Ninth day of the condo-fishing campaign.
Ninth day of long hours on the internet, long hours sending e-mails and on the phone coordinating visits.
Ninth day of longer hours on the gray, lifeless, monotonous subway. The tedious subway rides: people sleeping as if they were about to collapse, people eating as if there was no tomorrow, people showing that dullness on their faces as if this could be an outlet for such grayness. It seems like a competition for shutting down to the rest of the world (or rather, sub-world) as much as possible: people sinking in their books or whatever reading material, people drowned in their crosswords and sudokus, people plugged to their IPods and electronic games, people talking out loud mindless of those around them –as if the louder they spoke the number they became.
An image came to me, of my early days in Toronto and one of my first calls on mindfulness, although I did not know it was called like that. I was meeting with a close friend of mine and his brother for dinner. A Polish guy who was in university and working as a model: he would eat each grape slowly, as if each one was a precious elixir about to be savored, the very last elixir available in this world. This was a sheer contrast with his brother –my friend- who would be gulping food as if he was trying to fill up a bottomless tank. I remember this contrast to date.
This underground world reminds me of such contrast: go fast and if you hit-and-run, run faster…. Compassionate who? Mindful who? Breathing fast, talking fast, eating fast, breathing mindlessly, talking mindlessly, eating mindlessly. Do the most that you can fast and mindlessly, and maybe like that you can become unaware of the tediousness around you, maybe this is a visa to get faster out of here. I see this with some people close to me, too, even if they are in no subway. I cannot tell if they act like that because they are eluding us (sorry for them) or because they are actually like that: in a permanent hurry (even sorrier for them).
I don’t want that life or to go back to that. I know I was there at one point in my life, going at 100 km per second. I was studying, working, going out, and I was excelling at everything- but, I don’t want that.
Never to me had this contrast of worlds been so apparent and so unbearable, not even in my days of commuting in Toronto. Maybe because I was one of those people in desperate race for shutting down to the sub-world. Maybe because I was one of those people trying to get numbed by doing as much as I could, as fast as I could.
I think as I discussed today, I don’t need this city- maybe we’d go to Montenegro and live in the mountains. I think I could do that; I can see myself there. I think I can. I definitely stand cities less and less. Last night I could not sleep because of excessive noise: trucks, helicopters, airplanes, trucks again fixing the road or collecting garbage. I don’t want to be like the people I see in the subway, or like those numbed smile-less on the fast-track to nowhere.
4 comments:
I empathize deeply with what you say, for I have been in both places: running fast trying to get away from it all, always in a hurry to get... where? I could never stop, not really. If I had achieved a goal then instead of relaxing and enjoying, I immediately started looking for another. Then, lots of things happened which made me stop and take stock of my life: a break up, turning 30, social and financial turmoil both personal and national and, not to say the least, realizing I was not happy. I decided to go on a trip to the mountains and that was the beginning of the end for my life on the fast track. Anyway, it's not really about going fast or slow, is it? It's the being aware which changes everything. I include a much loved quote, as a thank you for the lovely ones you include:
(…)I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan - like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion." (…)
“Where I lived and what I lived for” from Walden by Henry David Thoreau - 1854
Florencia, thanks for your sharing your experiences and such a rich quote.
I believe that you raise a valid point: is it about going fast or slow, or is it about awareness?
No my question is how aware can we be if running at 180 km/h? Maybe at that speed we can only be aware of the road ahead of us, traffic, any major change affecting our driving. However, can we be aware of a conversation going on inside the car, of the news on the radio, of the beauty of the road itself? Going at such speed demands our full awareness so as not to crash, and adrenaline helps fuel that rush. Our awareness and focus are restricted only to the driving, leaving on the side other things, leaving on the side the rest of the present moment...
I am not saying to drive at 30 km/h always. Sometimes we do need to go at 180 km/h (emergency?). Maybe just to drive at that speed that allows us full awareness of the present. Maybe resisting that urge to be the fastest car in the group, to be dodging permanently, to be driving as if we were running late when we are not, to be driving in a race with ourselves.
You definitely have a point, speed does influence what you pay attention to. I agree wholeheartedly. I guess the challenge then is to find the happy medium which will probably be very elusive and changing and difficult to find, as perfection usually is. :)
The 'balance': difficult yes. However i think it is easier -even effortless- to find when one is in awareness, nsynch with developments and with oneself. Like dancing: it just flows naturally, you don't think much about it or how hard it is...
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