Taking It All Personally
Why I take everything 'personally'..
Taking everything personally may not always be a bad thing.
When we get affected by something, it is nothing unnatural. Most of the times, our biases come in the way. Our mind is a reinforcement loop. When we observe something, it changes us. The reaction evoked in us is based on our inner model of the world. Therein lie the problems and their solutions.
An example. I was standing in the open, and rain started falling. First there was the gentle breeze, then that earthy smell. The wind became more insistent, the clouds enveloped the sky and the damp stuck to my shoes.
All of these may cause me to flee, or to stay and breathe in the water. To observe how my body feels warm and the water cold. How my eyelids feel heavy, but my tongue feels splashed with tiny droplets, tasting water created miles away in thunder and 30000°C.
Notice how I use words to recreate an image in your mind of an experience that I could only catch a glimpse of. How my inner model kicks in. Maybe a fraction of that experience now lives in your mind.
When you go into the rain next time, maybe you will let yourself get drenched for a moment. To understand why it is important to detach from the pulls of survival and let reality check in, moment sink in. To really see what is going on. Engage.
Why it may be important to take everything personally. My biases may force me to flee, I may have an urgent meeting. I may get irritated, thinking now I would be stuck in traffic. Or I may accept this as my world, and plow ahead anyway with the same passion if it didn’t rain. Because the world is as it always has been.
So. There is the way of indifference. When we are numbed by the sufferings of the world. When we can’t feel at all. Because we have rejected the world, receded into the shells of identity. Pain and joy have blurred together into a massive blob of misery.
And then there is the way of acceptance. When we feel about everything because it is ours. The experience is the part of the world that we created in our minds. The clouds that I didn’t see. But could see in my mind. The thunderbolt which I merely heard, but could understand the science of, due to the model that I built in my head.
And all of it’d only increase my love for the world. That rain could either stop me and enrage me, or let me flow in its current. Nothing is wrong, just that I am here. I am, and it is enough. Not forever, and that is okay. These raindrops are made of the same stuff that I am made of. There is no end nor beginning to what I see now. Only the beloved world and this momentary self.
Such a beautiful piece!
"These raindrops are made of the same stuff that I am made of."
That line stopped me.
What you're calling acceptance, where the rain becomes yours rather than something happening to you, looks surprisingly similar to what a 4th-century Buddhist school called Yogacara described as the collapse of the strict boundary between observer and observed.
Not mysticism. More like: the inner model loosens, the hard border softens, and you end up standing in the rain instead of running from it.
The interesting part is that this isn't indifference. Indifference also makes the boundary go away, but by shutting down. What you're describing keeps everything alive and just stops fighting it.
Two ways to stop fighting the rain. Only one of them lets you taste it.
When did you last catch yourself choosing the rain over the meeting?