This is the story of a girl who was looking for the path she was walking on, mostly feeling lost and quite lonely, but somehow determined to keep going.
Oftentimes she would look back, searching far and wide for the wrong steps that always ended up turning right, or left, up and back down again. The walked path was diffuse, unconsciously changing every time it was recalled, every step rewritten with each new remembering, copies of copies of replayed projections that nobody seems to be accounting for. How to build an identity if the memories from the past are a fractal that is being played in slow motion at super speed?
Looking ahead isn’t easy either. A sense of duty could pop up, a narrative constructed upon unfulfilled wishes and ignored fears. And just before anxiety starts crawling up the stomach, an eye glances at the end of the way, where there could somehow be closure and rest.
And then there is mindfulness, a way out into the present that requires a lot of discipline and sometimes feels like trying to pull from a rope tied to a raging bull.
Her mind was a wildling with decades of chaotic behavior and an alarmingly low level of maintenance done over all those years. Some corners had turned into dumpsters, full of accumulated repressed memories and thoughts, stagnated parts of her old identities rotting in the dark.
Good work has been done since the cleaning began. Her mental hygiene is making good progress, but reaching optimal standards is still not always easy. Much work is left to be done. Or not? I guess that this question could be seen like an apple by a Christian. I was once supposed to be a Christian, but I couldn’t make it. Churches smell like despair. The identity thing again, as tricky as learning how to drive a car…
But how is an identity possible when you are only living in the now?
Wasn’t the shape made by the bumps along the way?
Aren’t the chosen directions determined by our projections of the uncertain into the unknown, or is this also a scam?
Being in the present moment seems to be the ultimate challenge and it some days feels like an impossible task.
So where is the way then? It is only and all the time under her feet, between her fingers, in front of her eyes, but also inside her mind, the wildest of the senses, the most ephemeral in its shape, the sneakiest in its ways. The omnipotent narrator that is hooked on survival and allergic to pain, the wicked tyrant that fetishizes pain and burns everything on its way, a bipolar mess that somehow strives towards the holy grail that are inner peace, harmony, joy, happiness. Their taste had mostly been missing, but in certain moments it had been intense enough to be hanged as the lantern memories that are used during the cleansing works at the dumpsters.
It was interesting though, watching the twists and turns, the impossible curves where closing your eyes seemed like the only way through. And here we are. You and I, mind and selves in an eternal battle that none of us can win, because what the f*** is you and I anyway? Finding the fusion point could be the key to solving the puzzle, the spiritual pickle of every living soul. Or maybe none of them actually exist and here we are, chasing our own invisible tails.
All the rest there is to tell are just stories and anecdotes that she stored over time and that have as much meaning as the bond(age) each of them dictates. We are a conglomerate of situations that had cohered through a particular force, an inner natural selection from which bits and pieces will conform the files of our personal library. Identity again. What a mess.
So she was looking for the path, because she couldn’t stop walking. Not even sleeping meant stopping. Impermanence implies constant movement, a ceaseless flow of happenings, restless, balanced, omnipresent, unavoidable, obviated. You have to go the way, there is no quitting, there is no running away, because there is no way out of the way. It is there like it is you again. It is here and it is I as well.
The scenarios and the characters move in an out of the path, as if they had the freedom of not being anymore once they had passed. I think that if every character also has an I, their own path will appear to them as an irrevocable sentence that is to be a blessing in disguise.
So she isolates and steps full gas on the breaks, pretending that it is not taking an immense amount of effort to walk the line. A shivering emptiness under the soles of her feet refuses to stay still, as if that could even sound as a good idea. Stillness and restlessness are equally unsettling, each in their own way. I guess that somewhere in between is the place where sober people live (sober with the connotation of not having to make an effort to remain that way).
It helps to identify the phenomena that is every process. This turns identity also into phenomena, which feels like a little siesta at the river bank. Identifying phenomena is one of curiosity’s favorite games. Curiosity is a very young girl who can only be satiated by hows & whys, a very recommendable companion for the path (also fun).
