Life’s often like a ‘where’s my lighter’ moment, when you want to light a stick of incense.
‘A lighter… but where is it ? Where’s my freaking lighter … this morning it was just there, I put it right here, I’m sure.’
I look around the room with the image of the lighter, placed, this morning still right on the fireplace. Nowhere t be found.
I then come back to follow the few steps I took after the morning seat. The sideboard, the telephone, the table…nothing. I go back to the fireplace, it can only be there. I nervously lift the log, the books and notebooks… Now it’s officially starting to annoy me.
I only have 45 minutes to dedicate to this sitting session and now 5 of those have been wasted looking for a stupid lighter.
Never mind. I’ll get matches instead…
To the image of the lighter in the back of my eyes, I substitute that of the good old box of matches.
In a split second, it now appear on the fireplace, just in front of the candle, precisely where I put it this morning, and then it all comes back to me :
There has never been a lighter anywhere but in my bedroom. And this is the for ever lighter-free living room.
What a strange thing the human mind is.
We are much less certain of finding what we are looking for than of looking for what we have found… in the depths of our eyes, like the dog we hand out a piece of fabric for him to sniff, so that he can plant ‘in the bottom of his nostrils’ what he needs to go fetch.
Meditation teaches (not enough, though, in my case), to see what lies in the background, before getting up to look for anything.
Franck – Nov 2022
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Such experiences are bizarre. There are those who believe that the universe plays tricks on us – hiding items just for the fun of it, to reveal them when the joke is ripe, or when we are moved to ask politely for them to be returned.
I have no view on that, save that I agree the universe is strangely humorous. And, maybe, having a laugh at your expense. Or, perhaps, trying to teach you to smile in place of your irritation. Or to realise the needlessness of incense.
There are many possibilities, of which those are but a few.
J’aimeAimé par 1 personne
Yes…sometimes the strangeness ingredient in « strangely humorous » really goes beyond humour and crosses the « utterly chaotic » border.
Or maybe it’s just me who have forgotten to sharpen my sense of humour for too long a period.
In any case, I don’t want to sound paranoid but it feels like, eventually, the joke’s always on us.
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Just because you are paranoid does not mean the universe is not out to get you.
J’aimeAimé par 1 personne