Dear Steele: When I was in Switzerland, and MSN messenger was just getting big, I remember I would email my boyfriend at the time maybe once a week, and occasionally we would meet online to chat on MSN. If I didn’t hear from him after about a three of four days or maybe even a week after an email or our last contact, I would start to freak out and get upset.
Nowadays people check their email almost hourly, and with blackberry devises, they get instant messages. So if you email someone and don’t get a response within the next few hours, worse a day later or more, you are upset, thinking that is the most inconsiderate thing. I wonder how sustainable that kind of living is; living with the expectation that everyone else is operating at your pace and to satisfy your needs. That’s probably why people are so strung out, why I had such high blood pressure, because people are constantly being let down by a world that takes its own time to do things, disregarding your plans and your schedule.
I remember whenever we were late for a movie, or something of that nature, you would think the universe would cooperate and let there be no traffic on the road, or no line at the box office, but it never happened that way; there was always traffic, no spots in the parking lot, and a line to wait on. I would think, how could the universe be so cruel.
Time is like currency and we are constantly spending it: watching, waiting, doing, brewing. We move between spaces where it is the right time to do something, or we never have enough time to do something, or we’re spending too much time doing something, or we need more time to do something, or it is past the time to do something or we just have too much time doing some things. We fill every second of our days doing something, surrounding ourselves with noise: sending email, checking email, posting comments on Facebook, watching TV, listening to music, rushing off somewhere, or a million other things. Even when we don’t appear to be doing something, we are usually thinking about the some things we are not doing.
Think about people nowadays, especially children, they can’t sit still; they are incapable of doing nothing and they can barely stand the sound of silence. It is the most uncomfortable thing in the world. I was always like that until we got to be home alone and lie out on the balcony bed and do nothing in silence. Those days felt so good. I was always like that until the silence after sex, those moments between the ecstasy of an orgasm and the serenity of sleep, when your mind is emptied of all the clutter and you experience a transcendent peace.
Although I haven’t taken up the art of meditation since you left, something the Chinese call the mastery of ‘sitting still doing nothing’, and although the real world hasn’t even skipped a beat, my world is motionless, as if standing still like the earth rotating motionlessly on its axis. The Taoists say: “When the mind is stilled, the spirit radiates a brilliance that illuminates all the great mysteries of the universe.” Most people never get a glimpse of that until the moment they die. You would know all about it.
It seems our lifestyles are moving us further and further away from our own existence; our socialisation is plunging us deeper and deeper into a state of unconsciousness. You have awoken me from my stupefaction and now I’d like to stay awake.