“Foolish. Incredibly foolish. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.” Claudia Schmidt
It’s actually rather nice to realize that I have begun to awaken from being so foolish. What a fool I have been not to see what has been so obvious and right in front of me. For most of my life, I have lived in an interior world of categories, a world defined by my very human mind. My culture has helped that definition a lot. So much has been an illusion.
All around me, a perception-ready world presented itself. Yet I have mostly experienced it all through a filter of my own fabricated ideas. I had so much more to be aware of, to work with.
It has been the nature of my human mind to see all the world through a pixelated lens that broke all existence into small bits of categorized data. All along, it could have been so much simpler. Everything simply is. I have struggled and worked hard to make it something that reflects my own notions and ideas rather than the other way around.
Concretely, I live in a city created by people, defined by concepts arising out of creative minds. At the same time, all around the real world goes on, ignoring what we humans have created. So it will continue long after we humans are gone.
Nature follows its own laws and patterns, oblivious of what humans have done and what they dream. We attempt to control and harness nature according to our own ideas and notions, but nature follows its own mind.
We destroy forests to plant crops in rows to fit our ideal of what providing food is like. We employ chemistry to attempt to manipulate the growth of plants. But nature has a mind of its own.
I tend my own garden and attempt to shape it according to my own notions and ideas. It is best when I yield to the desires of plants and we dance a waltz of close interaction and intimacy, following one another’s lead. I have mostly been a fool to fail to see the plants as they really are and not as reflections of my own ideas and dreams.
They have been here before I came and will likely prevail when I am gone. All this will change, ignoring what I might dream or imagine. It is a joy to see what I am able with eyes of one who is part of the world and not apart from it. What a joy it is to begin to wake up and no longer see with foolish eyes.
And all I have to do is yield to what is.