October 20, 2018
I wrote the following in a post on October 17, 2017. “I've been attending a meditation class lead by a Chopra trained instructor for the past three + months and it has been amazing. My stress level has dropped from 10 to below 1 and I can't remember the bad stuff in my past or the worries of my day when she has us drop those out of our mind. I have to try and come up with something, but I can't, so I just smile and move on. I'm never going back to the days before I found meditation. It's a regular part of my life now, twice a day.”
- I wonder what happened. I want to go back to that feeling. I don’t know that I can.
October 21, 2018
I got the feeling back. I got it by reaching into history and finding the words of Bruce Lee. First, I learned that one cannot regret losing what one never had. He didn’t say it quite that way, but that is what I got. He spoke and wrote of how we must be at peace with ourselves, and centered. Then he spoke and wrote of water, and how we need to be as fluid as it is. Punch water and it settles back to its state before the punch, in the same moment of that punch. Cut it with a knife, and it shows no wound. Drop a large boulder into a pool of water and the water becomes as it was, in that same moment, while the boulder sits entrapped by the water around it. We let others hurt us with words and with their fists. We hold onto the pain and relive it over and over again in our minds. Do we do this for attention, among other reasons? We dwell on it all. We carry it with us. We put it all in boxes and strap those boxes to our backs. We add to them, then add more boxes when they have overflowed. The boxes pile up, limiting our mobility. We bend, then we fall ill from the weight, then our bodies fail us. But not before our minds, which had failed us long before. We must be fluid, like water, settling back to our centered state after each setback, which will surely come, settling back in the moment of the punch, in the moment we are cut, in the moment someone drops that big figurative boulder on us. Settling back, restoring, just like water, as that pain goes through us, and our flesh, our feelings, our thoughts — reset, and make ready.
Chris Plante
October 21, 2018