On Being Ordinary
16 Nov 2011 4 Comments
Embarrassed as I am to admit this, all my life I have yearned to be clever, famous, beautiful, thin, perfect, popular, admired, enlightened and by extension – ‘special’…
Somewhat narcissistic peut etre?
There have been times when I have felt jealous of people with cancer not because I want their disease but because I want the super dooper propulsion into enlightenment that some people report on as a result of confronting their mortality.
It seems the universal energies, the wisdom beings, the Gods, the Goddesses (or whatever divine symbol works for you) have something different in mind for my life. It’s called mediocrity. Ordinariness, nuthin’ special. There have been no lights, fireworks or celestial halos over my head.
Yep. It seems that my job is to communicate through the vehicle of this ordinary life with all its financial stresses, relationship issues and relentless old habits of lazy thinking. I am destined to live in a chubby old body, to own a Barbeque, to lack motivation and to hold a lifetime membership to Weight Watchers to whose meetings I drive in a 5 year old car (not even vintage – just ordinary).
I even ‘died’ once when I was 18 years old in post-op after having my tonsils out. I floated out of my body and looked down at the guy having a convulsion in the bed next to mine. My parents were told “we nearly lost her”. But do you think I saw the tunnel or moved towards the light? Nope. It just felt ordinary… I would like to overstate it and say that is was unbelievable and life changing but it just wasn’t…
So am I complaining?
Actually, I think I have learned more through this ordinary experience that I may have if I had been born into the princess’s body I longed for. I have learned to appreciate that what I have to give through the vehicle of this ordinary life has value and I can marvel at the wonder and good fortune of my life. I practice meditation, gratitude and compassion and I love lots of people who I think love me back. I walk on a beautiful beach every day with my ordinary puppies. So it’s not bad is it?
In fact it is good. A very good life indeed.
Pearl of wisdom – Tom Bass
16 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
In 1994 I cut an article out of the Sydney Morning. I found it again today and have transcribed for you below. I hope you find it as inspiring as I did all those years ago.
It took sculptor Tom Bass 68 years to make the major breakthrough of his life. Now 78, the grand old man of Australian sculpture remembers: “I was in my 60’s before I realised I regarded myself as a victim. The day I got that, I was so embarrassed, I’m a raconteur (storyteller), I had this beautiful collection of finely honed anecdotes that I’s been victimised”
Until a decade ago, Bass – who grew up in poverty during the Depression and left school at 15 – felt really hard done by. “Imagine the collection of stuff I had”, he said.
Was wisdom about being optimistic and positive? The Herald asked Tom Bass, who nearly always wears white and lives in Sydney’s inner West with his “superb” 3 year old son and wife of 10 years Dr Margo Hoekstra, 48.
No. Optimism, he said, was too naïve a word in a world where we had tragedies such as Bosnia. Rather, wisdom was about trust, about trusting that whatever happens, good or bad, it is significant.
When I was 68, I was full of incomprehension still. I was sitting at the table and I got a sudden flash of explanation. Everything that happens has meaning. There’s no question of sorting out and saying this is dreadful, God shouldn’t have allowed this to
happen. As I got that thought, I got an image of a water-worn pebble which began existence as a jagged piece of stone, then had countless encounters with other objects – some could have been catastrophic – which finally shape it. And everything became the essence of the shape it is, or was.
“If I have a pearl of wisdom to give you, it is to accept that change is the most important and sacred thing there is. Then you are flexible. You have to lie back in the arms of the universe in an attitude of divine nonchalance, because believe me, once you begin to trust, the whole universe changes.
“You have to trust that happiness is an inevitable outcome of living in these terms. Trust the process. And there’s no quick fix, so be patient… People get desperate because they are disappointed in their expectations. They’ve built up an image of where they should be, and when it doesn’t work out, they’re disappointed and they miss out on what is happening”
Tom Bass passed away in 2010 aged 93. You can find information about the great man on his website www.tombass.org.au
Hello world!
20 Oct 2011 1 Comment
Hi
Welcome to my blog… I plan to write some stuff myself about living a conscious life and also to post interesting links and articles I come across in my daily wanderings as a teacher and psychotherapist…
Love and light
Margie
