Reading Mark’s post last week, a rush of ideas washed over me. My first thought was: ‘How delightful!’ Mark talked about phenomenology – the study of subjective conscious experience – without ever getting bogged down in the jargon of academia. Obviously, he knows the language that philosophers use to describe the experience of feeling the wind on one’s face, or the coldness of the sea, or even the sensation of music in one’s body. But scientists and philosophers tends to analyze in a way that keeps them ‘inside their heads’, removed from the actual experience – which was not Mark’s intention. Mark wanted us ‘in our bodies’ – to feel the wind, to hear the roar, to envy him the experience of being attentive to one’s experiences, and inspire us to do likewise.
Right after reading his post, my mind immediately started to compose a reply. An echo, really. I didn’t want to argue with any of his thoughts, but rather show how they had unlocked some of my own. But I didn’t have time to sit at my computer, or even to scribble my first few paragraphs. My husband and I had prior a commitment – an experience to enjoy. Thus we went on a nature walk with a group that was too large to see much wildlife, but it made me appreciate that our home is a sanctuary for more than Walter and I.
As we returned, I looked outside and saw the goslings – we harbor a large number of Canada geese families this year – 13 at last count. At about two weeks of age, their 50 or so babies look like miniature dinosaurs. I thought: “Spring is in full swing – the goslings have hatched and the greenery is shining. But summer has not yet arrived – as the lake is still rising.” I’m lucky to live close to nature – somehow its raw beauty inspires us to stay alert to our surroundings. Still, I realize how easily human beings get lost in their heads – so focused on our conceptual understanding that we may stop seeing, hearing, and noticing what is actually there to be experienced. On that glorious morning, Mark reminded me to be attentive. I thank him for that.
I know that when I lived in the city, I was much more ‘closed’. There is nothing meditative in the randomness of city sounds, so I’d donned my headphones as a buffer (sometimes even without any music). I knew that I shut out more than the noise of ambulances. I consciously constrained my field of perception because I didn’t have enough energy to discern the chaos. My mind was (is automatically) looking for patterns where very few commonalities remain. We live in the midst of so much stimulation, so many ‘inputs’. I obviously don’t mind the diversity of our cosmopolitan city life. But the connections that I shares with my fellow city dwellers were merely to exist in the same subway car, living in parallel – often while not even speaking the same language…
A day later, now unconsciously, Mark’s text still simmered. As I walked with my dog Tobey, I was amazed at the range of ‘mental states’ that I can experience. I can be in the moment, or lost in thought. I can remember things I’ve read, but only sometimes the fleeting thoughts that they provoked in me. More vivid in my memories are my emotions. I’ve known giddy joy, and pain – both psychic and physical. I’ve experienced love – both as the inner peace associated with its emotional safety, the rush of energy of its touch, the urgency of desire, and the anguish of its uncertainty. How amazing it is that I can recall particular moments of my past and how they made me feel! I guess this means that I was ‘fully present’ when experiencing them. And yet, while I think of such memories, right now, am I less ‘present’ to what is currently surrounding me? I caught myself slipping into my mental domain, and redirected my attention to my breath, the warmth of the sun on my face, the spring in my step.
Every second day, I walk the same 3 miles. I’m comforted by its familiarity. I still make an effort to notice the blue jay and the rabbit skittering away. In fact, this year I discovered that a fox family has their den under my neighbor’s seacan. But like Mark expressed, the relative sameness of my walk tends to somewhat dull my senses – unless I make a conscious effort to stay alert. Yet this repetition allows more thoughts to bubble onto the surface of my conscious. I become ‘reflective of’ instead of ‘immersed in’. I realize that these are not opposite states of mind, but actually two ways of subjectively experiencing.
Wow, how complex is our consciousness, when we bother to pounder its mysteries!
On that walk, I also had an epiphany. I realized that, amongst the seemingly infinite ‘things’ that I can experience, there are also things that I cannot experience. My husband’s thoughts is a prime example – but that also applies to all other minds. The ‘content’ of his mind will forever be out of my conscious reach – unless he expresses it to me. Moreover, I realized that what I know of my husband – his tendency to worry for example – is distorted by my familiarity with him. Maybe that today, he has not worried at all! Maybe that, on average, he is worrying less as months go by. But until and unless I choose to rediscover him anew, I might not notice that his thoughts have changed. No wonder that so many people can drift apart imperceptibly – it takes effort and diligence to perceive with fresh eyes.
Obviously I know that I am not the first person to have that particular epiphany. Now that I am reading heavily from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, I’m realizing that my thoughts are sometimes eerily close to those of my long dead predecessors. In other words, I have ideas that I didn’t know had been thought previously! I’ll have to be on my toes to not be accused of intellectual dishonesty. How is it even possible for an ‘Other’s mind’ to think along similar ‘lines’ – even recreate an argument, or through empathy, an emotion – and yet be so impenetrable in a ‘direct’ experience?
That is a paradox – that we cannot ‘experience’ the thoughts of others unless they are shared, and yet our human minds can experience similar thoughts ‘independently’ (for lack of a better word).
My wandering mind is now quite far from Mark’s original words… But his ideas still echo within – opening metaphorical doors in my own psyche. As I hiked and swam with him, as I sat in my home feeling the wind and cold, Mark succeeded in reminded me of how incredibly intimate the ‘act of living’ can be… and that we have to calm the ceaseless roar of our thoughts in order to pay attention.
Pay attention… What an odd idiom? Peter, is ‘attention’ part of your new system of value?!? Maybe it should.