Space, No Time

Aleathia says:

The other morning, after a long shift at work, I had a great conversation with my friend Tim as we waited for our time at work to be over.  I can't remember how we managed to slide onto the subject of concepts of time, but we did.

Tim talked about how on a daily basis, for just about all his life, he has had no concept of time.  He understands time counted, but its regimentation is lost to him.  He is one of those people that lives in space, not in time.  Further into the conversation he talked about how this made him feel like an outsider and how it challenged him to see things the way others see them.  Tim said he needed solid relationships to ground him to time.

My interjection to this conversation came from a Buddhist perspective.  In Buddhism, there is a base function of "form is emptiness; emptiness is form".  This is a simple sentence, but a drastically hard concept to swallow on a daily basis.  It requires one to let go of time and even sometimes space to live in a place that is built on the fluid idea that everything is connected, there is no beginning and no end.  Everything exists and does not exist simultaneously.

It seemed to me that those of us who try to live in some amount of awareness have a goal to live in a way that comes naturally to Tim.  He lives in the present with little worry of the past or the future.  I am one of those, for most of my life, who has been grounded too much in what was and what will be. When you live in such a place you have little time to be present with the life happening before you. You can miss the simplicity of clouds moving across the sky, bird song, laughter, small beauties and sorrows, and what other people are trying to tell or show you.

The American culture is one of having more....all the time.  We must go faster, get more, live harder. It is not difficult to get caught up in this or with people telling what you should achieve in your life. How many of us get bullied into living someone else's dream or expectation of us?

This idea of living in the present has been an achievement of mine. It has been an expectation that I want to live up to. Today I sat down to meditate and flipped to a page in the Dalai Lama's "The Art of Happiness" and came to this passage, aptly:

"Dealing with expectations is really a tricky issue. If you have excessive expectations without a proper foundation, then that usually leads to problems.  On the other hand, without expectation and hope, without aspiration, there can be no progress. Some hope is essential. So finding the proper balance is not easy. One needs to judge each situation on the spot."--Dalai Lama

To me, being able to have enough balance in which to achieve expectations comes from the balance and awareness of time and space.  Too much time leads to not being able to live in the present.  Too much space leads to lack of awareness.

This idea of time and space that Tim brought up has really struck a cord in me.  I was glad I was present in that moment and soaked in what he had to say. We all need more moments like that where we share the higher, spiritual knowledge that we house in our bodies.  It gives perspective and openness.

Aleathia

Recovering What Was Lost (Hello books!)

Aleathia says:

Those of you that know me or have followed me here at The Forked Road, know it has been a challenging couple of years with the loss of both my parents.  I never thought they would go so suddenly and so early, but if I look at it now maybe it was a blessing.  The both of them had multiple illnesses that in the end would have made them suffer terribly.  I am not sure I would have enjoyed watching them dwindle and cling to life.  I am not sure I would have been any more ready to let them go if they were older.  It is hard to say.

My mother's death was one of those devastating moments in life.  Our relationship was always tentative.  I believe she loved me in her own way, but her personality and my personality were on two different plans of the universe.  She did show me a certain amount of strength and perseverance that I will always hold dear, but in the end, I feel like her mental illness and drug abuse weighed more heavily on me than I liked.  Sadly and to many people's disbelief, I was relieved she was gone.  That was my struggle for the last two years....dealing with that relief plied with grief.  I should have seen a counselor, but I didn't.  I suffered alone.  I kept everyone out of my life and carried the burden on my rapidly aging back.

With her departure, she somehow took from me some of the things I loved most.  I had always been an avid reader, a lover of adventures in books, and someone with a great imagination.  I have struggled with these things over the last 2 years.  I read a total of 4 books last year.  4 books.  I could not concentrate long enough to gulp down the words to be interested in a story.  My last book of 2015 took me 6 months to finish.  It was barely 200 pages.

When I went home for my father's funeral I was able to spend a lot of time with my 82 year old grandmother.  Through all of life, she has been the rock firmly planted in my life.  She has always been a safe place to land, a lighthouse to a ship on dark seas.  As a child, I remember her apartment was always filled stem to stern with books.  At the age of 10, she introduced me to a fantasy series by Piers Anthony and my life was never the same.  I did not go on to be a fantasy book lover, but somehow it egged me into reading everything I could find.  My high school years were spent in library stacks discovering the world through someone else's eyes.  I feel I owe my love of reading to her.  I have surrounded myself with books my whole life, even when I didn't have money for food, because at least I would have some other adventure to go on in the face of hunger and dark times.

We talked about our shared loss and our shared depression over the last few years.  We counseled each other into a better place because we knew my mother differently than any other people in the world.  We knew the truth.  In these conversations, my grandmother shared that she did not know how to read until she was 10 and that her father was beside himself over it.  He used to yell at her and shame her for it.  She says that the words always looked mixed up and made no sense, so I think she had dyslexia.  She said one day, the words just straightened out and she has been devouring books ever since.

I feel like my grandmother at 10 years old.  I feel like I woke up from some deep and terrible sleep to find my love of reading again.  I feel like everyday is Christmas; every word a present.  I am concurrently reading three books at a time: fiction, non-fiction, and religion.  I finished my first book today and there is a glee in my heart that I am not sure I will ever be able to describe.  I feel like I am finding my way home.

Thank you all for sticking with me through these dreary two years.  It means the world to me that you keep coming back.  I only hope that my struggles have helped a few people over their own.  I hope to get back to sharing more art and food and books in the future.  My love to you all.

Aleathia