eThoughts : July 1, 2010: Life Doesn’t Repeat Itself, We Do”

I have had occasion lately to think about the human debris field that can be interpersonal relationships. And yep, that includes my screw-ups.

And I have had occasion lately to think about the beauty that can be interpersonal relationships. And yep, that includes a contribution or two by yours truly.

The debris field doesn’t just arise because of misunderstandings, that field often arises because we’d rather have a mess. The sabotage is amazing. When I was in my right mind instead of helping to create the sabotage, it was possible to see the actual intention of creating a mess. A relationship mess can be quite the excuse. Some of us cannot stand to have beauty—it seems so foreign and ill designed for our station in life. Indeed, having something resembling a beautiful interpersonal relationship is much more of a challenge than having all that negative conflict that contributes to the above mentioned debris field.

Here’s an idea: The next time things are going particularly good or particularly bad, try becoming empty and just seeing what gives sans the interpretations. You know, don’t round up the usual “suspects”—look at the unfolding as though it was the first time you’d ever seen it.

What happens is seeing without experience. When we don’t impose our experience on our reality, our reality takes on a strange new look. The dog just barks, people just don’t pay attention, the car just gets old, the house always seems to need something, the sunset is the sunset, the clouds are just the clouds and the color of the flower’s bloom is just radiant. Okay, that last one was a bit of an interpretation—but that flower’s bloom is just radiant you know? It isn’t going to hurt us, it isn’t going to interfere, it isn’t going to demand excess attention because of low self-esteem—the flower blooms. It blooms!

Yeah, I know. It must be the medication. Perhaps what is needed is a twelve-step program for controlling the zeitgeist of the ‘60s? Sorry, I don’t think so. It has always been this way. Sometimes—not much really—I missed it. We missed it. After all, there is a lot to pay attention to and sometimes things go away if we don’t pay attention and sometimes things get more demanding. How are we supposed to know? So we use our experience. On some level we believe the future is best predicted by the past. Sure, it is—if we keep at it. But what if we stopped?

I was talking with my youngest daughter tonight—a soon-to-be-twenty-nine-year old. Would she go back to a younger time? Nope! Would I? Nope! What if we were alive now and yet the best years of our lives have already occurred? We agreed that would be an ugly situation. We’ve got things to do, places to go, and people to meet—lots of each. And all those things, places, and people are not about where we’ve been, they’re about where we can really go.

Pretty funny, actually—life doesn’t repeat itself, we do.