In Search of a Tiny Little Flower

Do you know what a luddite is? It is a person who resists, avoids, or is skeptical of new technologies or changes, especially when those changes are seen as disruptive to established ways of working or living.

Being human feels luddish to me.

We’re so…analog. It’s a very slow and weighty experience. I have the briefest of moments where I see it all so clearly–the ethereal, multi-dimensional worlds that exist whether we believe they do or not–and all I can think is that we humans make this experience SO HARD. We think it to death. Or at least I do. We worry and toil, and we plan and pull it all apart, and in those briefest of moments, I see how futile it is. Or maybe a better word is unnecessary. 

Because if you want it–breathe it, think it, manifest it into existence, and it will be so. 

That of course sounds too wishful and childlike, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the Spirit realms embody more of those two things than we could ever imagine. Ease, peace, sweetness. As ridiculous as this sounds, the image I keep getting is akin to the elfin kingdom in Lord of the Rings. But not so ridiculous, eh? So beautiful, ethereal, peaceful, and abundant. Living in harmony with nature and all the other beings. 

But we ARE here to be human. We are here to experience the weight. We choose to come here to be heavy and play the game to see if we can do whatever it is we’re here to do to get the prize: lightness. Everyone thinks it’s riches and money, but it’s not; it’s light. 

Ease. Peace. Sweetness. 

That’s the real prize. The simplest of all desires, yet the most sought after by every single human being on this planet. That’s what we’re all looking for and that has nothing to do with something as base and energetically blank as money. 

To me, being human is like walking through 4 feet of mud all of the time. It’s difficult, heavy, time-consuming, exhausting, slow, requires a great deal of patience, and takes buckets of strength. Then, right when you think you’ve had enough, you look down and see a tiny little flower growing out of the sludge. You wonder how in the world it’s surviving in all this yuck. You figure it must be all the nutrients that come with the mud. 

What a wonder: all that stink, filth, and rot nurturing and sustaining life.

Then you realize how happy you are to have noticed it. What a shame it would’ve been, after so much hard work, to have missed it. You look up and see a break in the path ahead. All of a sudden, the walk is lighter, and you feel damn good for persevering and not giving up on the rough parts. Further ahead, you see another stretch that is trenched in even more mud than before, and you think, “I can do this. I did it before and I know how it ends. I got this.” And then you endure…again. 

And again. And again. And…uh-huh, you know.

Sometimes, I find myself thinking about monkeys that live in labs. Everyday is exactly the same and they know what to expect. They blindly adhere to the status quo of daily living. They don’t question; they learn to do whatever they must to maintain or even minimally increase whatever comfort they earn–through docility and following the rules of the environment–by obliviously complying with complacent conformity (say that 3x really fast.)

That’s us; we’re the monkeys. Our cages are just cleaner (mostly).

But I digress…

Being human is hard for me. By nature, I reside outside of the physicality of humanness. I question, ponder, inspect, wonder, wander, and am mostly happy to simply live inside of my own head. I quietly float off into streams of thought and possibilities, questioning all that is while dreaming all that could be, and believing nothing and everything all at the same time.

Then I realize I’m still tethered to this heavy skin suit and I sigh. Oh…you again. 

And I feel bad about it. I’m not good to my skin suit. I abuse it and ignore it all the time. I mean, it just gets in the way, and there are SO many rules to exist inside of it to ensure its prolonged usefulness. I think the most aggravating thing about the human body is that it is so irritatingly 

F R A G I L E and N E E D Y. Two things I find utterly abhorrent in other humans, so having to directly deal with these things within myself is both perplexingly exasperating and wholly stifling. I mean…this body ALWAYS needs SOMETHING. It’s like a cranky 2 year-old that refuses to quiet down until it gets what it wants. 

It is wildly inconvenient (just like a 2 year-old.) 

I don’t just mean the body, although that is a huge part of the disruption to my peaceful existence; I mean the whole experience. We’re so constricted in so many ways. We can’t travel through dimensions, or time, or even to physical locations. If we want to get somewhere here on this planet, we have to think it, plan it, and then figure out a mode of transportation to clunkily, and slowly deliver us there. Don’t even waste your time thinking about dimensional or time traveling. Forget it.

See? Constricted.

I think it’s so cruel that we can conjure the most fantastical, multi-dimensional, otherworldly, time-bending, majestic, and extraordinary things in our minds, and then have to figure out a way to be content with only the imaginary. 

Or clunky transportation.

We can’t just live; we have to figure out a living. We can’t just exist, we have to carve out an existence. We can’t just be a human being; we have to figure out being human. It’s a life of checks and balances and it’s all so…transactional.

How anti-climactic. How disappointing. How…human.

I know. It’s not so bad. There are some upsides, I agree. Like birthday cake, vacations, puppies, and falling in love. Yeah…other stuff too, I suppose.

Like when I hear my daughter’s spontaneous, uninhibited laughter through the walls of another room. Get the last parking spot. Stand in the woods after a snowfall and stare. Notice my plant decided not to die. Catch the flight just in time. Witness small, missable acts of human kindness. Dry the tears of another. Give my tears permission to fall. Laugh so hard I definitely pee myself a little. And merge myself into the full circle of love, loss, life, grief, celebration, joy, pain, healing, and all of the beautiful, real moments that are here now and gone in an instant but will imprint upon me forever. 

It kinda feels like when you’re about to give up and you spot a tiny little flower.

Life. 

I’m just another human being…being human…by living and experiencing life. 

Yes, to be human is to be brave. It is to muster the courage to trudge through never ending miles of mud just to get a glimpse of a tiny little flower so you can find the will to trudge through more endless miles of mud, all in search of the next tiny little flower.

Ahhhh…but that flower, right?

.  .  .  .  . 

As I consider this post, I am reminded of those that have come and gone in my life that never saw that damn tiny little flower. I never knew you suffered. I never saw your pain. For that, I am truly sorry. 

Billions of us on this planet, yet somehow most of us still feel so alone. How is that??

To those that suffer and choose to stay, I honor you. To those that suffered and chose to go, I honor you.

I am you. You are me. That’s what it means when you hear “We are One.” 

All that to say: When you have lightness, share it. When you need lightness, take it. 

Be the light. Always be the light.