Philosophy for life
As a wise friend pointed out, when your wings are being clipped or you’re feeling held back, it’s worth remembering the floral profusion of the tropical bougainvillea.
Sometimes a good winter pruning is just the thing to promote healthy balanced growth – and a summer burst into full bloom.
It takes both sun and showers to grow and flower. So sometimes, it’s good to gather oneself and take on a little less. Much better a blooming bougainvillea than a prickly rambling rose.
Nine hours: aches in the triceps and the biceps, the adductors and the back, the shoulders and the groin – and a right pain in the butt cheeks.
Two bruised knees and the gait of an eighty year old – but it is done. No, not a karate training montage, but an old wooden floor made new.
Karate Kid’s Mr Miyagi would be proud. A front room floor is scraped and chipped free of decades of paint splashes, sanded and hammered and oiled and waxed.
And I am physically whacked. If I sit down I’ll be stuck down, so staying on my feet is the only option. But you can’t beat the sense of achievement of a laborious job well done. As TV Tropes rightly has it:
“Before Enlightenment, carry water, chop wood.
After Enlightenment, carry water, chop wood.”
— Buddhist Saying
Albert Camus, the French Algerian Existentialist, challenges us to be happy as Sisyphus. That Greek King was damned by Zeus to forever roll a boulder uphill, only to have it roll back down as soon as the summit was achieved.
For Camus, the human condition requires us to face the futility of Sisyphus – that we are alone in the universe without meaning or destiny, each pointlessly rolling our own boulder uphill. But Camus’s challenge to us, is to smile and be happy in the face of this futility – not sad or downcast.
And the lot of Sisyphus, was mine yesterday – faced with several hundredweight of miscellaneous building rubbish to shift, in a biblical downpour. Badly bagged, paint dripping from it, from a narrow alley to an unknown refuse site without proper parking or help.
Three bags in – I was Sisyphus. Drenched, cold, back stiff and a hamstring already taught. With dozens more bags and wood and board and plastic and blinds and rubble and cement and soaking dustsheets and rags and sharp stuff and awkward stuff and worst of all paint-dripping stuff. A ball ache to match the back ache.
Toying with chucking it in, taking shelter or hoping it would all go away, Monsieur Camus came to mind -smiling enigmatically, with the collar turned up on his French trench-coat…
All human existence was momentarily encapsulated in sacks, rubble and timbers. To be happy as Sisyphus, the triumph of the spirit over drudgery – the satisfaction of a thankless task well done.
And it was done. Drenched, back-breaking, four car loads of dripping, spiky, heavy building debris bit the dust. And a happy Sisyphus was I.
So much so, that after a couple of celebratory beers and a pepperoni pizza, I cheerfully armed myself with two chisels and cleared two staircases of carpet staples and nails.
Zeus himself would have been grudgingly impressed and Camus was right. Sisyphus, happy, is the satisfaction of a thankless task well done. And that’s about all there is to life – chin up, put a smile on your face and keep rolling that boulder.
Surely one of the defining characteristics of the passage of years, is the tendency for the mind to close.
Knowing best, seen it all before, mind made up, declining interest in the new or different, set points of view; these are casts of mind which stalk us all. The secret to evading them, is to strive to remain an ‘open system.’
To adapt Wikipedia: the person who remains an ‘open system’ is one who continuously interacts with their environment or surroundings. The interaction can take the form of information, energy, or intellectual transfers into or out of the system.
This contrasts with the ‘closed minded’ person who exchanges neither energy nor information with their environment – they are substantially uninterested in and unaffected by the views of others and drain energy in their interactions.
There’s a lot of it about. We’re all guilty of it at times. But a true test of a person, is how hard they fight to resist it. The open mind is an interested and interesting mind.
Start closing and you stop learning, growing and thinking. The closed mind is old before its time. An open mind is ageless, limitless and eternally beautiful.
One hesitates to admit to loony sounding practices which invite ridicule, but… mindfulness meditation really does reach the parts other things don’t.
Sure you can read, philosophise, listen to music, exercise or get blotto to blot out a whirring mind. But when it comes to finding out what’s at the heart of the whirring, you have to stop distracting yourself and start meditating.
Mindfulness meditation is learning to connect your mind and body – but without the help of the Buddha. Simple really, focus on your body and breathing and it reveals a deeper understanding of what’s in you mind.
It generally starts with thinking about your feet. More accurately focusing on breathing, and then stopping your mind racing by working up from the feet, to the legs and upwards, concentrating on each zone of the body in turn.
Hey presto, the mind stops racing. Result! But as I discovered this week that’s just a foundation. A very useful one; but it’s not the sum of what can be done.
Turning towards difficulty has been this week’s task – and this has brought some uncomfortable realisations. Quite literally uncomfortable too, as the challenge is to clear the mind, conjure up a difficult thought – a fear, anxiety or problem – and then really feel it. And keep feeling it even when it hurts too. Ouch!
In various runs at this, I have found, thinking about one situation makes my thighs cramp and my face literally twitch with anxiety. Another makes me clench all my arm and chest muscles in controlled fury. And a third – which I thought I feared, I don’t. I also discovered I’m no great fan either of ridicule or being ridiculed…
So what happens next? Well the answer is not to suppress and bottle all this stuff. Recognising mental events often trigger a set of physical responses – which pass, and aren’t so bad really – breaks the vicious circle.
Just like the dentist (where I was yet again on Monday) one way is clench up and hate every minute. Another is to breathe, relax, close my eyes and enjoy half an hour to myself – as the dentist buzzes, whizzes, picks and saws.
I’m off for more dentistry right now and quite looking forward to the chair. I’m learning that when you stop avoiding discomfort and turn to face it – it hurts much less.
Achilles & Aristotle 