On fitting into other peoples’ worlds (3 min read)
Do you ever try to fit yourself into someone else’s world?
Last night I watched the sunset over the playground as my three-year-old son called to me, “Watch this, mama!” over and over again, each victorious climb of a ladder rung. I smiled to him and myself, noticing how his joy brought me into the moment. I tried to feel what it’s like to be a child, to see the world as a novel thing. To be unencumbered by thoughts, concepts and beliefs.
In my past, I tried very hard to fit myself into other peoples’ worlds – to adopt their values and perspectives. To try on their beliefs. I was determined to find my place and also deeply curious about what it was like to have another life. Another set of parents. Another set of experiences. Another set of rules.
Over the course of my adult life, I lived as a member of several spiritual communities. My first self-improvement weekend workshop was in the fall of 1997 with The Art of Living, an organization founded by spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. His vision of a peaceful world made possible through breath and bliss resonated with my shaken soul. I had only recently left my hometown, just having turned eighteen, and wanted to consume life in new ways. I learned breath work that altered my consciousness and led to having profound experiences in meditation. It was the start of a path full of expansive, soulful searching.
While I learned profound ways of healing and coping with life, I also often felt something was missing. I felt clear that my spirit was boundaryless and that I was having a localized human experience that would one day pass. I felt sure that I was in contact with a higher consciousness that existed within me and also in every living creature. I had no doubt that the world around me was illusory and temporary.
And, I still missed my mother.
I still wished for a different life.
I still yearned to be loved.
Today, I only try to fit myself into other peoples’ worlds for brief moments so that I can find compassion for their journey and amusement at all the ways we are expressed in human form. We are an incredibly diverse and wonder-full species, with infinite eyes and ears. We fall in love differently. We wander differently. We find solutions to our challenges differently. And yet, as each day ends, we all face the same little death. We lay our bodies down, if we are so privileged, and we disappear for a while. Whether we dream or not, whether we awaken feeling rested or restless, there is a common spark, a breath of life, an opportunity to find novelty once more upon awakening.
Here is a little poem I wrote in my head while my son giggled and called me into his world. I wish you peace and joy today, one moment at a time.
I think I will get to a point in life where I’ll want to do nothing but
Close my eyes and feel the breeze upon my face,
Be so in love with the sensation that thought is irrelevant, unheard and distant.
I think so.
