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Your original false solution for everything is going to nudge you till you die.
My original false solution is hope. Actions based on hope. Hope that things will be OK, or better.
Or that I am ready now… that I’ll survive.
I could not see this until I got myself into the situation where my survival is not handled yet, of maybe even can’t be handled no matter what I do.
The fact that I could drag myself from my sleeping chair to the kitchen to have a cup of tea doesn’t mean that there is any future for me, and that I now should order whatever the next fancy is.
It’s hard.
It’s been hard, but more importantly quite ineffective to disengage hope. It’s not just that it’s been my go-to place for comfort for 76 years, more that it is a hidden power, the human condition in action.
No one has gotten out of the human condition alive. And we are all in this soup together.
Not many people will get the opportunity to clearly see what they have given their lives to… the false solution. I would consider myself lucky if it were even just a little less painful… I don’t. It’s horrible.
But I have a lot of time at hand, given that I can’t do hardly anything with my time… other than stay aware, stay alert, and distinguish.
I imagine being a disembodied brain kept alive in water… only the pain is the difference… that I still have a body that can hurt.
Anyway, I have done the work of distinguishing for quite a few of you in my head… and I am ready to share, as soon as the body agrees. Not just yet. I have postponed the workshop that was scheduled for Saturday, with the hope that next Saturday I can actually physically do it.
It would be so much more predictable if I could lose the body…
What I have seen this past night is this: Only action makes a difference, if what you want is an alteration of your course.
Most people never do anything that does… or maybe they do, but not long enough.
The action needs to be relevant, strong enough to change something, and long enough to matter.
And, of course, whatever you think you are doing in your head is not action. Not even in the ballpark of action.
I have been having calls with one of my students daily for a few weeks, I really don’t know for how long.
Having calls sound like action, right? But so far none of these calls have produced an single action… not from the student, not from me.
On the other hand my nephew who asked me to be strong and hang in there, has produced and action from me of not giving up, not reacting, no jumping into conclusion, for I don’t know five days now?
Not doing something is also an action… an action that either alters your course of keep you on the old one.
Action is the rarest thing in the human condition. Talking is the most frequent.
PS: If you want to read beautiful writing of people who chose to act, go here
