Working Meditation

Observations on Human Connection & Contribution

Home » Time » Page 6

#47: Marking Time

I have an orchid that blooms diligently year after year; it was a house warming gift from a friend. The first year it bloomed from scratch in my new house, I shared its beauty with my family over video calls and messages. I had planted several interesting indoor plants in this new home so the orchid was one of many but what differentiated it was that, unlike others, it flowered. Then later that year my brother, who was a part of this message thread, passed away unexpectedly.

Since then every time this orchid blooms, I think of him with an achy heart. Not because he had any attachment to orchids but because the first time it flowered in my new home, we shared the joy. There is also a sweetness to this experience since the flowers appear only once a year over the summer. The unique shape of the flower along with annual blossoms may make you think that it’s a fickle plant but that’s not the case. It’s my easiest to care for plant with a flowering cycle that I can count on. And so I await this orchid’s flowers with a bittersweet feeling. Sweetness that my wait gets showered with the gift of a flower and the bitterness of marking time’s travel from my moment of loss.

This year, just as three buds started to appear, I adopted a cat named Fern. In her inquisitiveness, Fern sniffed and bit off one bud and the other two got dislodged while moving the orchid to a less accessible spot. In one fell swoop, I lost one of my key markers on this very private journey of loss. Before this episode I hadn’t acknowledged the role this flower was serving for me and now that I’ve lost it, I have been thinking about how its annual rhythm helped me navigate personal time and loss. The orchid didn’t create or remove the sadness of loss. It was more like an etch-a-sketch clock, self-created and impermanent. If it wasn’t an orchid, I would have likely anointed something else with this meaning. It seems to me that these personal markers infuse private meaning to time. While our focus is on time and not the markers themselves, if we didn’t have the markers…would we understand time’s passage the same way? If we didn’t have a sense for what a minute, hour, or year means in very personal terms, would we be able to infuse our compressed lives with so much joy and meaning? These markers give our aches, joys, and loves a time-bound container. They are like a metronome, keeping the beat of our lives, reminding us to live in alignment with our innermost nudges.

Even though my orchid’s fate next year lies in Fern’s self-control abilities, I think for now it will continue to serve as my private marker of love and loss.

“We live in secret cities
And we travel unmapped roads…

You and I, we are the secret citizens of the city
Inside us, and inside us

There go all the cars we have driven
And seen, there are all the people

We know and have known, there
Are all the places that are

But which used to be as well. This is where
They went. They did not disappear.”― Alberto Ríos

#41: Sniffing for truffles

I went looking for a thick book to put underneath my computer monitor, to elevate it to a more ergonomic position. I found a ~4-year old yoga manual that I hadn’t used because it was unsuitable for my sporadic practice. As I flipped through the pages however, I sank into the couch savoring the creative ways to sequence postures. I now had a container in which to apply this practical wisdom. “I’ll use this one”, I thought as I put it aside. I then moved on to an academic text that had felt overwhelming because of the dense content and small print. I opened it for a quick glance and was astounded by how much of it made sense and was now within grasp. “Ok, so not this one either”. Then I saw a random coffee table book of maps but found myself enjoying it given my interest in different cultures and people. This happened repeatedly, book after thick book. I would pick up my thickest oddball books only to realize that books that seemed peripheral or aspirational a few years ago genuinely pulled me in now.

I wondered how my past self had managed to surround me with material that my present self found compelling…almost felt like a gift from the past. How did she know?! It seems that something in her was drawn to a kernel of interest and she picked up these books with open-hearted curiosity and without an ounce of agenda. She didn’t push herself or try to impress others. She was attracted to certain ideas and created space for them even when she wasn’t completely ready to absorb their depth. These are the things that I surrounded myself with even before I completely knew why I was drawn to them and what to do with them.

You’ll likely have your own unique and varied collection of things that interest you. These interests may seem disparate, of little practical use, and you might even feel that you are extending into too many things. But we find ourselves like a hog searches for precious and fragrant truffles. We go sniffing on our internal trails of natural curiosity next to our trees of interests, we breathe in the fresh air of freedom and get stamina to keep going through non-attachment. This journey can take time, sometimes a process of years. Quieter patches of life interspersed with bouts of intense activity and at some point, ideas and inspiration start firing like they never did before. No matter where we are in the journey though, every time we spar with one of our genuine interests, we come back to the world renewed and refreshed. Also, no matter where we are in our journey, we have to practice patience. Anything worthwhile takes time to mature and bear fruit…and finding and living out our unique selfhood is one of the most worthwhile tasks of a human.

“Some days I am more wolf than woman and I am still learning how to stop apologizing for my wild” ― Nikita Gill

#39: Unseen impressions

Like many people, I’ve been on endless video calls over the last year. A few of these were facilitated sessions where, for one reason or another, the facilitator invited attendees to close their eyes and turn inward. I noticed that sometimes after closing my eyes, I would have the imprint of an image for the first few seconds. The first time I really noticed was because I saw the outline of someone sitting in meditation, like the buddha. For a very brief moment I genuinely thought that I had connected to a deeper, more anchored, part of me and that’s why I was seeing this calm outline. Then I opened my eyes to realize there was a massive buddha statue behind the teacher in an otherwise sparse background. I found the source of my imprint and it made sense. “Of course!!”, I thought and then moved on to forgot all about it.

