On "being" human

 

My thoughts upon rising early...I did stay abed another hour after first light...geese, I need to rest! But the musings from yesterday(s)  penetrated too much (either TV characters, or conversations with friends, or - who knows what) so I decided to get up and get into a routine I've started to follow.

Some exercises in bed, then watering porch plants. This time of day (7:00 am) the humidity is still 99% and the temp is just at 70 F. I feel wet after being outside, when I come back into my little air conditioned bubble. Made coffee. Read some emails, including Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American newsletter from Fri. posted yesterday.

And I'm back interested in politics again.

Why?

Well those early morning thoughts I turned into meditation. After all, why shouldn't this human being be able to meditate on good ideas as well as ruminate on old ones? (Rhetorical question.)

I have often had to remind myself to be a human being, rather than a human doing.

But I realized this morning that I've been "being" by just doing nothing. Kind of looking at doing, then the opposite to be not doing. But wait one minute. This being has sure done a lot, not exactly in the action category, but definitely not totally passive, meditating and droning OM.

So I'm shifting from "being passive" to "being active" - which means I can do the things I've been putting aside.  There's a need for active life. I started out with so many wonderful urges as a baby (the wonder of new life has caught my attention lately, perhaps as a circle of life kind of thing.) 

The thoughts I had all day yesterday came from a bird.

I was at a stop light driving to market early in the day. I looked up to see a sparrow fly up to a wire. It flew over it by about 5 inches (I was at just the right angle to see this) and then settled for landing it's feet to grab the wire.

It was conscious of where it's feet were in relation to the wire. We as humans become conscious of where our body parts are early in life, compared to our surroundings. First testing everything for nutritious value by putting it in our mouths, just think that we are born pretty much knowing where our mouths are in relation to our hands! Then reaching to search what's around us...moving all our limbs until we can stand. We begin to run, then dance, and twirl (perhaps to find that dizzy is a neat feeling,) and lots of falling down as we explore how our bodies fit into the world. I saw a toddler fall on the grass at the Tailgate Market yesterday...only about a 6 inch difference from it's standing position. Not much crying...thankfully the grass was soft.

But we have to keep changing our perceptions because our bodies don't stay the same size. Put the legs of a 2 year old on a 10 year old...both know how to work for their respective sizes, but not when switched around. And thankfully that change is slow enough for us to adjust (except in adolescence).

Anyway, we are meant in the first 20-25 years of life to adapt to our own changes as well as those of the world around us.

And boom, we stay the same physically for many years (unless, like me, you had babies!) Intellectually we think differently through the years, learning skills, choosing different things (imagine having the same tastes in food that you had as a teenager - now that you've had a chance to try so many different things!)

Whoops I've done it again. Just thoughts onto the laptop, and yet....and yet. Watching how we are in our space of the world...and the others around us, is such a delight! I not only am watching dogs at the market, I watch the humans too. Their movements, their body interactions with others around them, their outfits. Oh my, they do wear some strange things Saturday morning.

So my being today is "being-active" rather than "being-passive." It's a shade different (not grey please) from a doing. This activity is to support the being. Just as the child did in exploring the things its new body could do. This elder is exploring ways the old body can keep its activities going...keep the muscles strong, and the organs playing the music of me.

Hope you have a good Sunday, and a week of wonderfulness.

PS, I'm again listening to and sharing some political thoughts. My break from the toxicity of politics  helped me feel ready to see what I need to, and build a wall against what I don't need to engage in.