Who?

I’ve been thinking of how, in the vast expanse of the universe, would I recognize myself. What distinguishes me in such a way that anyone could answer me: Who am I? Among all sentient beings on this planet, what distinguishes me from all others?

I am, first of all, a man who wants to be fully alive no matter how many times I have traveled around the sun. I want a deep intimacy with the world, and that is characterized by my being an attentive gardener. I want to be a guardian of the world I see when I wake in the morning.

I am someone with an open heart and I welcome anyone wanting to join me in my adventure of plunging into the world. I am curious and an avid student of the world, living and not living. I teach about plants to anyone who seems attentive and I participate in discovering geology through classes at the University of Minnesota.

I love to read, and I am currently nestled between the covers of: Caste, My Grandmother’s Hands, Until The End of Time, Mindfulness And Intimacy, Fidelity and Educated. I am engaged in four book circles with other readers.

Currently, my favorite poet is Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer whom I read daily along with Rainer Maria Rilke. I have a daily meditation practice and exercise program.

The question is still: Who am I? I am a man who is determined to be deeper and deeper in love with life. I stumble in that pursuit, I recover, I turn corners frequently. I do my best to turn away from the desire to possess or be possessed. Instead, I try to experience myself as part of all that is. A unique part.

Circle

It is such a circular kind of thinking. It is a circular way of seeing things that I often find myself following to define and describe what is real. All I know, all I have to go on is what I perceive with my senses. My senses alone tell me what exists. My senses connect me to what I determine is real. It is often a circuitous route, but it always comes back to what my senses tell me, what I learn through my senses. It is a circle.

It is typical that physicists fabricate laws to explain and define reality. Those laws and definitions have constantly changed as perceptions have changed. Even those explanations and laws are based on sensory observations.

For me, the laws of physics describe what is real and project what can be. They all are ultimately based on sensory experience, on what senses have perceived. It is a circular way of thinking that I say what is real only based on what my senses pick up. Anything else that is real is beyond my knowing. It would be foolish to say that nothing exists outside my bubble of perception and the thinking based on it.

The tools that physicists use all are extensions of the senses. Even the tools that look into what happens inside atoms and how small particles perform convert it all into sensory data. All my knowledge is based on this way of gathering information.

It makes no sense to me that some people limit reality to what they can perceive with the senses. It is a circular way of thinking. Of course, their reality is limited to what their senses perceive because that is how they define what is real. That is a circle.

Useful

I realize what it is a gift for me to feel useful. It is something I want. In any setting, I want to be of use and to feel useful. I have my own notions about how I can be useful. I am aware of my potential to be useful. But from a practical side, I am only really useful when my usefulness is accepted and received. I can think of myself as a potentially useful gardener, but I am actually useful to my garden when my gardening is effectively received.

The same is true of my human interactions. I am effectively useful only when what I have to offer is accepted and received. This morning, I am aware how that applies to my presence on the Annex Board.

I not only want to be effectively useful, but I also want my usefulness, my useful presence to be recognized and sometimes acknowledged. I want what I say to be listened to and be heard. I want my involvement to be accepted and maybe even valued, and not routinely resisted. I want to feel useful in just about every setting I enter.

For many years I have watched it happen to others as they were dismissed as not being of use. Sometimes I have intervened to affirm their usefulness when it was not being recognized by others. Today I am especially aware how this dynamic happened to me last evening. This time it was I who felt aware of what it feels like to not feel useful, and I am reminded how I am resolved not to cause others to feel that way.

I also learned that I must either find a way to shield myself from the experience of dismissal, or remove myself from the situation where I am not effectively useful.

For years I lived in a situation at home where I did not feel of use. I am now recognizing that my involvement with the Annex has run its course. I realize that I am not considered useful enough, not effectively useful. Most important, I no longer feel of use.

Gray

My days lately have been clouded by gray. My common instinct is to resist. Everything requires more effort than I remember. The gray has woven itself into my typical feeling of being connected. Everything seems to have wrapped itself in a soft and obscuring cloud. Shapes are less vivid. Everything is remote.

More than anything, I am missing my feeling of being connected to other people, my companions. So many gestures to connect hover in the gray mist without encouraging response. The feeling of separateness grows around me, insulating me in gray.

What I am able to succeed in doing is to turn my focus more inside myself and become more aware of what I am experiencing. I observe the grayness. I am convinced that what at times feels like a gray dead end is not what it appears to be. There is a reality lurking beyond, and it will unfold.

At the moment, however, I am not sure about how to penetrate my gray ambience. I know there is no dead end, only a time when the path seems not clear, the footing less secure.

I walk slowly in grayness, patiently, expectantly.

Enough

On one level, I believe that what I have is enough. Those reassuring moments of deep connection, however, do not seem to linger. Again and again, I am faced with wanting to go deeper, to spend more time, to linger, to be intimately connected.

Today I have settled deeply into the embrace of the woods where my cabin is nestled. I am surrounded by a familiar natural spot I so deeply love and to which I am tenderly connected. Then the moments come when that seems not quite enough, and I want to share this woodsy intimacy with others, or at least with someone. I text, and a small amount of that sharing happens. But it is not enough.

It actually is easy for me to identify individuals with whom I would want to share this special spot. But I think it is unlikely to happen. It will never be enough.

So I am faced with the intimacy of this place and what it means to be alone here. I wonder if this enough. It is a question I have when I think of the intimacy I want to experience with the world. Will it ever be enough? Will the intimacy I have learned and experienced with the world ever be enough, regardless how much I have absorbed.

When, if ever, will it really be enough? For now, it may have to be what it is. It is all I have.