You: The Stranger in Your Own Life

I find it difficult to believe you can have a good relationship with anyone or indeed with any thing unless you know or understand something about them. Would you agree? And the better the knowledge, the deeper and more meaningful the relationship can become. It just makes sense doesn’t it?

But what if you knew nothing of others, if you were destined to always be a stranger to everyone and every thing? A cold and lonely existence would be an understatement. It would be almost as though you did not exist. How could you enjoy life at all if you were disconnected from everything and everyone in it?

The thing is, I believe for the vast majority of us that is exactly how we exist every single day.

We are the stranger in our own lives. In fact, I do not think there is an area of our lives for most of us that we truly know.

Furthermore, I believe that the result of this phantom state of existence is surely affecting our physical health, our mental health and our relationships with family, friends and colleagues. It is affecting our communities, our countries and the state of the planet.

Our ignorance is to the detriment of all.

I’m saying we are barely scratching the surface of our own lives and we need to fix that as soon as possible. In order to fix it, we need to see the problem. It’s the pink and purple polka-dot elephant in the room with us and from where I’m sitting, it looks like this:

Starting with us as human beings: Let’s say that you are a regular person who spends their waking hours doing some sort of work. We live in a house of some kind which we may or may not own, filled to some degree with furniture, utensils and tools. We wear clothes, we eat and drink food, we relate to other people in our lives and to some degree the community we live in. To some extent we know the area we live in also.

Sounds reasonable and far from mysterious I agree, but let’s look beyond appearance.

We could start anywhere really but let’s begin with food since it’s easy for everyone to relate to.

Looking in your cupboards or refrigerator you will see any number of food items; packaging and shape mostly familiar. Picking up an item, let’s say a can of baked beans, what can you tell me about it? In a reverse sequence, what do you know of the person you bought it from? Are they paid fairly, treated well, happy in their work? The shop the item came from: what do you know of the stores origins, its owners? Where do profits go and how are products sourced? Are stock items sourced ethically? Who put your can on the shop shelf? Who ordered the stock? Who unpacked it? Who drove it to the store? Who packed the truck and works at the wholesale depot? Before it got there, where did the beans get put in the tin? How? Who made the tin and how? What metals were used and from where was the metal mined and then refined? Who did that work? Where were the beans grown and by whom? Were there chemicals used for pests and fertilisation? What minerals were in that particular soil, now transferred to your bean? How and by whom were the beans harvested, sorted and transported? What kind of beans are they and what are their origins? How are the beans cooked and what ingredients went in the sauce? Where did those ingredients come from? Overall, what nutrients are in your can of beans and of what benefit are they to your body? Beans are reputed for giving gas. Why? Is that normal? The label: who designed, made and manufactured that. What information is given on it and why? What does it all mean?

From a financial point of view, how much were any of the people from beginning to end involved with your can of beans paid? What percentage did they receive versus the percent of work they did? Was that fair? What taxes were paid, pollution created, waste made? When you are done with your can, and assuming you can recycle it, who takes your can away? Where exactly does it go and what happens to it next? How many people are involved in taking your waste and making it into something else that, when finally made again into something by people unknown, will start again at the beginning of some chain?

Does this can of baked beans still look familiar to you?

Look at all the other food items in your kitchen. Likely they will have the same unknown story. A vast army of invisible hands have passed that food to you, the benefit to your health will likely be sketchy and the item packaging will be taken away at the and by another group of strangers.

Beyond your food items, look at your utensils, you fridge, detergent, your cupboards and light fittings. Look at anything and you will realise you actually know little about any of it. Look beyond your kitchen to your whole house. Things that appear to be so worn and familiar; what do you really know any of them? From each item of clothing to toiletries, to the water you use and the power and technology at your disposal- what kind of a relationship do you have with them?

Likely you know no more about the origins of your computer and it’s componants than the box it came in.

Beyond your house (what do you really know of the building and its materials?) what do you know of your neighbour? Really know? Of your street, of your neighbourhood and suburb/town/village/city? Who are your local council and where do your taxes go? Who looks after the utilities you use and where do they come from? How were they formed? Who invented them? Who maintains them? Who owns them?

The transport you use, the people you pass, the business you may work for? What do you really know about any of that?

Back to us: our bodies. What do you know of your own body beyond external appearance? How much movement is optimal for your wellbeing? How do muscles work and what nutrients keep them in best health? What harms them? What do various sensations in them really mean and how might we best utilise that information? How strong might we be? How fast? What movements were our bodies designed best to do and how much are we utilising them? Consider any part of your body- how well do you truly know it? Your skin: a freckle, a mole, a birthmark- why are they there? Why do we have body hair? What does it do? How is it made and by what? Does removing it or growing it have any consequence at all? Why does hair change, disappear, appear? What does a rash mean? Why is it really there? Do we know? What can we do about it? What is our body trying to tell us?

 If we don’t know our body, how can we really look after it? Is a pill or an ointment going to improve your ability to care for yourself better? Does it teach you anything or improve your understanding or relationship with it?

