Preserving my senses

The house is now completely filled with boxes and chaos. The movers arrive in the morning to cart away most of our possessions, but we stay on for a few more precious days to try to restore the house to some approximation of what we found when we arrived here. This makes the daily struggle to capture in words some of the things that this year has meant to me a bit more difficult to manage. We feel the urgency of the emails from employers, co-workers, and friends increase, as they look forward to our return and (in some cases) try to think of ways to help us re-assimilate. Again, I think of Star Trek. This time of Borg. I also feel sadness both for us -- it will be a struggle to hang onto everything we've learned, decided, and understood about how we want to live out our lives -- and for them -- we fear that their eager anticipation of us may be blunted when they see that we're not the same family who left town a year ago.

What has changed? My senses have heightened. I hear, feel, smell and taste more than at any other time in my life. What's more, I find it easier to reach the connections between sensations. I'll struggle if I try to explain this. It will take more work than I have time for today. Let me try to put it this way: how does one characterize an average day of life? We wake in the morning with a certain set of scripts -- the routines that sustain us. We groom ourselves, we eat and drink, care for our bodies in whatever ways they need to be nurtured, or at least sustained. We also have a certain set of plans -- goals that need to be achieved, even such minor things as shopping for groceries, finishing a task for our jobs, making contact with a family member, helping our children. For the most part, as our day unfolds, we are mostly only open to the sensations that are relevant to the work that needs to be done. When we consider ourselves to be working well, our focus is like a tightly focused beam on the tasks at hand. We are closed to the unexpected.

Though there is still much of that kind of pattern in my life, I feel as though I have many more moments when I'm open to the world. Subtleties that, a year ago, would have evaded my notice completely, can catch me by the throat somehow and overwhelm me completely. The hue of a cluster of leaves, the sound of bird call, the sensation of the wind on my skin. Not only do I notice these kinds of sensations, but their impact on me is much greater than at any other time I can remember. I find myself immobilized by the power of a sensation. I can be transfixed by a potent combination of sensory impressions to the extent that I simply can't carry on with whatever script I'm in the middle of. It is the most glorious feeling. I'd like to say that it's a kind of mindfulness, and perhaps it is, but I know that I'm also very attached to the state. But though I may not be a very good Buddhist, I have some conviction that this way of relating to the world is much healthier than my previous state of task-oriented, laser beam focused behaviour in which I took from the world only what I needed and discarded what I thought was superfluous. If I were to try to sum all of this up in just a few words, I might say that I now have the patience and unfocused regard to allow me to take what the world offers, rather than to lean into it, take control of it, and wrest from it what I think I might need. A long time ago, I was accused (in print, no less!) of treating nature as though it were some kind of grand smorgasbord from which I could feast on what I needed and discard the rest. I was incensed to the point of apoplexy when the accusing finger was raised, though, looking back, I see now that I was guilty as charged.

When I throw myself back into a busy urban setting with many more work responsibilities, detachment from natural settings, and all of the old habits and patterns waiting to eat my soul, will I be able to hold on to this hard won territory? I'm filled with resolve, but fear and doubt gnaw at me as well. It will be the battle of my life.