Come Back to Me

For those occasions when I get stuck in deep thinking, my wife shocks me out of my revelry with “Come Back to Me.” She does this most often when I’m driving. Her concern grows over my NOT being alert to traffic conditions; she notices my drifting by the reduced speed; other cars race by us on both sides. It is then she is certain I’ve become the hindrance to traffic flow while off on some mental tra-la-la.  Good safety tip, don’t let your mind wander when moving at high speed in a mostly plastic container which is an illusion of safe.

   I was entertaining the low level noise of others deceit.  Not the fooling me into giving away the family fortune for land in the Everglades kind of deception but rather the mundane everyday kind of deceit of illusionary perception.  Since we are all subjectively constructing our concepts moment by moment, it can be confusing to sort out what are the facts and which ones among them I agree with, (knowing all along, those are most likely personally endeared values I WANT to hold the ultimate, universal and TRUE definition.)  Montse and I were in deep conversation about how the paths of actual and illusion depart in different directions until the preponderance of facts makes an illusion fall in on itself.  You can only fool yourself for so long. Then “Snap” disillusionment happens and you’re in the rubble of a well cultivated dream.  Which may be uncomfortable, and even hurt, but it’s always best to be back in the here and now.  So Imagine every single one of us wandering away into our dream world, weaving a fantasy of self-serving facts that perpetuate our royal personage; our special identity; our ever cherished and perpetual important status, commanding the external world with a sense of entitled deserving privilege.

Yikes, use your damn blinkers when you swerve buddy.

  Pretty easy to see where the struggle comes from eh?  Just as that struggle has tributaries of worry, anxiety, anger, frustration, and most compelling of them;

Terror.

  I’ve pondered this process for years.  I wanted to figure out how to anticipate it; to extinguish the practice; and to rise above self delusion.  There are plenty of suggestions on how to live mindfully.  Just as there are techniques to calm one's self in order to move from that place of anxious into a calm confidence of the actual moment.  What I have overlooked for far too long, was the common-every-day solvent that works so well, has been staring me in the face for all of my recollecting life, and I’ve neglected to resort to.  What is the silver bullet to self-inflicted limiting woundings?  Humor. 

Just as with all good humor, there is a punchline bringing the joke to its dramatic delivery; and here’s the beauty of it.  That punchline is a key phrase as your own wakeup call.  Construct it; find it; then treasure the skill as you hone it to cut through your woven nonsense.  For me, it’s the startle that awakens me everytime I hear it; from the lips of the one I cherish, or the guiding voice in my head who witnesses my meaningless mental tomfoolery stuck on trying to make conflicting concepts make sense in a inconsistent existence.  Come back to me.