we struggle until the time comes. And we can see. See as far as we can. Hopefully hurt one a little. And then reply with some ridiculous sense of patriotism for the history built by the country that contains our bodies and souls. And respond, and debate, and disagree and finally arrive to some sort of self-enlightened and self-designed version of the truth. Knowing the hindrance or lie to and of being objetive (because at the end of the day there is nothing that can be objective about anyone, there is no one single truth) we deliver the personal manifesto and of we go!
Of we go until something stops us. Of we go until an event distracts us and perhaps forces us to loose sight of that truth that for moments seem so relevant and important and even essential for life to continue. We get distracted. In my case, by default. And the plans start shaping up over the course of years. I start recirculating versions of that self-designed truth and then suddenly start seeing it melt by pieces and by beats. Every time the door bell rings when I am collecting thoughts about professional strategy. Every single time the internet falls when I am writing an email to someone I am courting and does not come back up after I left the house for any other activity. Every single time that I cannot retreat because the level of activity I aspire or perform is vaster than the actual amount of time that a good session of self analysis would require. These are miniature catastrophes. These are unexplainable phenomena that just as it was hard to come by the time to build up plans, it later became as hard to put them on course.
We like to get distracted. When we retreat, the easiest thing is to diver by these phone calls, by the calling wars of success at the office, by the ever growing interests of the mind. Books. Exhibits. Shows. Sex. Line ups of activities with amazing abality to devastate the silence or space that requires the thinking of those "grand" "planning" "strategies". And life diverts.
Yet, to be fair, those distractions are structural in most cases. Life happens in wealth and poverty. Each can be a structural difficulty to finding silence. Life happens in health and sickness. Each can be another structural obstacle to finding balance for the mind and heart. In sickness, we want to resolve all things. In health, we pay little attention to existencial matters. In any event, assuming one is standing in the ideal place for one of these planning sessions and really is ready to walk into and around oneself, our lives do not take place in isolation. They take place around others. They exist in unison and in a chronologically assigned manner. They are finite. They begin. They end. And everything around us begins and ends during our own course.
It is the coming to an end of one such life while attempting to retreat into myself that moves me to think about this and write it. I was drafting lists about life and setting out the vision ahead, thinking of the retrospective way back, when this lack of oxygen, one again, started cramming into someone's life. Moments later, you sit and stare how life and air escape a person. The love you feel. The passion you have for the shared existence with that life. All of the moments and silences that were shared. The wisdom and magic that descended on your heart along the way. That fairy woman who always protects you. Suddenly, frail, eyes closed, hand clinging to the metal border of the bed. Tubed up. Tubed around. And barely catching a breathe. You simply do not want to think about the potential of lossing all of this. Of loosing a soul companion. A soul that should be here, everlasting, ever present. But, then, the miniature disasters do happen.
Lives truncated by a single turn of events. By bad medication prescribed that dents brutal holes in human organs. By the fact that we exist together and some cannot operate when others are not around. Because we do depend on each other by heart or physics. To build those plans. To frustrate them. To build new ones. To improve others. We simply cannot create those plans in isolation.
I realize, it is insolent to call such an event like a life obstruction and life threatening oxygen deficiencies an interruption. Well, actually, it is frivolous analysis at first sight. But it is necessary. Of course, it is extreme but it is precisely important to look at it because it highlights important issues that once understood can help build brighter, grander courses for all of us.
Now, the interruption being discussed stops being about those around this soul. It is, mainly, now I realize, about her soul. This interruption must have taken place when she had set out dreams in her own mind. How will I prepare for Christmas? What will I do with my family? Will I be able to carry out the dinner and hear to what they are saying? Perhaps I should light candles and offer San Patricio something so my life continues smoothly? Will I make it to tomorrow? How can I remove this pain in my left knee? Why does my body ache so much? I should be using the oxygen, but I think is dangerous, will they realize I am not using it? The weight of trains of thought like these repeat on each of us on a daily basis. Do we stop planning life and retreating into ourselves at the age of 80? Do we look back more than look ahead? I doubt it. The ability and need of thinking about life and how we want to live it is persistent and age makes it the more acute.
When plans take course a million obstacles seem to interfere. One builds a plan. Life continues taking its course. The resolute is there. Life truncates it. It seems obliviously difficult to retain course but we do not even realize. We soon confront other problems. Our own. Other's. We get distracted and unknowingly abandon missions that are worth living. Missions that are worth experimenting. Perhaps that is one main resolute for the time ahead. To look deeper into examples of these events and really dig until we uncover a way to let life happen but simply turn and realize a distraction for what it is and come back to where we were.
Perhaps then the disilussion ends. Then love becomes true. Lives stop being mediocre. And we really find content in realizing that focus, concentration, and attempts to live can follow our intentions if we set out on it. We can stop being somber shadows of ourselves.
Retreat.
No comments:
Post a Comment