We Learn From Each Other

Digging a hole and making a mud pool with my older brother now makes me think of suffocating in dirt and water.  We still made mud pools, though; and it was great because as kids we had no qualms with being covered head-to-toe in earth.  They never caved in, either – except on little plastic army men who Mum still finds today, over a decade later, in unusually well upkeep considering the time they’ve spent in underground warfare.

Fear can be of making mistakes and thinking that it means something much worse than it does – it doesn’t, most of the time.  Maybe never.  We just think it does because out minds chatter away at a thousand thoughts per second, leaving our hearts a little bit lonely, their bursting artery-like hands half-raised in the air – not really being listened to.  Fear was often coloured with playfulness back when you weren’t an adult, but now the element of play is for most people gone or distant; all that’s left is the raw fear.  People talk about “consequences”, “responsibility”.  Heavy, weighty things.  A lot of which is aimed at making you scared stiff.

Were we taught to decide with our hearts, or with our minds?  Maybe most fear comes from the mind, having been built up and reinforced over the years; from memory, because we’re stuck in neurotic old lessons that aren’t relevant anymore but which could have remained relevant if they were taught relatively, or maybe just differently.  And maybe then our minds exponentially grow in rules and regulations, which our experience struggles constantly to align itself with.  And then we become a little bit schizophrenic.  Not too schizophrenic, though.  Just enough to make us feel heavier than we once were.  Then we can grow sort of preoccupied, perpetually and constantly going about dealing with this new and ever-changing weight, rather than seeing the beauty of life manifesting about us.

You are perfect.  Imagine if they told you that all the way through life.  Follow your heart; you’re doing great, even if you can’t understand this; no, you don’t need to do that, but you can if you want to.  I’ll help you help yourself because that helps me and in turn helps everyone and everything.  You are a beautiful creature, like me; lets use this moment to create change together, without thinking of anything else.

Now, perhaps, for some of us — maybe most — there are big congregations gathered, all over our mind-bodies, stressing them out, telling of good, bad, do this, do that.  Even if you’ve managed to swing right around and face the music, there still seems to be an endless workload.  And then something someone built into your shoulder or neck, like a little radio, emitting a nasty frequency — you shouldn’t be doing that; you should be doing this.

The frequency can say lots of things.  It takes a while to learn how to turn the volume down, but it’s possible.  Most things are.

Now is the time.  If I think about it, now has already passed; and that’s where anxieties come in, because I might feel I have to do it or that it might be “too late”.  There are lots of reasons we can make for things, but mostly no one really ever has to.  Spontaneity plays a bigger role than that.  Feel with your heart-tentacles and see that this organism works together, whether you like it or not.  No one makes an independent decision in any literal sense.  You are not a-lone being, I promise.

Everything will be all right, even in the face of the most horrid fear.  Worse comes to worst you’ll cry and cry or hurt and hurt, maybe not even make it a quarter the way to the bar; but you did well, anyway.  Perfectly, even; you always do.  You’re doing it right now.

It’s not always easy, but often it can be.

If I saw the world as a foreign body, unable to be traversed, I would be full of fear.  Luckily, I no longer understand that notion (unfortunately, fear has infinite mediums to manifest in, thus I am, to be sure, not fear-free just yet).  How can I be looking at something foreign, when I am an active part of it?  When it looks back at me and communicates with me?  When the wind rustles the leaves, it isn’t a noise; it’s something speaking to you.  When a little child waves at you, it’s more than nice to wave back.  It makes both of you smile.  And we all like to smile; it’s like our hearts are connecting again.

When a bad situation arises, it is often explained away by referring to other things.  If it’s a good situation, it doesn’t seem to call for as much explaining.  If you follow causality outwards from a situation, you’ll likely get really confused.  Understandably.  It just keeps going — for ages.  I can’t see where it ends.  Can you?  This situation is here, now; it is synchronous and what “caused” it might, sometimes, just be an idea we make to explain things away.  But you created the situation too; you and lots of other things.  We are Creators, after all; it shouldn’t be so easy to forget that.

Perhaps the test is not to be responsible for what is created, but to accept and be conscious of what you’ve helped bring about and what you potentially can bring about, be it good, bad or really, nastily ugly.  It is what it is. Look it in the eye and say hello, because if you walk right past it you’ll never know.  She might have been thinking the same thing.

If I had a child and it said, “Dad, what’s something that might help me through life?”  I’d reply by saying, “Well, when you point your finger at someone, try to be aware — most of the time you’re pointing it at yourself.  But that’s all right; it’s an old habit, hard to deviate from.  Just keep it in mind and realise that we learn from each other because we are each other, in a sense.  Fear tends to come from oneself.”

The child might look at me boggle-eyed and laugh, but nonetheless that’s one little key I’d try to pass on over time (A key I’d make sure I refined if it got a little rusty and stopped opening doors).  And in turn, hopefully, the kid would tell me not to take everything so damn seriously and to always remember to have a laugh.  And I’d be looking myself right in the eyes when I did have a laugh in response.  Because it’s a funny game, this thing we play with one another and with the world.  When we were kids, it wasn’t nearly as scary though, was it?

We learn from each other.