Self awareness vs. self absorption
This phrase has been rolling around in my head lately. I was reading one of my religious magazines and found myself feeling annoyed at the depth to which a certain writer was analyzing his experience of making tea ... a Buddhist cliche I'm really starting to get tired of. Another phrase – "navel gazing" – also comes to mind.
I've spent years and years doing the same thing. What makes me happy these days is that I keep noticing something different happening with it. I think I'm finally settling into my life enough that I'm no longer identifying with it as much as I used to. It's hard to explain what I mean, without using language that I'm starting to find sort of off-putting .... But here's something that happened to me today that I think illustrates what I'm trying to say.
My new office is near a big wetland preserve and I've been eating lunch at my desk so I can spend my lunch break walking in this park. It's marshy and wide and open, with a tidal river running along one far edge and always lots of birds and people and dogs everywhere, almost like being at the beach. Today I walked about a mile out to a bench and sat down to watch the birds stalking around on the mud flats. The tide was out and some of them were swimming in little pools, some were poking their beaks into the muck, and some were just standing still, looking around. I wondered what they were eating, and how they knew what to do ....
I thought how nice it would be to be self-aware, like they are (when they're hungry, they know they're hungry, etc.), without always trying to assign some sort of meaning to their awareness. I've heard people say that this is what makes people different from animals – our ability to perceive or create meaning – but I'm not so sure that ability is always such a great thing. Sometimes it feels really good just to be, without trying to understand anything at all about what that might "mean." (Another phrase I really dislike: "understanding what it means to be human." Also, "slim volume." That one always bugs me.)
So in a roundabout way I realized this is part of the reason I haven't been feeling much like writing lately. I'm enjoying my experiences and feeling really open and clear in my mind for the first time in awhile (not all the time, but enough to notice) – and I'm realizing that all I really want to do with this experience is experience it. Be aware of it, but not absorbed in it.
Coming back to write it all down feels sort of ... sludgy, or something. It mucks up my flow.
Maybe that's part of what I've been trying to do with all this journaling for so many years, now that I think of it – slow down the flow a bit, so I could try to get a grip on myself before my whole life spun out of reach. Mr. A once told me, when we first knew each other, that he felt like I was always hitting the gas with the brakes on. I think that was a pretty astute observation at the time.
I'm glad I'm learning how to do things differently.
I've spent years and years doing the same thing. What makes me happy these days is that I keep noticing something different happening with it. I think I'm finally settling into my life enough that I'm no longer identifying with it as much as I used to. It's hard to explain what I mean, without using language that I'm starting to find sort of off-putting .... But here's something that happened to me today that I think illustrates what I'm trying to say.
My new office is near a big wetland preserve and I've been eating lunch at my desk so I can spend my lunch break walking in this park. It's marshy and wide and open, with a tidal river running along one far edge and always lots of birds and people and dogs everywhere, almost like being at the beach. Today I walked about a mile out to a bench and sat down to watch the birds stalking around on the mud flats. The tide was out and some of them were swimming in little pools, some were poking their beaks into the muck, and some were just standing still, looking around. I wondered what they were eating, and how they knew what to do ....
I thought how nice it would be to be self-aware, like they are (when they're hungry, they know they're hungry, etc.), without always trying to assign some sort of meaning to their awareness. I've heard people say that this is what makes people different from animals – our ability to perceive or create meaning – but I'm not so sure that ability is always such a great thing. Sometimes it feels really good just to be, without trying to understand anything at all about what that might "mean." (Another phrase I really dislike: "understanding what it means to be human." Also, "slim volume." That one always bugs me.)
So in a roundabout way I realized this is part of the reason I haven't been feeling much like writing lately. I'm enjoying my experiences and feeling really open and clear in my mind for the first time in awhile (not all the time, but enough to notice) – and I'm realizing that all I really want to do with this experience is experience it. Be aware of it, but not absorbed in it.
Coming back to write it all down feels sort of ... sludgy, or something. It mucks up my flow.
Maybe that's part of what I've been trying to do with all this journaling for so many years, now that I think of it – slow down the flow a bit, so I could try to get a grip on myself before my whole life spun out of reach. Mr. A once told me, when we first knew each other, that he felt like I was always hitting the gas with the brakes on. I think that was a pretty astute observation at the time.
I'm glad I'm learning how to do things differently.
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