I dare say, there is one simple fact that might send your identity, and sense of self flying. It’s so obvious, I have to say, it surprises me to come back to remembering it: you are moving.
Play a quick game – get out your cell phone and set the timer for 1 minute. Level 1: Start the timer, and count how many things about yourself you can find in motion.
Did you ever play one of those count the triangles in this picture kind of puzzles? There are the obvious ones, and then as you sink in a little further, you find even more of them. It’s not that they weren’t obvious, it’s that they hadn’t yet returned to being obvious.
I challenge you to play this game several times over the next few days. I suggest it will be like one of these puzzles. You’ll catch something about yourself that’s moving and you probably will have a very pleasant aha moment, as the obscured returns to obvious. For the adventurous, don’t be afraid to venture into parts of cognition, or mind, or consciousness, or attention, or awareness. What can you notice is moving?
I think at some point in time, the convenience of patterns overwhelms the drive toward lively novelty. Oh patterns, you help me type, and recognize letters and words and the gist of how to sit and see and wake and sleep and recognize my friends and where my clothes are and how to make coffee, and drink it. Patterns are earned. The very youngest among us, well, they don’t have so many yet and are at the mercy of their caretakers. Demonstrating how to replicate something in some way, acting in tangent with some pattern, I dare say all learning involves this.
And so we learn to be ourself. What works we keep. These are the patterns we trust. Depending on so many factors we will cling to our working identity, depending on what doesn’t work, we change our patterns. I have an ID and a social security card. My girlfriend is living with me. There is a very consistent sphere and range that I am able to make changes upon. Hello me.
I don’t typically like to say goodbye me. I’m also not arguing we should. Babies are so nineteen-ninety-I-just-got-born. I am here to suggest that the balance needs some reconfiguring. Actually I’m not here to say anything needs doing, rather, there is a game to be played with the balance left to tip and sway a bit more then we tend to. Did you know in standing we don’t hold still to balance ourselves? In order to walk, and certainly to run you have to lose your balance. We are well-equipped to recover our balance. Go ahead, lose it.
I don’t want to play your game for you. It’s your quarter. But I dare you, play again. One minute, go!
Level 2: set the timer for one minute, and find something that isn’t moving. Spend the rest of the minute trying to prove your original assessment wrong.
I have a special prize for someone who can answer me the question: When was the last time in the last 7,000 years that the world stopped moving?
I hope you have a lovely end of the Autumn season. Winter is nigh, and to my delight, the days will soon be growing longer. There’s a clue for one easy point for your game. Care to share some of your finds, or high scores? Please post about them here, I’m sure I have something to learn from each of you.