What I am saying is that if you really don’t know about something, it makes it difficult to have a connection and understanding with it, to truly care. In having so distant a relationship with so much of our lives, it is difficult to see what difference anything you do makes.

Right now I can hear birds outside. Do you know what animals and plants are around your neighbourhood? What they eat and how they behave? Which are native and which were introduced? What season they are active and how they fit into the cycle of life around you? What are the properties of the plants? Are any edible, medicinal, of importance to bees?

 I’m saying that if you know and care about these things, understand the relationship between you and them and the planet in general, this will clearly affect how much you literally care for it.
To be clear though, I am not suggesting we all know each aspect of our lives to the nth degree. I guess my point is that would be impossible. But to have more direct relationships is the aim.
Be aware of your distance to the 'baked bean cans' in our lives and aim for more 'home grown tomato' experiences.

Consider indigenous/native people living in their natural state. They are at the opposite end of existence to most of us. On the deepest level they know their environment and the plants and animals of the region. They know the seasons and to a great extent the weather. They know the origins and construction of their homes, their tools and garments. They know and they respect and they value. And of course they see their place in all of this and do not consider themselves in charge but a part of everything around them. These people do not pollute or cause waste. They do not kill for sport or wipe out species of animals. They do not ruin environments. They do not horde. And they do not wonder what the purpose of life is. Life is all around them and a part of them, not a separate entity, because they have a direct relationship with it.

Not so us. At some point, we began to distance ourselves from our own lives and this disconnection is killing us and it’s killing the planet. Unwittingly we do harm. If we seek to know and to understand, then we can appreciate and from that make informed decisions about the way we live and the consequences of how we do so.

But so long as we put our relations with nature, with others, with that which sustains us in the hands of strangers, we can never truly care, can never truly appreciate the wonderful and important connection we can have to everyone and everything around us.

The ancient Greek adage ‘Know thyself’ is the connection we have all been seeking.

In whatever ways we can I believe it's of vital importance we get back in contact with ourselves and with our lives; to make decisions based on understanding and knowing.

The world is missing our place in it as much as we are missing being a part of it.

 

The Realm of Possibility

I had an amazing dream a few nights ago. In fact I had two. I NEVER recall my dreams so I was pretty amazed when I woke up thinking about both. My recollection was so clear that I jumped out of bed to find pen and paper before my memory faded.

One dream had been a period romantic play (I know right?!), all characters intact and plot sorted.

 I’m going to ask Kenneth Branagh to direct I think ;)

The second dream began with the discovery that I could levitate a small distance off the ground. Astonished as I was, I began to think of all the reasons that levitation simply wasn’t possible.

 Fortunately, for some reason I became aware of my thoughts and decided that since it really had happened it must be a possibility. And, if I could levitate a little, it seemed possible I could even go a little higher, so that’s what I did.

 My experiments grew until I was flying about all over the place. Every time I began to think of the impossibility of it all, I changed my thoughts. Sometimes I gave myself feasible scientific reasons why flying could be possible (Like, technically the honeybee is too heavy for flight and yet it does) and other times I just made stuff up. It didn’t seem to matter as long as I told myself a story of possibility.

At one point I thought about flying very high and started worrying about not being able to breath in thin air and feeling the cold etc until once again I caught my thoughts and actually laughed. I was FLYING and yet still I worried about the logic of something. Ridiculous!

 I flew up and up and I was fine so I kept going until I left Earths atmosphere and looked back at the planet from space. Now it seemed that since I could fly (a seeming impossibility) there seemed no reason I couldn’t go further. I flew back down to where I had begun and I decided to go under water (in a stream.) I began to think “Oh, you better not stay under water too long, you can’t breath” (I’d just been in space?!) and so I thought “Why can I not?” If I need reason, there is oxygen in the water and I will utilise that somehow. But I didn’t really need a reason anymore. It was just a knee-jerk reaction of doubt.

And so on and so on it went. I tried time travel and exploring parallel universes, all because it seemed possible based on the impossibility of what I was already doing anyway.

 Of course by now I unequivocally believed anything was possible and any lingering doubts of ‘logical impossibilities’ had disappeared.

That was how the dream ended.

 

What I took away from my dream was that YOU can do ANYTHING- just make attempt after attempt, replacing all logical doubts with ‘could be’ possibilities. Use science or fantasy, I don’t think it matters as long as you give yourself a green light story.

I also felt behind this wonderful life opening lesson for me, there was a larger story:  all rules, all laws, all logic are illusions made to anchor us in time and space to experience life from that particular point, but that all those constraints are simply not real.
 Even they are just other possibilities.

 Very aware of any constraints and limitations I may be choosing (validating the negative), I replaced any restricting thoughts with different ones like- ‘It’s entirely possible’ or ‘there’s a possibility it will/does/could/can. I even sang Sia's 'There's a possibility' at times (quietly in public!:)

 The result? Where I allowed for the possibility of good things or positive things or nice things, those are exactly what happened. Every time!

In the realm of possibility all things are possible, so you have to ask yourself: why not pave the road ahead in ‘go sign’ green and jettison any ballast holding you down?