i am a very stubborn person. it is, in large part, why i’m still here today. but sometimes, this stubbornness is much more a curse than a blessing. one of the true flaws i hold has its foundation in stubbornness. i am often unwilling to accept that people are as they are, that they can choose to be so, and that no matter how much you hope or want to see them otherwise, sometimes, you just have to accept it is never going to happen. not in this life, anyway.
it’s a real sore point for me, because i happen to believe that the only reason people are ever truly incapable of becoming is… well… choice. actually, that’s not quite correct. i think it is first a matter of awareness, then a matter of choice.
for a long time, i held a good deal of anger towards humanity in general because i did not realise that people are not always aware. that, in many cases, not only are they not aware, but they do not even have a construct of knowledge by which to find it, let alone become it.
i think it is likely a natural thing that one tends to assume of others that which one finds in oneself. but it seems a thing that often leads to some pretty amazing errors. the whole matter of awareness being the first from which many sprout for me. i remember having a very heated discussion with my last partner over this very thing. i was almost in tears for it, because it strikes at the heart of something that is very closely held and deeply meaningful to and for me.
the discussion began as a conversation about awareness. i asserted that it was a choice. he, that it was often not so. i disagreed, and set forth that all beings are aware. he immediately disagreed and countered that not only are most unaware, many actively choose unawareness because the level of effort and often, pain, that comes from awareness is a thing many wish to avoid.
this is something i have flatly rejected for a long, long time… not wanting to accept that it could be possible. the idea that, given a choice, people will actively decide not only to remain unaware, but to actively embrace it, and prefer it… this is a thing that, literally, breaks my heart.
now admittedly, i endure a lot of pain as a result of being in any way aware. and i readily admit that i am far, far from being as aware as i’d like to be… but i cannot imagine actively choosing to shut oneself off from it.
there is so much insight and contentment, so much true delight, so much learning that comes from having even this pitiful sliver of awareness from which to contemplate life, people, concepts.
i can honestly say that my worst day living as an aware being exceeds my best day spent in those moments i was not so. i cannot grasp that anyone would choose differently. truly. i have tried. in this, my own awareness fails. i cannot understand it. life is obviously intended to grant us learning, becoming, and discovery. how can any of these things exist if one does not embrace awareness? to live wrapped in a cloak of unawareness — can this be to truly live at all?
i remember how i ‘thought’ in the moments and days and years before i was awake, aware, and yes, i remember the moment in which the choice, for me, arrived. i placed that memory into crystal, knowing, somehow, that it was An Important Thing.
at the time, i was living in a rented room in one of the very worst areas of town. i won’t bore you with the gory details. suffice to say it was bad. i had just been laid off from the first non-manual job i’d ever held. i was crushed. it seemed as if the sky had gone dark, and all the possibility of sunlight had been removed from my world. it felt as if i would never be more than i was, and all aspiration toward being so was foolishness, pointless, without chance of ever being more than a pensive dream.
i sat there, in that filthy hovel of a room, and thought about life… literally thought about ‘why do i exist?’ and ‘what purpose does my existance serve?’ and as i did, i asked myself the question, ‘if there is nothing in life except what i know today, now, how can my existance be said to have any meaning whatever?’
that question was like a small explosion in my mind… because, for reasons unknown, the asking of it sparked visions of an almost infinite series of ‘different lives’… it was something like watching a movie being played upon my eyelids as i sat there, eyes closed, thinking.
for the first time in my life, i envisioned myself living differently… in so many ways… saw myself working any number of different types of jobs, living in myriad places, interacting with people whose faces i could see, but did not know, and it was like i was seeing some strange web of possibilities… all of which were branching out from that instant in time, and the only thing keeping me from any of them… was me… was my choice… was my ability or inability to embrace that they could exist, that i could be there, in any of those moment, any of those jobs, with any of those people.
it was like i stood at a central point within all the universe, and from where i stood, all these infinite paths sprung… and yes, among them was the one where nothing ‘changed’ and life went on as it always had, and i could look a ways down that path… but only a small distance… because after small distance of focused looking, it just faded out into the indecipherable.
curious, i set my thoughts to look along a few of the other paths… and i discovered that any one of them i could follow… some for a short time… some longer… none to their end. at different points along the way, each of them faded into the imponderable.
it was in that moment that i realised a good number of things… first of which was that any possible outcome of my life depended utterly upon whether or not i could conceive of being there, having that outcome, and knowing it as a thing that could exist as more than a dream.
even then, i was ever one to write down things that seemed important… and somewhere in an old, tattered notebook, that page still exists. i wrote in messy, jagged strokes, ‘to achieve a thing, you must first be able to conceive a thing.’ it was my first moment of ever experiencing more than the baseline of life. the very first time i could ever look beyond the moment or the boundaries of life as it existed and see something other than what was. it was the first time i had even tried to do so. and it was the first time in my life that i had ever as much as breathed upon the idea that it was possible to do or be something or someone other than the sum total of history and environment.
the moment itself was not a spectacular thing, for all it may sound so. it was actually a very quiet and somewhat tranquil thing. the storms of contemplation and the many ways in which awareness has often lent to little more than agony or despair were not envisioned in that moment. there was little of contemplation in it beyond the somewhat wondering thoughts that the only thing keeping me bound to ‘what i knew’ or ‘what it was possible for me to know’ was, in fact, the degree to which i clung to either or both and permitted them to define me.
the true depth and meaning of these thoughts were not fully understood in that moment, and there are many aspects of them that escape me still.
but from that moment forward, the process of such thinking, and the ways in which it has undeniably shaped me, changed me, and opened life to me has been an on-going and wholly enveloping thing. there is not a single aspect of my being that has not been utterly transformed by it. there are parts of me that are changing still as a result of that moment, and of my own decision to reach out and embrace all that was seen within it.
for many years, i have thought that this was a thing all people encountered. i thought this was a thing all people sought, and when at last found, was a thing all people cherished and delighted to embrace. it was not until very recently that i discovered my error and that i was and am profoundly incorrect in this assumption and conclusion.
in truth, i cannot say i yet fully accept that i am wrong. and here, we return to the truth of just how stubborn i am… and i chuckle for it.
you see, despite the fact that i have witnessed the many ways in which people actively reject that moment upon its arrival, and despite that i have personally witnessed that many people never even have such a moment, nor can they conceive of it, i remain utterly, utterly convinced that it is not people rejecting or never having such a moment because it is not a single moment in life, it is instead many moments, constant moments, even.
stretching into infinity, every moment is a moment that must be either embraced or rejected. moments arrive and continue to arrive throughout life… many of them, endlessly repeating… as the universe sends them and never tires of doing so.
so while it may be true that many people reject many moments, and while it may be true that, from any one person’s view, no such moment ever arrives, it is also true that all moments are such moments… waiting only for us to reach out and touch them, embrace them, and through them, find becoming.
ah, stubbornness. you pain me so, but i am still thankful.