Musings on life and how I choose to interpret it…

I meditated for a few hours last night. I should do this more often. Especially so since there’s so many stuff that I need to clear away before the end of summer. The job, family, SFT and all the other extracurricular luggage that comes with them. Not that I’m complaining or anything. My job at Greenest City has been a truly wonderful revelation for me: both in terms of work experience, skills and the magnitude at which we are affecting the community around us. I can honestly say, in all my experience of working for a paycheque, I’ve never had people come up to me and just gush about the sheer positivity of our work. The people and the stories that they have to tell more than make up for the odd days of frustration and dead-ends.

Family is family. You miss them when they’re not around: the warmth of the kitchen, the convenience of just plopping on the sofa and not having to worry about groceries or phone bills… They start getting on your nerves for the littlest things the day after the 2nd week together. It’s a rickety ride that I still haven’t quite managed to steady past my adolescence, but I’ve been assured by more than a couple of people that it’s a completely normal occurrence, and that I shouldn’t be beating myself over about the miserable, ungrateful sod that I think I am.

And concerning my ever fluctuating dalliances with activism — a word I’ve sullied so often for the sad purpose of placating my dull inertia — I’ve started to get into the thick of it all again. I’ve been making a few calls and sending fancy emails around lately so it shouldn’t be too long before I find myself deluged with commitments even bigger than my head. Ahh … to be young and restless.

And all the extracurricular items? What of it, you ask. Oh what can I offer but, a feckless “the usual”, my dear reader. When I get around containing impulses, discerning moods, capturing hints and mastering the art of unrequited mirthfulness, then shall I have the means to fully enthrall you of tales tall and poppy. Perhaps you can offer a word of advice or two: maybe it’ll propel me forward to greener pastures or maybe it’ll just pass through my ears while circumnavigating my brain, as it is wont to do so in most cases. In any case, for now, you’ll have to settle for a measly “the usual”.

I undertook a yoga class for the first time a week ago and I must say that it left quite an impression on me. I’ve always viewed yoga as an overly mystified aerobics exercise buoyed into the mainstream by the excess media of west-coast lifestyle and shallow spirituality. I would imagine it to be another fickle, exotic fad that only the privileged can be bothered to bend over while the rest are left with some whimsical notion of eastern philosophy long ago gone with the flood. Which still holds true, in some ways. But it’s safe to say that I’ve gone over some of my initial squeamishness about the whole deal, and that learning to hold your breath while arching your back as far as you can is harder than it sounds. But my! Does it feel energizing or what?

Spirituality is another chapter of this maddeningly confusing manuscript of mine that I’m trying to reconcile with. Actually, “reconcile” would be an inappropriate choice of word here. Reconciling would imply that somewhere back then I had an affair or understanding with the nature of self that I somehow lost track of in the past. In fact, I have never even gotten anywhere near in terms of understanding the core concepts of Buddhism (my preferred “spiritual handle”, for now) and holding it in relation against my own existence and the existential conundrums of all the other beings in this universe. So, no — to learn, or rather, to commit would be more apropos. Humility has been a steady accrual in my personal ledger of wisdom and I ought to apply it in much more meaningful doses.

I’d like to think I know about Buddhism moreso than, say, the average Canadian. But I don’t think that’s true. I mean, indeed, I might know the Four Noble Truths and the Eight-Fold Paths and some other aspects of Buddhism, but really, can I honestly say with a straight face that I know Buddhism?

Here is what I delved on yesterday as I achieved an entirely minuscule and transient state of relaxation and contemplation:

My mind is a monkey. I’ll have to thank my dear father for having pointed that out numerous times. I’ve always cringed at his liberal use of clichéd (in my haughty state of mind, yes) metaphors, but now that I’ve deliberated upon it, it’s quite true. My mind is a restless, mischievous, cautious, over-zealous, wild, uninhibited, and insecure monkey. A thoughtless, aimless ape driven by the base instinct of just…living. A monkey that strays from one tree to another, swaying on branches, nitpicking with other monkeys, howling, screeching, biting, scratching, clawing. Always moving but never keeping still in one spot for however little time it can manage. I think about this monkey nature of mine and look back upon all my experiences and how I’ve dealt with people: how I’ve jumped to conclusions; been infatuated; disgusted; repulsed; benign; weirded; judged; welcoming; friend, brother and son. It strikes me as completely incredulous that never in one second of my being have I stopped to even consider taming this fickle self of mine. How, in moments of joy and despair, in grief and elation, have I had a chance to look back on my thought processes and examine it in an objective manner. How everything that I’ve taken for granted as my personality has been tainted by an omnipresent shade of guilt, greed, second-guessing, doubt and desperation. Insecurity has been gnawing away at my heels ever since I can remember but only rarely have I had the chance to look down and see how badly deformed my roots have become.

I realize that this may all sound pretentious to the nth level and you must have distended your optic nerve from all that excess eye-rolling. I also realize that the previous paragraph may prove to be offensive to primatologists or people who identify with our distant cousins as being beyond just academic subject matters. Be that as it may, I hope my attempt here at conveying my present state of mind is at least a little more clairvoyant than some other run-of-the-mill blog post or what-have-you. I can provide no satisfying conclusion to this rather meandering post, so you, dear reader, will have to make do with a cliffhanger of an ending — a term applied very generously out of context here.

I hope you enjoy this peculiarly mild summer that mother nature has bestowed upon us this year in thanks for all the burgeoning amounts of GHGs we so generously provide her with everyday. Lather up that sunscreen, baby! And mind your toes!