Tag: birdsong

The Home Stretch

Two months from today, I will not publish a blog post for the first time in 365 days.

I’m not quite sure how I feel about that.

I set a goal on March 14, 2023 to write and publish a blog post every single day for a full year. god willing, on March 14, 2024, I will have reached that goal.

I am getting close. It is still sixty days away but I figure it’s time to start thinking about what’s next.

A book was supposed to come out of, or at least be supported by, this blog writing exercise.

No manuscript yet and that goal may have changed. I am not 100% sure.

Here is what I have learned since I started publishing this blog ten months ago.

Words saturate the world like wedding confetti. Depth and valuable content, however, seem scarcer these days, generally speaking.

There has always been an inherent promiscuity in the writing game. It was the French writer Moliere who aptly said: Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.

I’ve learned lots about myself in this writing discipline/exercise. I am more old school than I first believed. I have actually come to cherish that about myself. Conservative and cautious at core though sometimes my decisions are impulsive and ill-thought through. It seems to balance out.

Certain life facts are immutable. Where you are born and who you are born to are among them. Choices have consequences. The world will move along, with or without you.

The most significant moments in anyone’s life are the moment of our birth and the moment of our death. Everything in the middle is… well … in the middle. Each person’s stories and paths are different. But the beginning and end are the same for all of us.

I believe only some things in life are tried and true. It is our individual job to discover them. We must meet the twists and turns life hands us and overcome challenges while learning from them. This is the process of maturing, I believe, or adulting or whatever you call it.

If you still hold the same life views at sixty that you did when you were twenty, I’d venture to guess you haven’t moved very far along life’s continuum. I have met elderly women who sport the same haircuts they had in their university graduation pictures.

They speak with the same breathless adoration of their college alma mater or sorority and use the same jargon of their youth. Perhaps I am typecasting, but those are not the type of women I usually have much in common with or want to know very well.

If you have one or two good friends in later life that you share much in common with, you are lucky. If you have a handful of friends in that category, you are wealthy beyond measure.

In our society, we have a tendency to equate happiness and success with quantity over quality. As I get older, quality is becoming more desirable and precious.

Quality time with loved ones. Quality consumables shared with those loved ones. Fine books (There are many if you but look.) Fine music. Paintings. The sound of wind moving through a stand of trees. Birdsong. Conversation.

We tend to ignore or give short shrift to simple joys and pleasures in our youth. Not enough action in them to satisfy our ambitions. Fact is, we are much too busy in young adulthood trying to build some semblance of a life based on the scripts we inherited.

We all have to keep body and soul together as best we can. And, one day, if we have a family, we have to keep their bodies and souls together, too. It is all very distracting and energy intense.

I have learned that universal truths remain universal. And for all of us, one day, everything will come to a screeching halt. I have tried to wrap my head around that certain eventuality.

It is either life’s kindness or built-in denial that serves as a survival mechanism. We generally find it hard to imagine ourselves not being here any more, in this body, and on this planet.

Who knows what happens when we depart this mortal coil? Certainly not I. I have some theories but they are only that: theories. So the seeker in me will no doubt continue the hunt for answers to life’s “big” questions when this blog posting goal has been accomplished.

I may do something different with my writing. Or I may focus the writing on something similar. Who knows? I may actually bear down and write that novel/memoir/novella. It all depends.

The question I have yet to answer is, on what exactly that new path going forward will depend?

Here’s to having hope and keeping faith that I will eventually find out.

The Sounds of Silence

I have nothing to say. That interests me. Words are important currency in our society. People often seem to value them above a lot of other elements. Snakeoil salesmen have historically used them to good effect.

When thoughts and words aren’t forthcoming, it feels odd to me. We need words to offer and feel validation. We use them to connect to and shape our environment.

Words are important for plotting a path in life. Words underpin the narrative upon which we build our beliefs and develop our goals. Without words, we cannot articulate our dreams nor map a way to actualize them.

What is it about having nothing to say that intrigues me? In part, words have been my survival tool. I have relied on my ability to write or talk my way either out of or into any situation I believed I wanted to be part of.

I cannot say words were equally effective in improving my judgment, however. Some of those situations I got into I very quickly I wanted to get out of. There is a lot of wisdom in the caution “be careful what you wish for.”

We don’t much value nothing these days. It doesn’t sell well or for much money. And yet, there is so much available for us to learn and feel in nothingness and silence.

Most people fear emptiness. Recall in your own life uncomfortable silences that may have made certain interactions difficult and awkward. Recall the allure of frantic celebrations or parties we attended when thinking or speaking might have been impossible. The din of people trying to talk over loud music drowns out any intimacy there could be.

I once attended a 10 day silent meditation retreat in a beautiful country setting based on the ancient Vipassana tradition. Vipassana is a meditation discipline wherein we train our minds to “see things as they really are.” My interpretation of Vipassana is that by letting the mental clutter in our minds settle, we can clearly see ourselves and others.

Here is what the worldwide Vipassana website tells us about the practice:

There are three steps to the training. The first step is, for the period of the course, to abstain from killing, stealing, sexual activity, speaking falsely, and intoxicants. This serves to calm the mind, which otherwise would be too agitated to perform the task of self-observation.