The trouble comes when the bumps, apparently forgotten, become an integral part of the shape, a wounded chassis that insists on pretending that it is fully functional. When this happens, the shielding is off. May destiny have mercy on your soul, may the upcoming wounds be healable, may you start working and repairing, observing and identifying, disciplining and nurturing.
Is the path the way to healing? Well, from all the things she could do, healing seemed to be an objectively good idea and since going the path was non-negotiable, becoming stronger, lighter, fitter, faster and calmer could well be the way to go. But the synapsis firing between the idea of happiness and its imminent deception are still quite pervasive. Maybe it is not that she is uncapable of happiness, but rather unwilling to risk being happy. Does this make any sense? Some people seem to be happy. I seemed to be happy. Everything seems.
So, yes, the path or the way? The way is made of path, of two feet that insist on following one another, of the hands that wash each other. But what is with all the paths that kept crossing her way? It could all be so annoying, so tiring, so apparently unnecessary. Was the prediction of failure an unfounded fear or cautious intuition? Her gut was no yet trained enough to distinguish the subtle distinction between the opposites. Extremes had always felt so cozy and stable. However, due to their nature, they are difficult to maintain and they tend to be destructive. Extremes feel like home, like the smell of turpentine.
And of course there is chaos. Ever since the Big Bang, earlier even, chaos has not yet taken a day off. It is the tireless force that keeps us up and running. It cannot be fought, so it shouldn’t be fought. But it can also not be ignored. With chaos it works a bit like with emotions and pain: the only way to interact with them requires constant observation.
Last winter had been a dumpster-cleaning chapter. There was so much dirt; there still is. Here resilience and time are her best allies. Maybe the path would be better expressed through formulas:
PATH = (OBSERVATION + RESILIENCE) * TIME
OBSERVATION = presence = awareness
RESILIENCE = discipline + determination + persistance
TIME = life + death
It is quite a depressive formula, functional though. Could functional and joyful maybe play a bit more often in the same team? Ah, right, the happiness-deception paradox that poisoned the system after all those bumps along the way… No wonder the dumpsters were full, with all those entangled thoughts and sensations disregulating emotions. That’s when the mud begins to splash, when your arms are submerged down to the elbows and your nose gets a terrible itch that takes all your concentration away. And you tell yourself: “resisting means cleaning.” But does it? Well, scratching would definitely not be cleaning. But it is not just resisting. It is resisting until the itch goes away, so that you can learn that every itch goes away, so that you don’t get mud all over your face.
As she walked by the river, a climbing rose bush crossed her path. Its intense red immediately caught her attention, and the petals felt so soft… As she moved her face away after having smelled the plant’s genitals, her thin and pale hands appeared to have a life of their own. Because of her weakness for softness, her fingers were automatically rubbing themselves against the aroused flower. Phenomena shape identities, because the “I“ that is the active agent gets dragged by phenomena. The “I” seems to be the active agent, at least it feels that way, but it is most likely just phenomena as well.
It is a tricky game this path we walk. But I am sure that by now, you have already realized that she is I and that I is we, you and me. It’s messy, you say?
So how is your path like? Can you see it clearly? Can you describe it to me? Is it fuzzy, but intriguing? Uncertain or calm? Can you keep it calm? Calm for me is like a sunny day (she lives in Germany). It is the dissociation issue that tends to dissolve the boundaries between pronouns, a dangerous mental virus that can be best fought by I don’t know.
It is this unexperienced reality in which we are all one that keeps escaping me and that makes the ground fertile for predators. Maybe the key lies on innerly concealing the inherent contradiction of existence that makes unity out of opposites that complement each other. This is most likely correct. Or maybe not. Who cares?
It is funny that stopping in front of a stranger and introducing a finger in one of his lowest holes is considered impolite, while we smell flowers in public. At the end of the day, it is all about perspective. Striving for the higher status of “truth” or “reality” brings rigidity with itself. And everyone knows that rigid tends to end up broken, which is more pain than we need. We had enough pain already.
Simply train paying attention: no voice-over, no lamenting echoes, no omniscient narrator. Just pay attention. This is so far the best piece of advice to go the way. Observe attentively as much as you can.
Nice to meet you.
I’m F.
