I am often overwhelmed but the variety that exists in the universe - I mean, there's a shitload of things just on, say, Facebook, or in San Francisco. Too many to keep up with, and that's just the smallest fraction of the smallest bit of one tiny moment in time of a vast and potentially endless....blah blah blah. You get the idea.
But with all this variety, so many things are the same. Weeks, for instance. Like many of us, my weekdays follow a pattern - I don't work on the weekend, I start work again on Monday, I hang out with friends on Friday nights, I watch movies on Saturdays, etc. Last Sunday, my partner, kind of out of nowhere, said, "I can't stand it anymore! It's Sunday, then Monday, and Tuesday and so on, again, and again, and again!" Does anyone else ever get that way? I do.
Others have different routines from mine - but everyone has some routine. Our basic biology warrants a certain amount of routine - eating, sleeping, shitting, peeing. If you want to live, those things have to keep happening. Breathing too, but that happens SO frequently it doesn't provoke that "Gosh, I have to breathe *again*?" feeling. But I do sometimes feel that way about sleeping, eating, etc.
I also sometimes start to wonder about all the different places I have done the same thing. I sleep mostly in my bed at home, but I've recently slept all over New York, and before that Vegas, and before that Cairo and so on. And peeing! How many thousands of places in the world have I urinated? It's not even comprehensible - and I'm not even one of those people who pee a lot. But I have peed all over the world, from fancy bathrooms to crap-splattered port-a-potties; I've peed in 15 countries, countless cities, three continents, and once in space. Actually, no, I have never peed in space, but I would, if I could. I've left behind little bits of my genetic code and, quite literally, a part of myself, in so many different places it boggles the mind.
I sometimes think of this when I am in a new, unexpected bathroom. "Well," I think, "There's one more down. I'll never be able to keep track of this." Not that I am trying, but it does sort of call me to be in the present. I'm not peeing mindlessly, my thoughts on the past or the future; I am here now, peeing in the here and now, and it's...well, it's not exciting, per se - that would be the wrong word - but it's arresting, a little bit. When I notice I'm in a new bathroom, I really am present.
I don't want to give the impression bathrooms are the ONLY place I feel that; I have the same moment whenever I drive down a street in San Francisco I have never been on before, or travel. I think, "Hey, I am standing on a spot on the earth that I have never stood on before!" That IS kind of exciting.
The ability to do something over and over sometimes gets called into question, for me, when it intersects with technology. I *assume* that I can keep on peeing while I'm alive, but every time I do something technical or mechanical, I think, gee, I wonder how many times that is going to work. I'm always afraid to open my sunroof on my 1986 BMW, because it seems like sunroofs weren't necessarily built to last, and I suspect the designated number of times it was designed to open has *got* to be exceeded by now. But the sunroof does still work - I open it, despite the fear. It's a small way to confront fear, sure, but every little habit that builds courage and integrity helps.
When thinking of useful lives of things, I can't help but turn to those single-use items because that really can drive a person mad. Single use plastic forks. Single use ketchup packets. I mean, REALLY? Plastic bottles that had to be manufactured and then become (for the most part) trash, for a long time. In fact, several sites say plastic bottles NEVER decompose, but the oft-quoted figure is 450 years. And why do we make something that will sit around for 450 years? To hold WATER, just ONCE, for a pretty short period of time. Glass bottles take a million years to breakdown, and when you think about making a bottle that will last for millions of years to hold water for, in some cases, maybe just a day, it makes you realize how insane our modern world is. Leather, on the other hand, biodegrades in 50 years. We should be using leather waterskins, instead of plastic bottles, really, except that calls into the question slaughtering animals which is its own issue.
(I don't mean to depress anyone - and trash can be really depressing. In fact, just the opposite! My BMW has had many years of use, but really, on the cosmic scale, it's kind of more like a single-use ketchup packet than we commonly think of. Different time scales can really lend perspective. But hey, people do live in the world, after all. And they make things. Things can be wonderful, and I am glad we have them. We should just recycle them, that's all.)
Back to the nature of reality, which is both repetitive (wow, lots of times one pees in a lifetime) and unique (wow, lots of different moments of peeing in many places). I don't have a conclusion, except to say it is. It seems to be. It's interesting.
I like to get behind the meaning of things, and sometimes I wonder why we pee. I mean, why breath, why eat, etc. I think it's just another way of the universe helping to point us, over and over, to connection. To the essential oneness of us all. We all pee. My pee goes out and mingles in the world with lots of other people's pee. It might not seem like fun to think about, but it IS true and it DOES connect us. The air I breathe out is the air you breathe in. Or the animals breathe in or the plants breathe out. There is NO way to deny the connection. It's like the universe has a giant flashing neon saying saying "We are all ONE. Boundaries are an illusion. All divisions are arbitrary. It's fun to forget that, and it's fun to remember. Remember to forget who you are, and don't forget to remember who are."
