those incomprehensible trees of glass.
i could talk now as of my own tears,
which i, gripped by such fantastic dreaming,
spilled once and then somehow forgot.
- rumi, from ABOUT FOUNTAINS
i have been thinking about forgetfulness and clumsiness these days. i had always felt that people, including myself, tend to operate within a certain domain around their quintessential selves. certainly, there is a degree of deviation from center depending upon our present milieu, yet by and large there is always a center, a place of equipoise to return to when events in life throw our balance.
these days, searching for my center has become a routine venture. this venture of mine has left me frustrated and occasionally embarrassed because i am realizing that my poise isn't where i remember it being. i find myself forgetting, and i find myself clumsy in my ability to maintain my grasp to what i thought was my center.
i've been pondering this situation of mine for a bit, and i've considered the fact that perhaps while typically people tend to operate within a certain sphere around their quintessential self, certain events in life can cause the entire center to shift (something to the effect of being uprooted and re-planted elsewhere.) this shift, which is nothing less than jarring i assure you, moves the entire center - it still exists, it is just in a new location.
in consideration of this shift, it has occurred to me that perhaps my forgetfulness and clumsiness are truly assets. we humans tend to hold onto things. we confine ourselves to our own hearts, terrified of letting something leak out. perhaps we're afraid of exposing the contents of our hearts to the elements of the world. perhaps we're afraid of rejection. perhaps we're afraid that once we open the door we won't be able to control what gets out, and who gets in. and so with conscious effort, we hold on - protecting our hearts from harm and confining it to its shells. these fears, by the by, are empty - i remember my brother once telling me to stop worrying so much (at the time, and many times since, i worried a lot about my heart) because i always assumed the worse and was at risk of missing out on something truly beautiful happening in my life. his comment was most penetrating, and in my opinion quite on point. but, in spite of the irrationality of the fears that keep us holding onto to our hearts, we still feel compelled to grasp. but, what happens when events in our lives create a drastic shift in our hearts? what happens when the shift is stronger than our grasp can hold and renders our roots exposed? what happens when the core of our being is re-planted in a new location?
it seems my friends, that an ideal approach to such a jarring shift is to embrace forgetfulness and clumsiness; to let slip away from us our concept of being, and to release the grasp on our hearts.
he told me that once
he forgot himself and his
heart opened up like a door
with a loose latch
and everything fell out and
he tried for days to put
it all back in the proper
order, but finally he gave up and left it there
in a pile and loved
everything equally.
- biran andreas, OPEN HEART
even exposed and in pieces and transplanted to a new location, the contents of our hearts and fibers of our being maintain themselves - nothing is ever truly lost. when we try to hold onto the places where we think our hearts and our cores should be, perhaps we are actually doing ourselves a disservice by not allowing ourselves to discover new earth. can we let go of ourselves for a moment? can we release ourselves from the confines of our fears and in so doing allow our unclenched heart spill over into its new earth? can we allow ourselves to forget to hold on for a moment and embrace the movement of our core? can we, in clumsy forgetfulness, open ourselves to the potential of a new center? can we stop worrying so much and assuming to worse for our expose hearts and allow something beautiful to happen?
it seems that perhaps i should forget myself and my human compulsion to hold, and in my clumsiness, let slip the latches on my heart.... and suddenly, i feel like i know a lot about fountains.