Then a few months later, in another facilitated session, I saw the outline of a person with a large square next to them and a little square inside the large square. It was as if someone had painted these clear details in shades of charcoal. I kept on going with the assigned exercise and when I opened my eyes, I saw that my partner for this exercise was sitting next to a window with a small square box fan on the window sill. In this exercise, we were invited to offer deep presence to the person in front of us. All my attention was on my partner and I had not even noticed the window, let alone the box fan. Yet, all that information was imprinted behind my eyelids somehow. I didn’t make this happen consciously and even now that I’m more aware, this doesn’t always happen. It seems that for these impression to appear, a few conditions need to be present: the canvas of a quiet and empty mind, accompanied by a prolonged gaze, followed by closing the eyes to let the impressions appear. When my mind is hyperactive or when I look briefly, I don’t absorb all the details. When I gaze and don’t close my eyes, clearly I don’t see the imprint.

This makes me think if there are intellectual parallels to this and whether this holds true for our minds in general. What needs to be true for us to absorb information; when does the information make an imprint and when does it dissipate; and most concerning perhaps…what impressions might we be absorbing without even realizing?

It’s worthwhile to observe our unseen impressions. What are we making space for on our mental canvas, what do we spend our uninterrupted presence on, what do we think about when we turn inwards?

“The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke

#37: The endless shelf of disengagement

I enjoy books and found out about Libby last year. It’s a mobile app that allows people, in some countries, to borrow audiobooks and eBooks from their local Public Library for 21 days. If you’re not done reading within the loan period, you can renew or (if others are waiting) put another hold to get back in line. There are all sorts of amazing books at one’s fingertips for free. What’s not to like!

I have noticed however that now I might put holds on books that I’m just moderately interested in. Perhaps it’s a recommendation from someone but not what I need or want to read right now. Maybe I don’t even have time for it but because it has a long wait time, I get in line thinking I’ll have the space to absorb when my turn comes. Sometimes I’m too swamped to borrow when it’s my turn so I postpone my hold, while on other occasions I’ve excitedly borrowed a book I really wanted only to realize there are other books with fast approaching due dates that need to be finished first. Occasionally I finish the books before return date, which is very satisfying, but mostly I’m at various stages of completion when time runs out and I just don’t have the bandwidth to put another hold…so I let it slip. At these moments I feel like I have “failed” my intent. All kinds of amazing books in different genres―business, psychology, social commentary, history, fiction―partially read or unread. As if I’m juggling expiration dates, my reading moods and work rhythms, and they rarely match. The stakes to borrow are low, and the options and moods endless. The result: a very low start-to-finish rate confirming a distracted and uncommitted mind, which leaves me dissatisfied and displeased with myself, and sometimes even mildly anxious. But then I pause to notice an array of finished and deeply consumed books. The difference most often is that they are physical books, with higher stakes to acquire and maintain. I buy what I really want to read.

You might not have the same problem with books but this “endless shelf” of convenience and eventual disengagement is a fixture of our modern lives. It permeates culture and morphs our behavior in unexpected ways. You see it in how we consume products, interact with one another over social media, while dating, in friendships, and while tending to relationships in general. The endless shelf follows us unexpectedly into life’s nooks, molding us in the process without us even realizing. What starts off as convenience becomes an overabundance of options in a way that distracts us from committing to something meaningful that’s within reach. We see the next thing that piques our interest and drop what we had almost commited to without realizing that we dropped it. Over time, this history of perpetual motion without any real anchors makes us feel unmoored. Not connected to anything, anyone or even ourselves meaningfully to notice. And who might notice and help correct our lack of commitment anyway when everyone’s attention is getting scattered and splintered the same way? Who is committed enough to us to notice and help address our lack of commitment?

We are all wired differently and we move to different personal rhythms. But what is common is that we all need the weight and strength of commitment to live lives that are saturated with meaning and love. What doesn’t help create this heft and joyous saturation is the endless digital shelf where we keep looking to what’s next instead of commiting to what’s right here in front of us. Fear of Better Options (or FOBO) makes us continually disengage and surf the surface, which is antithetical to a well lived life. The first step in reclaiming our commitment is to notice our endless shelves and the second, arguably harder, step is to recommit to engagement because that is where all of life’s nectar is.

“May your fears yield
Their deepest tranquilities.” ― John O’Donohue

#32: Changing our minds

My dearest uncle was a general in the Indian Armed Forces; so my cousins and I spent our childhood summers in varied and gorgeous military cantonments across India, following our uncle to wherever he was posted as the commanding officer. One of his postings was to Shillong, a small town in Northeastern India, replete with the most luscious greenery I’ve ever seen. This included a seemingly endless bounty of pineapples, which all the other kids feasted on for several summers and I religiously avoided. I’ve never been particularly fond of pineapples. Maybe it was the overly sweet taste or the texture…I’m not sure.

Propel my life a few decades and somehow a bit of frozen pineapple made its way into my morning smoothie with raw cacao, banana and chia seeds. The taste combination was divine and it was the pineapple that gave the blend an extra dose of oomph! Since then, I randomly toss in frozen pineapple in my smoothies as a treat. And last weekend…I bought the first ever real pineapple of my life. It just looked gorgeous sitting there in the grocery store and I couldn’t keep my hands off. The next day when I walked by my Pacific Northwestern kitchen and saw this majestic fruit sitting unexpectedly on the counter, looking all sorts of tropical, beautiful and inviting, I had to pause and reflect on the pretty sudden U-turn. What changed?

I found the right on-ramp for the pineapple. That is, the right context and dose for my taste buds. But my taste buds have also evolved to allow for that on-ramp in the first place. Perhaps you have a “pineapple” in your life? Something you avoided in the past and now are intrigued by? What changed? Allow yourself the space to embrace your pineapple. Mine is making my life sweeter.

“To grow, you must be willing to let your present and future be totally unlike your past. Your history is not your destiny.”― Alan Cohen