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And, in the walkin'-talkin' koan department comes the sometimes-whispered, sometimes-yowled ...
"Nobody understands me!"
Simultaneously, in day to day affairs, there is some recognition that where friends, lovers or enemies do, to some extent, seem to understand, still their understandings limit who I am in ways that amount to a continued lack of understanding: I am not just a soccer mom or just a writer or just a telephone lineman or just a stock broker or just a genius or just a red neck or just a truck driver or just a dad or just a comedian or just a Zen student or just a priest or just a marathon runner or just a builder of houses or just a cook or just a ... just a anything at all. And descriptives that parse the scene and add different facets to complete the whole ... still it is not whole.
Nobody understands me.
I want someone to understand.
But when they do understand, they don't.
And when they don't understand -- when every agreeable or disagreeable understanding seems to fall short of the truth -- perhaps it is time to reflect: How much better am I at understanding me? I can say what a lack of understanding feels like -- mistaken or limiting or close-but-no-cigar -- but can I really say what would be bang-on true and lacking in constriction? Nobody else can hit the bulls-eye, but I'm no expert either.
Nobody understands me and neither do I.
But where the whispering and yowling abate, where the facts consent to stand still for a moment without the overlays of despair or delight ... well, how about them apples?!
Who is this nobody who understands me?
Nobody understands me and yet I am capable of kindness and cruelty, laughter and tears, silly and serious, smart and stupid. This 'nobody' is pretty versatile, it seems, and nailing this 'nobody' down is like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall. Who in his right mind would try to nail Jell-O to a wall?
Jell-O is just something to eat, isn't it?
I don't know about you, but I think Jell-O can be pretty tasty... jiggly, fun and tasty.
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Within my mind there has been a lot of views, perceptions and processes running in and out of it over the past while. Something like the smoke of burning incense blurring one's clarity of vision.
ReplyDeleteThere are alot of dust in the entire cosmos, it is weird to suggest that an animated human body is too made of dust, and when the life-force leaves the body (assuming that there ever were such a term as a life-force), what was dust is still dust.
Sitting at the wake of a close relation, watching the facial expressions of many a kin and kith. Some are sorrowful, some are smiling, and who am I to put a ruler next to them to describe their genuine motivations or states of understanding?
.. Chanting Amitabha makes sense; and still it is as meaningful as listening to the wind blow pass; or the whisper of the living into the ears of the departed...
More than understanding.. I have tried to understand, I have understood, I have misunderstood, I have re-understood, and when I put all the apprehensions (or misapprehensions) from day 1 till today -- like a jigsaw puzzle -- everything remains baffling like a puzzle ought to..
Lionel