eThoughts : Our Relationship and Influence With Perception

One thing about the involvement/no involvement paradox is that it is always about involvement. Even a hermit is involved in one way or the other.

Spring break looms and my lady friend and I are headed to Kauai. Besides being a professor, I’m also an Academic Senate President. That means that vacations are not the same as if I was strictly a professor. But I just don’t care about all that work sometimes. So not only am I going to Kauai, I’m telling everyone at work that I simply will not be available. And I won’t.

Lovely.

I’ve traveled a bit in my day, yet I’ve never been to Hawaii. So when the opportunity arose—and I mean it was really perfect—it was a no-brainer.

I think that much of our existence is about disturbance punctuated by the contrast of peace. To me, Kauai represents the opposite of a disturbance in the fabric of awareness, though I acknowledge the relationship and influence of my perception.

Going to Kauai seems like a value added—like the sparkle of wonder in a safe world versus the dark uncertainty of a disturbed world. I realize this is my creation, both the disturbance and the sparkle, even if the events I think I perceive exist as a separate cohesion.

So perhaps Kauai is merely the idea of value added and dark uncertainty is the idea of disturbance. This can get crazy as it seems our creations simply run into other creations and our relationships can become this existence of collisions—some seem like value added, some seem like value lost. And so it seems each of us have a relationship and influence with our creations and with the creations of others.

So what are we doing?? And why are we not doing it better??

And we’re off and running…

Such questions and answers can be good work, until somebody’s creation starts to emphasize being right at the expense of getting it right. That last bit becomes tiresome to me—value lost, though I acknowledge the relationship and influence of my perception.

So, I’ve got the opportunity of going to Kauai. The party of that vacation is doing nothing, except as something comes up. It is a relationship I have with the vacation of Kauai contrasted with the disturbances, for better or worse, at work or on the road, with myself, or with any folk that seem to not be paying attention.

And again I have to acknowledge the influence and the relationship with my perception.

Sometimes it seems like we, as both individuals and as a community, are our own gods and our own devils busily painting our machinations thinly on the magnificence of awareness.

My guess is our relationships and our perceptions are a stewardship, ones best grounded in the magnificence of awareness, rather than just in the pronouncement of our values added or values lost. Perhaps vacations are one way to reset our bearings. In any case, I’m off to Kauai!

Aloha.