The next step is to develop some mastery over the mind by learning to fix one’s attention on the natural reality of the ever changing flow of breath as it enters and leaves the nostrils.

By the fourth day the mind is calmer and more focused, better able to undertake the practice of Vipassana itself: observing sensations throughout the body, understanding their nature, and developing equanimity by learning not to react to them.

Finally, on the last full day participants learn the meditation of loving kindness or goodwill towards all, in which the purity developed during the course is shared with all beings.

https://www.dhamma.org/en-US/about/vipassana

The experience of a silent retreat is purifying. And calming. But many don’t make it through the ten days. Days Three and Four are well known as “bolt” days. These are the days when people are most likely to leave. For some people, being alone with their thoughts in complete isolation is too difficult and too frightening.

I believe you have to be ready before you undergo a ten day course of complete silence and disconnection from the outside world (no cellphones, journals or even books are allowed). Participants are free to go as they wish. They are also free to come back if/when they feel ready.

Finding a time and place to experience complete silence and disconnection is no mean feat. Social media bombards us with an endless array of opportunities to connect and share and communicate with others. Quantity has won the day over quality.

So embracing my inner Luddite, I am better and happier generally when I carve out tranches of silent “me time.” Early mornings are good for that. And what is it I do in that space? Nothing.

I try doing something that is very hard for me. Just being. I ignore my devices, TV and my phone. No reading or writing emails. Not even writing this blog until I have had some nurturing quiet time. I like to sit and absorb what the world around me is offering me in those periods.

Birdsong in nearby trees. Jet planes flying overhead. Squirrels scuttling at top speed across the wooden fence in our backyard. I often do a body checkin at the same time.

How does my tummy feel today? Are my muscles aching from that swim yesterday? Am I hungry? Or thirsty? The body chatters away incessantly, if wordlessly, with us if we just tune in to it.

Odd admission for a writer, no doubt. But I believe in the underlying logic. By carving out time to card through my thoughts and reactions, the output of words is a little clearer and more focused.

As Vipassana aims to teach, I feel more confident emerging from silence that I am seeing the world as it really is, rather than how I want to see it. Maybe the world would be kinder and more sane if more people did.

Defragmentation

Sometimes I feel like a police scanner – to the extent I even know how a police scanner works. I scan constantly through my computer and phone throughout the day, every day. It is kind of a ritual but more of a neurosis, if I’m honest.

It is an odd combination of FOMO (fear of missing out) but also a form of hyper-vigilance. I look and constantly wait for “things that need to be tended to.” A utility bill. An enticing post or meme. A bank statement. Friends’ birthdays. All things that may need my “urgent” attention.

I am so familiar with this pattern now and the feelings it is trying to manage.

My life’s work has been trying to pull back together the fragmented pieces of myself that flew apart when I was a child and young woman. Pieces of myself flew apart on several occasions before I hit the proverbial brick wall.

When I was younger, I suffered from a bad case of arrogance of youth. I overestimated my importance and ability to change the world. It is a common arrogance that life thrashes out of most of us.

Most of us settle into familiar routines as we grow into adulthood. I see that as a gift life gives us. Even plants have to find a place to dig in and take root if they are to become fully mature and productive. It underpins the philosophy “to bloom where you are planted.”

These days, I am not so sure young people are able to access and develop those routines as easily. Young adults fret and fuss about the basics way too deeply into adulthood. Their conversations are an all too familiar commiseration about how difficult life has become. Houses are unaffordable. In longterm rental accommodation, equity cannot be built. And equity has always been the most familiar and reliable route to financial security.

So people everywhere – just like me – are enraptured by the world available to them on their rectangular anchors. Problem is – and the problem is becoming much clearer to many – the online world is illusory. It is full of bias and singular POV’s and fragments of truth.

Constantly surfing the internet is like eating and eating at a buffet and yet never feeling full. It is like watching kids play on the other side of a chainlink fence. It is like blowing kisses to loved ones on the other side of a glass wall.

Nothing can take the place of that perfect first bite of something sinfully delicious. Nothing can replace that extremely particular sensation of joy and pleasure. Nothing beats good old-fashioned hugging and giggling to bond us to each other.

So I’m devising a plan. To wean myself away from this obsessive ritual of device scanning and become more deliberate about how I spend my time. The aim is to calm my mind. To stare down the internal “to-do” list. The aim is to settle down incessant demands that are largely self-created.

For the past several months, it seems all I needed were tchotchkes from online stores which I was sure would add heaps to my sense of peace and security and wholeness. Those tchotchkes have not done that and the message is coming through loud and clear that I need to shift direction.

So I have set a path. The boundaries of that path are ill-defined at the minute but that is the process new ideas go through to get born. Less time online. More quiet time with myself and in nature.

I could wrap this up by saying something clever like, “I’m heading to the internet to find articles on exactly how to do that!” But I won’t. I’ll take my coffee outside to listen to the sounds of our community starting its day in the distance and the birds in the trees around us waking up.

There is inherently more comfort in nature than chasing illusions on the Internet. We all need to relearn that.

I’m pretty sure those birdsongs will comfort and settle me. Excuse me while I turn this off to go do that.