Clarity is the new Black
You know that book BLINK that told us to trust the first reaction we have to events, people and places? Well, I try to use that practice in most everything I do these days, but I still find myself sometimes on the slow uptake. I try to overcome this bovine mentality by remembering that not everyone is bright, sharp, self-aware or enlightened all of the time, so don’t be so hard on yourself.
Tin is about to turn 6, he is entering the transition cycle, so he took his perfect afro:
And cut a hole in it in kindergarten:
He is going through that cycle again of disobedience and rebellion – everything is contested – every response is refusal. If I had hair, I’d pull it out. But alas, I don’t have hair.
Sty is about to turn 59:
He is cycling through the peaks and valleys of transition with his move to Florida. The transition could and should have been smooth but it created a low frequency of dissonance from the get go with us – all the adages we know, absence makes the heart grow fonder, out of sight is out of mind, love the one you’re with, what will be will be – which of these should we pluck out of the hat and pin to the wall?
Meanwhile, I have cut a steady path the last three years towards stability that I find myself digging deeper and deeper into the rut that I have dug, the rut that resembles sometimes a grave, sometimes a crevice to hold all my dreams, and sometimes a snug place to hide from all those things I cannot control.
In my thoughts, there are dark places where I start to believe that there are only a few things in our life that we ever have any control over and the first is our thoughts. The second is our center – a constantly shifting and accommodating compass within us. The third is our intuition, which is the wellspring of all desire and knowledge. And the fourth, because four is my lucky number, part of ourselves that we can control is our spirit.
We do not control our hearts, we do not have any control over our plans, we do not even control when we enter a cycle or when we exit one, we only know how to hold our center in it, how to use our intuition to navigate, how to stop our thoughts from going too far in any direction, and we know we must, to be happy, follow our spirit instead of our plans.
If we succeed in this, it is because we have let those things we cannot control free in the universe to dissipate or strengthen. It is only in that place that we can truly be free ourselves. Freedom from attachment. Enlightenment. What’s the sound of one foot tapping?
