Meeting the Eye

There are a couple of components to this, but I think they’re related. One of which I’ve been meaning to write about for a while now, the other which is cuttingly fresh. By the way, I’m writing this with the cat sleeping between my outstretched and now numb legs. The lengths I go to to please others!

I’ve let myself slip over the past couple of months from my daily forest walks, my regular words of gratitude and an overall, hopeful demeanor threading throughout my days. I’ve lost the practice and returned to just “that guy” sitting around waiting for the weekend. Gone is the vibrancy in my thoughts and behavior. It isn’t an absence of joy because I’m aware that joy still exists, but at the moment it seems out of reach as I plod step after unmotivated step through my days, scoffing at those around me, criticizing the flaws of others. And even in that there is no real pizazz. I’ve simply lost touch with the deeper connection I had been developing with my waking hours. The world has grown flat and edged out conscious living.

And now, in the following couple of hours after finding out my father has had significant heart surgery with an unknown prognosis, I feel the same way. Of course, if on the phone with a sibling or my mother and they start to cry, I start to cry, but it’s short lived. After the phone calls I have a brief outpouring of emotion, but quickly return to being pragmatic. Denial? Probably. Emotional fatigue? There’s that too (not feeling for a stretch of time is actually quite draining). A lack of awareness? Bingo.

There’s a damn solid connection between being properly aware and conscious of the imports of life, and being properly human. When we’re truly paying attention and cutting out all the shit that surrounds and distracts us, we get a little closer to environmental connection. Our guard drops to the important things making us vulnerable, but in a way that can increase understanding, or connection, or whatever frufru term you want to use for it.

On the other hand, when we’re just mindlessly stumbling around, like most of us do, we lose that vulnerability that helps make us complete. We stop thinking critically and thoroughly, and as a result become distant to the connections that should be central to our lives. We lose engagement with life, and bounce around it like a moth on a lantern. We stop feeling, be it sorrow, happiness, fear or hope.

I was fortunate enough to have the wherewithal to finally go for a walk in the woods today. I gave thanks for some things that I’m grateful for, and asked for other things that are lacking. I’m not sure if this single experience informed the rest of my day, but it changed my thought patterns briefly, and gave reason to do it again.

Pay attention out there everyone. There’s a shit tonne more to our lives than meets the eye.