Getting it

I read somewhere recently (I know the book, but since it was an author quoting another author, I forget who "said" it) about being a stoic observer of your own life. That the goal isn't so much that you "get there" inasmuch as you begin to understand your being. Something along those lines anyway, and like any good thought, it sparked a river of flow in my mind (there are many reasons I do not use the term "brain" anymore to describe where my thoughts flow, maybe a later post will elaborate on that).

I was watching my students practice for their sports day. Like I do with pretty much everything I observe, I analyze, think about, philosophize, and simultaneously silently enjoy the moment. I thought about how structured their movements were, I pictured them as little cells, all working together. The way a bajillion cells work together to create functioning organs that help keep multicellular organisms "alive." They were all smiling, these students really enjoy their sport's day stuff. If you think about it fundamentally, everything is kind of like a cell. Even more fundamentally, everything is kind of like atoms, kind of like little bits and pieces that get together and do stuff, and everything acts in a similar fashion. It's all a matter of degree of size and our ability to comprehend and grasp the scales at which things occur.

Seeing them got me to thinking about how Japanese culture values structure and order, they really value that. Something many Westerners (and particularly Americans if I may be so bold) would not value as much or understand why it would be so damn important. But it is, especially if you come from a culture where how society functions is part of your daily curriculum personality builder. I prefer a more critical view of how I should perform in society though. I think Japanese culture (as a general idea, not an absolutist whole) can take the social harmony aspect too far sometimes. Like when kids are being bullied nobody knows how to react. On the other hand, I think Americans (as a general idea again) can be quite extreme in trying to preserve what they have brainwashed the populace to believe is "freedom" and the free market. But this post isn't about being knit picky and delineating all the nuances between a very social culture and a very individualistic culture. This post is about seeing the bigger picture, and seeing yourself seeing the bigger picture.

I watched them; I was imagining they were all little cells and represented certain cultural ideas the world over as human beings. I watched them and imagined how space would organize, how matter would have distributed. I watched them and though about thermodynamics and the distribution of energy, deeply influenced by a book I'm currently reading. I watched them and thought about consciousness, what it might be, where it comes from, and what we can do with it. I watched them and thought about cross species communication, how I was sitting close to the plants as they practiced on a windy day in the lush mountain valley we live in.

As all these thought crossed my mind, I smiled and laughed. I told myself that I sure am in love with the ideas of organization. I am fascinated by patterns of all kinds, abstract and/or tangible. I "saw" myself thinking, and I was a stoic observer of my own processes, my own thoughts, my own being. All the thoughts together were simply an expression of my being (I don't equate simplicity with unimportance, but most of the time, I think the most simplest of things demand more attention and importance). This ability to perceive myself is one I had been working towards for a long time, and yet, was one that was always there. A lot of the times we have to sift out our thoughts and recognize whether those thoughts are wanted there, where they may have stemmed from (i.e. prejudiced or not cultural beliefs or upbringings), and what we can do with them. Most of all though, I think it's important that we listen to our thoughts, to what they can teach us about the processes and systems we are a part of. Cultural, biochemical, scientific etc. processes, they're all connected and influence each other.

Then I thought about the hologram, a term I've been using recently to describe that mental space that isn't physical in the sense that we can "touch" it with our hands (what is touch though, really?), but that we are aware of, can greatly influence, and know. It sounds a bit schizophrenic, maybe a bit autistic, maybe a bit delusional, maybe a bit fucking crazy, but I'm used to that. The self (NOT the ego) fascinates me to no end. And the self being itself within itself is a process that is becoming more and more clear to me, even as the language to describe this process becomes more and more clumsy, muddled, and crazy sounding. It's an active silent poem, the poetry of existing and knowing that you exist.