The Delighted Mind

 

I woke myself up the other night laughing at something in a dream. I mean really laughing, stomach muscle involvement laughing. It’s stayed with me all week – not the dream, that fled immediately, leaving only the vaguest vestige of an innocuous looking pigeon – but the feeling of delight in my own mind. That I can, in my most unguarded moments, be utterly unburdened and able to enjoy the simplicity of the mind at play. It strikes me that this is to be treasured as one treasures those moments of joy or hilarity with a friend, for the feeling of fondness toward myself quickly dissipated along with the dream, becoming replaced by the old familiar self-critique.

Elizabeth Gilbert speaks of practising ‘stewardship’ towards oneself, an idea so enormous and beautiful that I dropped a saucepan in my excitement upon first encountering it, but have since not known what to do with, holding it in my outstretched palm like a sweet yet timid little bird that is liable to expire at any moment from the sheer bewilderment of existence. However, this laughing dream experience has galvanized me into creating my own ‘comrade’ practice.

In opposition to the usual angsty, grippy, gripey, too-difficult-to-maintain-no-wonder-they-only-last-until-february New Year’s RESOLUTIONS, I’d like to emphasize an aspect of that word’s etymology, which is loosening. So, part of the practice is to think of a thing about myself that is nothing to do with me, if you see what I mean. Nothing identity-based, forced, chosen, conscious, controlling, needed. Nothing that matters. And then just be friends with it. That’s it. Simple. Lovely. Amusing. Soft.

Example: I like to carry boiled eggs with me; sensible source of protein, come in their own handy biodegradable packaging, can be offered to friends and strangers (though, oddly, rarely accepted), not the end of the world if you drop one. Also they’re oval shaped, which pleases me immensely - I don’t know why, nor do I care, I just like that I like this. It is far easier to feel stewardship toward this individual who sees fit to carry such advantageous edibles than it is to embark upon the somewhat abstract journey of ‘self-love’ or some other dewy Americanism too sugary for our cynical European tastes.

A caveat; your practice must centre (as all truth must) around a paradox. What you deem unimportant about yourself might be something held dearly by others, but if you have noticed this, then you may have slipped into its cultivation and therefore it is no longer unimportant to you. It must remain something uncultivatable – a penchant for hard-boiled eggs for instance (GAH, I even love the language surrounding these beuts - hard boiled? So brilliantly bad-ass for so vulnerable a thing).

I may never again carry a boiled egg, but nobody, including me, will notice this. Yet I have been gently ribbed about this habit by people who regard it, and by extension me, as familiar, as kin – known, which makes me happy. Of course, the ego immediately wants to get involved, developing a proud identification with ‘egg-carrier’, forgetting in its slavering devotion to LOOK-AT-ME-I-AM-THIS-NESS that 3 minutes ago its prominent identity was DO-NOT-DEFINE-ME-BY-MY-EGG-CARRYING-BIOLOGY. Ho Hum.

Try it. Don’t overthink, and for goodness’ sake have fun. Happy Solstice.

X

Image: Anna Khomutova

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