Day 256

Saturday November 21, 2020

I am presently sitting on the couch drinking my usual morning coffee. With Pucci, our long hair dachsund, staunchly lying beside me I begin the quest of writing down not only my thoughts, but an account of the last week. Yesterday we finished remote teaching and look forward to a week off. The vacation time comes with no travel, no family and no celebration. It is a time for us to relax and refuel.

A time to think solely of ourselves while being thankful for those we love and help those in need. This season for us has become less about tradition and more about condition. The situation we find ourselves and how we can be benevolent.  The current reality is we are healthy and fortunate to be working during the pandemic. While much of the world spars with the virus and the rising infection rates, the U.S. is faring no better and in some ways worse. 

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in several U.S. states is growing more rapidly than anywhere else in the world. Dante learned in The Divine Comedy to escape hell one must go through the center of it. I suppose as we journey through this pandemic we are in the center of hell and must proceed through it in order to exit.  The suffering will continue.

The nation of the United States of America is in trouble. The divide in this country has caused a separation of thought and cohesiveness.  Our divided states has brought about carelessness instead of unity.  We struggle because we do not care. The pandemic has played its part, our government has a role and so do all of us. We have fought and tried to remain diligent in our fighting, but we have failed. We have failed each other. We will continue to do battle with this coronavirus, but ultimately it will win the war. In fact it already has to the point of 250,000 lives lost.  Humans are survivors and those that live will move on and make adjustments to survive, but the losses will be many and the pain will be much to bear. The holidays will not be the same. The joy will be tinged with a scent of sorrow and hopelessness as we move deeper into the winter and the discontentment that comes with loss. 

So as I sit and write and try to remain present knowing the concepts of past and future have little meaning to the persistent flow of thoughts streaming in my mind. It is verily an ongoing quandary of how we separate the "I" from the "me". Alan Watts, says, "the truth is revealed by removing things that stand in it's light..." and I perceive unawareness as a darkness shrouding our present mindfulness.

Alan Watts describes the mind and it's inability to stop thinking. We think thoughts that are not present and thus those thoughts cause anxiety or fear or pain. Even a joyful thought of our past is really just a piece of our present because we are thinking of it now. And the memory may be cheerful in nature, it reminds us of what is not now and that can trigger sorrow.  In this video Watts explains the only way to stop the mind from thinking is to leave it alone. And thus by leaving it alone, "it will quiet itself" 

Alan Watts - The Mind