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Today I learned television was invented and had live broadcasts in 1927. in Europe and in America.
In Hungary I saw my first television, the machine, not even a program when I was seven years old, in 1954. The television was in the Prime minister’s house. Her daughter was in my kindergarten class. The whole kindergarten class walked to their house and ogled the television.
I lived across the street from the school.
So when it was the famous and exciting broadcast, space travel, I think showing the sputnik, the whole class came to our apartment. I lived closest to the school.
I have vivid memories of those times. And most of those memories were when we as a group did something.
We had a classmate who had brain tumor that visibly pushed her eyes out and then she died. We visited her before she died, the whole class. On the way back to the school we passed a yard with turkeys, and we all chanted: A peacock is more beautiful than a turkey. a Hungarian nursery rhyme.
I have more group memories from that time, than from the rest of my life.
I looked up the school and the old house on google. Nothing is the way it was 70 years ago.
The most striking difference I see is that I am now alone. I only have transactional relationships, not relationships of the heart.
When I was 34, I left Hungary, illegally, and immigrated to Israel. I was alone, and that has never changed.
Israel was an alien culture to me. Not just because of the language, but because people were different. Unfamiliar.
Kwetching, which I never experienced in Hungary, was the order of the day. I don’t have the energy! I don’t have the time!
Lying.
A culture laden with unwillingness.
Three years later life has transported me to the USA. Found here even more lying, even more unwillingness.
I bet that just like with television, Hungary has caught up since. but I am not there, I am here.
I even find myself lying. I can’t is my most frequent lie. Instead of telling the truth: it is painful and I don’t even want to try.
I stop myself, a lot, saying I can’t. What is underneath is clearly unwillingness. A heavy inertia. Had to look up the word. Every time I have to look up a word I KNOW there is a reason I don’t remember the word. some lie is blocking it.
Inertia
Inertia is what keeps you doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different life. A tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged.
Even though we all say we want more, better, different. We want love. Or joy. Or success. We don’t want to feel alone. But when it comes to taking an action that is different from what we have been doing. we balk. And lie about it.
Occasionally an invented attitude, an invented context helps us get over that balking. and we get a glimpse of a life we are missing. But no new path is taken, it is an incident, not a new path. Next time we will balk again, and unless there is an alive attitude or context, we’ll say ‘I can’t‘ again.
I learned something today that I may be able to make part of who I am.
Being in kindergarten about things.
What made my kindergarten years so enjoyable was that I didn’t know.
I don’t know is an expression of humility. An expression of being open. An expression of curiosity.
Interestingly, I don’t remember any girl from my kindergarten class. Elementary school? yeah, but not kindergarten. I remember all the boys though. And they were all in love with me. They even fought over me. I really liked that.
And I remember the toys. I had no toys at home. I stole some from kindergarten. I learned not to take them home. My parents would just return the toys. So I asked the downstairs neighbor, Olga, to hold them for me. She made me rub her feet. That was a price she set for being a co-conspirator with me…
In kindergarten everything was a big deal to me. New, and exciting. I don’t remember when I got jaded.
By jaded I mean I was no longer present to much of anything, because I knew. And knowing is all mind.
I looked up ordering the spicy chicken sandwich from Popeyes. And found that the memory of the one time I had one of those is in the way. I had no curiosity, no kindergarten attitude.
I guess this is what the meme means: bring a beginner’s mind to life. In everything.
The mind, the ego don’t like this. They want shortcuts. they want to exclude reality from our life.
I see this creeping in in my chewing practice. I don’t have to pay attention to the taste, the texture, because I already know. Not willing, not ready to be surprised, be delighted, experience joy. Not willing.
Or cooking.
Or reading an article…
If and when you already know, what you know comes from the mind and not from the present, not from reality.
I have a student who has been eating slowly all her life. Now, in the Drink your Food challenge, her interpretation of the challenge is to chew 40-50 times each bite, lasting minutes. The challenge is not about eating slowly. It is about chewing. Chewing thoroughly. When you eat slowly, when chew slowly, you do it because you are not present. You are somewhere else in your mind, and can’t and don’t experience anything that is in reality.
Chewing 50 times takes 22-25 seconds…
The Drink your Food challenge teaches you to meditate.
A Zen meditation. Or mindfulness meditation if you prefer. No mind, just experience. No words.words mean you went to the mind to find an earlier similar thing. aka you are not present. Meditation is wordless. I guess that is why TM, Transcendental Meditation gives you a mantra. so you can’t think…
You CAN speak from no-mind, but it’s a rare person who can. That is one of the things the 1000’s can do. not speak from their minds.
I know you are speaking from your mind when you don’t hear that I am trying to interrupt you. And thus is the case with everything: in the mind you can’t hear reality calling. The tastes, the textures, the speed, the experience. Nothing.
Going back to kindergarten is the key. The key to joy. The key to the Promised Land.
I know you doubt that you can do it. But you’ll never know unless you try. Try it for 5 days.
Your results will be a reliable predictor for the rest of your life.
If you can experience being present, longer than a glimpse, then you can grow from there. If you can’t, then you’ll likely spend the rest of your life in your mind, in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. I give you permission to hate me…
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