An Ordinary Life
Perhaps I shall live my life in an ordinary way. Seeker energy no longer drives me. That part of life is done. The chase, the focus on teachings, on sitting, on learning what’s real has slipped away. Maybe now I will simply live.
For me at least, not being a seeker doesn’t mean that curiosity has dwindled nor died. It simply means that I am no longer driven to find out, and am content with however life unfolds, however it appears to be. Life can be ordinary … or not.
Nothing is glamorous or important, a disaster or distressing, when all is equally received, when a death sentence is met with equanimity, a fall with sweet surprise. I fell the other day, caught my toe on the path and couldn’t right the ship before all was lost. It was a complete yard sale of a fall.
After feeling about to make sure there were no bones where they shouldn’t be, I picked myself up and continued on, no self-recrimination, no fear about what might be broken, no stories about being embarrassed and who might have seen, just a walk in the woods.
Once home, my Arnica gel called my name, so I slathered it on. Talking to Scott later in the day, he offered to show me how to fall, how to land in the most grace-filled way. He’s been a skateboarder since he was 8, so I tend to think my agile son might know a trick or two. What a good idea. I never know when life will surprise me again.
Today, four days later, the bruises, the evidence of the short flight, are nearly gone.
Life has graciously divulged the root of the fall in a way that is impossible to deny, so I am breaking the old habit of lifting my feet not quite far enough. I’d gotten lazy. Our experiences always show us what we need to know when it’s time, and it is obviously time.
What is ordinary anyway? Is it simply going about life, walking, talking, working, playing, cooking, eating, sleeping and doing some version of it again if I happen to awaken the next morning? Is that ordinary?
I don’t think my life is ordinary, for to live an ordinary life I’d have to live in fear, to be concerned for myself and those I love. I’d find ways to protect and defend myself and my beliefs. I’d need to hang onto what I want and push away what I didn’t. I’d be constantly reaching for what I don’t have that I think I need. That is ordinary and it’s the way most people live.
I know it well. It’s the way I used to live, and it was exhausting.
To not need anything more than what is here right now seems impossible to many. Interestingly, that doesn’t mean that I don’t go to the store when the groceries run low, or that I fail to notice when I use the last little bit of Arnica. It doesn’t even mean that I sit at home and do nothing, eating bon-bons on the couch. What is a bon-bon anyway? It just means that I don’t think about what I’ll do, analyzing what’s next, before it takes place. When it is time, movement occurs.
I seem to get a lot done, more than I used to when I lived an ordinary life, when I was focused and driven, when I knew how I wanted life to be. Ordinary isn’t bad. It’s just a bit tiring and perhaps that is its great golden goodness. Eventually we get so tired of it, that we stop.
That’s the only difference between our lives. Something happened here and I simply stopped. I didn’t do it. If I had, it wouldn’t have been stopping. It would have been doing stopping.
Noticing the ordinary movement of life, seeing the futility of it all, is part of the preparation, no different than plowing the ground before planting. It readies the ground, steadies the nerves, and eventually pulls the plug. How long the momentum will continue is part of the great mystery.
