Day: October 13, 2017

I used to collect quotes the way children collect playing cards. I would laud each one, storing it away in notebooks that grew beyond the cardboard sheaths. in time quotes turned into passages and passages into books, becoming the library that fills my living space. These quotes, passages, and finally stories brought me joy and also understanding. As I move deeper into myself in search of a core understanding–of a way to move forward, I’ve returned to that core collection of quotes. I’ve bathed in the thoughts of Thich Nhat Hanh, Deepak Chopra, and so many others who offer a path towards mindfulness and towards inner peace.

Another author, Deborah Reber writes, ” Letting go doesn’t mean that you don’t care about someone anymore. It’s just realizing that the only person you really have control over is yourself.” That is an important step to take, as it is important to craft a life that is filled with joy and not pain, though often the source of one can be the source of the other through circumstance and emotion. This is why I must let go and let what must happen, abandoning that sense of right and wrong and the corrosive effects of the imbalance that colors my life. Meanwhile I turn inward, hopeful of what I can become as an individual and quietly cultivating what that is.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Thich Nhat Hanh writes, “Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.” But it is important to consider what we are hoping for. Are we hoping for the impossible–something that cannot exist because too many steps were taken away from that dream and now it is too damaged, too one-sided to be anything more than currently exists? Or do we hope that what is happening–what forms the impossible itself is misunderstood?

 

 

 

 

I believe in happy endings. I believe the path there is cut from the sacrifices of heroes. I believe the stories that speak of such things are built not from a formula per say but from the components of human imagination. Alchemy is defined as “a seemingly magical process of transformation, creation, or combination.” Imagination is defined as “the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses.” I believe these two processes are the same thing, a point in which the human mind reaches beyond the known to connect with what can be known and moreover can be believed.

We are part of an infinite universe that, it seems, stemmed from a singular event–a singular atomic particle. That means we are all connected across the vastness of space and time and the dimensions that we have yet to understand or observe. The particles of life communicate–be it through chemical reaction or the simple kiss of wind against your cheek. Everything is part of that larger conversation. Every snippet of talk I hear as I walk by, every interaction I see, every conversation I overhear informs my conscious and subconscious and grants me momentary access to the imaginable. The alchemy of Imagination is the taking of that raw data and transforming it into a connection between individuals; to build a bridge of understanding that spans what we believe and what we feel.

Perhaps such lofty ideals is too much to ask of a simple story. When I write I pull together these thoughts and I hope that someone gets what I am trying to say. I hope more than someone takes what I am trying to say and performs their own alchemy to shape what I have cast into what they need in order to make sense of where they are.

Like anyone subject to long stretches of failure, hope can seem dim and I can feel like I no longer know how to compose. I am not a philosopher’s stone and cannot always find the right words to transform idea into story, but I can continue to try. For a while I stopped trying and forgot that the key is not to succeed, but to effort. I forgot that the components of imagination still clang and rattle in my psyche no matter what I say or do, and there is nothing else to do but try and turn them into something useful.