I'm not sure thinking about how often and when and where one has peed over the course of one's life is necessarily the BEST way to get zen, but it's certainly one way. Feel free to think of this that next time you go to the bathroom. It will be just a little bit more fun, I suspect. Well, it is for me, anyway.
But with all this variety, so many things are the same. Weeks, for instance. Like many of us, my weekdays follow a pattern - I don't work on the weekend, I start work again on Monday, I hang out with friends on Friday nights, I watch movies on Saturdays, etc. Last Sunday, my partner, kind of out of nowhere, said, "I can't stand it anymore! It's Sunday, then Monday, and Tuesday and so on, again, and again, and again!" Does anyone else ever get that way? I do.
Others have different routines from mine - but everyone has some routine. Our basic biology warrants a certain amount of routine - eating, sleeping, shitting, peeing. If you want to live, those things have to keep happening. Breathing too, but that happens SO frequently it doesn't provoke that "Gosh, I have to breathe *again*?" feeling. But I do sometimes feel that way about sleeping, eating, etc.
I also sometimes start to wonder about all the different places I have done the same thing. I sleep mostly in my bed at home, but I've recently slept all over New York, and before that Vegas, and before that Cairo and so on. And peeing! How many thousands of places in the world have I urinated? It's not even comprehensible - and I'm not even one of those people who pee a lot. But I have peed all over the world, from fancy bathrooms to crap-splattered port-a-potties; I've peed in 15 countries, countless cities, three continents, and once in space. Actually, no, I have never peed in space, but I would, if I could. I've left behind little bits of my genetic code and, quite literally, a part of myself, in so many different places it boggles the mind.
I sometimes think of this when I am in a new, unexpected bathroom. "Well," I think, "There's one more down. I'll never be able to keep track of this." Not that I am trying, but it does sort of call me to be in the present. I'm not peeing mindlessly, my thoughts on the past or the future; I am here now, peeing in the here and now, and it's...well, it's not exciting, per se - that would be the wrong word - but it's arresting, a little bit. When I notice I'm in a new bathroom, I really am present.
I don't want to give the impression bathrooms are the ONLY place I feel that; I have the same moment whenever I drive down a street in San Francisco I have never been on before, or travel. I think, "Hey, I am standing on a spot on the earth that I have never stood on before!" That IS kind of exciting.
The ability to do something over and over sometimes gets called into question, for me, when it intersects with technology. I *assume* that I can keep on peeing while I'm alive, but every time I do something technical or mechanical, I think, gee, I wonder how many times that is going to work. I'm always afraid to open my sunroof on my 1986 BMW, because it seems like sunroofs weren't necessarily built to last, and I suspect the designated number of times it was designed to open has *got* to be exceeded by now. But the sunroof does still work - I open it, despite the fear. It's a small way to confront fear, sure, but every little habit that builds courage and integrity helps.
When thinking of useful lives of things, I can't help but turn to those single-use items because that really can drive a person mad. Single use plastic forks. Single use ketchup packets. I mean, REALLY? Plastic bottles that had to be manufactured and then become (for the most part) trash, for a long time. In fact, several sites say plastic bottles NEVER decompose, but the oft-quoted figure is 450 years. And why do we make something that will sit around for 450 years? To hold WATER, just ONCE, for a pretty short period of time. Glass bottles take a million years to breakdown, and when you think about making a bottle that will last for millions of years to hold water for, in some cases, maybe just a day, it makes you realize how insane our modern world is. Leather, on the other hand, biodegrades in 50 years. We should be using leather waterskins, instead of plastic bottles, really, except that calls into the question slaughtering animals which is its own issue.
(I don't mean to depress anyone - and trash can be really depressing. In fact, just the opposite! My BMW has had many years of use, but really, on the cosmic scale, it's kind of more like a single-use ketchup packet than we commonly think of. Different time scales can really lend perspective. But hey, people do live in the world, after all. And they make things. Things can be wonderful, and I am glad we have them. We should just recycle them, that's all.)
Back to the nature of reality, which is both repetitive (wow, lots of times one pees in a lifetime) and unique (wow, lots of different moments of peeing in many places). I don't have a conclusion, except to say it is. It seems to be. It's interesting.
I like to get behind the meaning of things, and sometimes I wonder why we pee. I mean, why breath, why eat, etc. I think it's just another way of the universe helping to point us, over and over, to connection. To the essential oneness of us all. We all pee. My pee goes out and mingles in the world with lots of other people's pee. It might not seem like fun to think about, but it IS true and it DOES connect us. The air I breathe out is the air you breathe in. Or the animals breathe in or the plants breathe out. There is NO way to deny the connection. It's like the universe has a giant flashing neon saying saying "We are all ONE. Boundaries are an illusion. All divisions are arbitrary. It's fun to forget that, and it's fun to remember. Remember to forget who you are, and don't forget to remember who are."
I'm not sure thinking about how often and when and where one has peed over the course of one's life is necessarily the BEST way to get zen, but it's certainly one way. Feel free to think of this that next time you go to the bathroom. It will be just a little bit more fun, I suspect. Well, it is for me, anyway.
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