1 — A woman sets out to walk to the shed—the first step in today’s gardening. She trips over a root and screams in frustration. Her child sets out to walk to the shed—to find a spider. She trips over the same root with a peep of surprise. “When did you get there, little fellow?” she asks. And she sits to wonder how the root became today what it was not yesterday, and her world is re-written.
2 — “I was frustrated, so I lost control.” No, you lost control, so you were frustrated–and you lurched out to grab back control, and we all saw a devil. Only a plan can be frustrated.
3 — A man walks up to his fig tree, and it has no figs, and he grumbles. The next year, the same thing. Then, the winter comes, and he becomes a Stoic. He expects no figs. The summer comes, and he is satisfied. The fall comes, and he starves to death.
4 — To enact patience, one must already be dissatisfied.
5 — Between you and I, at the same table, is the infinite chasm of being. Most imagine to bridge the gap by locking the Other into their plans–into expected behaviors in their imaginary world–and the gap widens, and the fog becomes opaque. Some cease to Be, and let curiosity carry them as the wind–where they might grasp a scent of Transcendence. We wake with the choice to be one who owns everything and sees nothing or one who becomes everything and owns hardly themselves.
6 — In the event, the collision of beings, we may listen and lose ourselves in the song of the other. But this body which we call our own travels close and sings her own song–and she is other too. Being has no simple harmony. We wave the dissonance away with children's words like "boundaries" and "respect," but to walk and listen is a quieter strength than we have yet learned as a species.