Fourth Form of Madness

Have you ever had that uncanny feeling where you realise that the outer story and inner story do not match? That in congruency between appearance and essence. I love these feelings as I use them as guideposts back to a kind of sweet nothingness. Let me explain.

The first example happened in the distant past, the second example just this morning. Many moons ago I was asked to present on, of all things, time management. It’s funny because if I gave that talk now I would start with “Time, an interesting construct that doesn’t exist…….” 🙂 but then I played it straight and stuck to the popular topic of how to be more effective by nipping time wasters in the bud. I had fun with the topic and with a few heart felt jokes the audience and I had built a common understanding. Afterwards several people said how much they enjoyed the talk.

One in particular has stayed with me all these years. One of my work colleagues at the time, approached me and said most honestly and not with malice “Wow I thought your talk was going to be boring and you would be shy, but that was really fun and interesting”. I remembered marvelling at the difference between how I must appear to people and how my inner life felt. To the outside work environment I must have appeared serious, shy, not interesting and lacking in confidence. But on the inside, I was always in a constant state of curiosity and questioning and a state of marvel at the world and how it worked and confidence in my ability to speak with substance when required. I remember being fascinated at the difference between inner life experience (which then felt like reality) and outer life perception of me.

There are many examples I can use for this story but the second example happened this morning. We were on our daily dog walk expedition down to the look out tower at the beaches edge. The dogs were enjoying the moody cooler weather and bounced along with joy and freedom that a cool change brings to their existence. We passed two young surfer’s carrying their boards under their arms and beaming of that wholesome freshness that only the nurturing sea can produce. As I walked past with the tiniest tiny Luck Luck bouncing along on the end of her strap I heard the words of one of the surfers on the wind as he past “Why do people have those stupid small trophy dogs?”

I felt a rise in my nervous system as the judgement of me and my dog was made so quickly, so dismissively and without context of history or meaning. I marvelled once again as the back story of inner experience, history, life, personal meaning was just omitted. How the inner experience of another was just silenced by a tyrant grasping tightly to what they believed was the truth as guided by external markers. Then I realised there were two tyrants grasping tightly to what they considered to be the truth and one of them was me 🙂 I was just holding on tight to the other side of the rope, that’s all.

Instead of getting into a game of emotionally charged thought tug-of-war, I simply put down the rope and looked at the sky with all her vast open space and wisdom in emptiness and continued on my journey into the exploration of truth.