Dominant emotions: happiness, excitement, wonder, contentment,
gratitude
Report from the river
So much can happen in five weeks. You can build a whole
life. And not just any life, but a huge, diverse, ever-evolving life more
fulfilling and enriching than any other I’ve ever been a part of. Of course,
part of that is just the novelty, the same way I felt UCU was paradise on earth
when I first got there. And part of it is my awareness of my temporality here,
which makes every day seem so much fuller, vivid, and unique. Another part is
just me reencountering myself. Just like the times before where I broke away
from a life I’d been living and started anew, being here all on my own makes me
rediscover how much I like myself, which is great. I feel that in any new place
I’d go to I could feel this happy, simply by being reminded of my own
brightness when it’s held against a new and different light. But by now it has been a while since I last
felt that free breeze of unbounded, empty existence I held so dear in the first
few weeks. And that’s okay. I am so happy to have traded it for a feeling of
deep embeddedness in this wonderful place, surrounded by such amazing people.
Because yes, a fourth part of why I’m having the time of my life here is
because this simply is an incredible
place.
The people here are all such unique characters, and,
generally speaking, so kind and welcoming. Many have a fascinating set of
talents and skills that I can learn a lot from. Like right now I’m writing all
this in one of the bedrooms in Pierce, sitting next to someone who grows algae
in a lab and plays waterpolo, and who I’m rapidly growing into a beautiful
friendship with, and another guy who, I just discovered, plays the Irish whistle,
taught me a tune, and in return has some questions for me, as he is learning to
play the guitar because he wants to be a bard. I am still super involved in
loads of different things, simply by being surrounded by so many active people and
not having to muster the discipline all by myself every time I go rock climbing,
running, going to the gym, gardening, planting seeds in the greenhouse,
jamming, singing, partying, playing videogames, going to the weekly Farmer’s
Market, reading, studying, cooking, hanging out, meditating, yoga, concerts, …
it goes on and on and on. Every night again, I find myself rolling from one
social scene into the next, and it takes at least three, all with different
people in different places, before I finally roll into bed. Apart from leaving
me feeling so socially saturated and satisfied, my learning curve of life has
also started up a steep incline. I talk and think about my experiences here at
a meta level a lot. A friend of mine put it beautifully, saying that with being
around so many people all the time, your head is constantly filled with other
people’s thoughts. And so apart from going through your own learning process,
you are in effect a participant in other people’s learning processes too. Maybe
that’s why life is so fast and deep and full here. At the same time, I have
never felt so fully present for such a long consecutive period of time. In
fact, I feel I have never left the center of life, where it’s all going down,
in all this time here. And not just that, I have also never been so consciously
grateful for all that I have, I feel like I’m living gratitude. So here I am, experiencing and thanking every
second of it all.
Spontaneous 1,5 hour long jam coming to our kitchen.
One of the most wonderful surprises of my life
Let me share some of the specific insights I’ve had, to
maybe make these very generic statements above come to life a little more.
Four day visit to the
cave of rumination
One friend that I’ve made here in particular has boosted my
learning curve of life. He is what I consider a ‘real scientist’, just like my
dear friend Mark from home. But more so than anyone else I’ve ever met, he
looks at the world so differently,
that I have trouble relating to what he has to say about it. Everything he says
is never something I could have predicted. He reminds me that while I’m
spending my time trying to make sense of the world on my own terms, those terms
are so relative, and there are such different ways of looking at the world. Recently
I have been thinking a lot again about the one-person universes we all inhabit,
or our ‘inescapable separateness from the other’ as a friend called it. It was confronting
to see how I can connect with someone, feel some elusive deeper understanding
that draws us together as friends, and yet know that our universes are so alien
to each other that all we could ever accomplish is stare in through sporadic
little windows in wonder. You can never understand the other person on their
own terms, see the world through their eyes. ‘Really understanding’ thus
becomes at best a close approximation of the other person’s experience. In
fact, it was a little disturbing, and it made me call into question the
coherence of my own perspective on the world. I got drawn too deeply into thinking
about this, and spiraled down into a deep rut of rumination. For four days, I
was upset and confused, and felt my mind clouding over the world around me.
But the way I came out of this throwback was beautiful. I
know the way out very well in theory, and have experienced many times in my
life, but every time I get lost in my mind I have to wait for the next moment
where I feel the way out. This time, it
was through meditation and yoga. Centering on my inner strength, stripping off
all thoughts, made me snap out of it. I had never before so consciously
experienced how those two practices can lift you out of a bad state of mind in
a single session. The key – for me – is opening up to world. Peeling off all films
of fear that settle in between you and your infinite, omnipotent source
of love. Every time I am amazed how easy it is to relieve your love of some of
those layers of fear, once you realize, or rather remember, that you can. Life
is all about sharing your love. It was so beautiful to see how it transforms
your interactions with other people. They are drawn to your light, happiness, to
warm and open and generous love, and it’s so contagious. It makes for instant
and real connections. Why don’t we always share our love? And it’s not more
complicated, on the contrary, it is the simplest form of being. Why, if it’s
not our natural or simplest state, do we get caught up in these strenuous,
exhausting modes of being most of our time, weighed down by this fear of
sharing our love? It’s crazy, it’s all everyone wants! Luckily, I have this
place now as a perpetual mirror, instantly reflecting the effects of my state
of mind in my interactions with the people around me. Can you imagine how this
place accelerates my growth?
Fractal webs of
affiliation
Last week Friday I went to my first party off campus. After
a month of sinking into life at the Tricoops, all of a sudden I found myself
back on an edge, surrounded by people I had never seen before. Yet I felt the
same benign vibe: open and welcoming. And as the night progressed, I stumbled
upon some of those invisible threads of spider silk, connecting new people I met back to friends
at the Tricoops, at the Domes, from the Student Farm, rock climbing, Project
Compost, the Whole Earth Festival Crew, and so on. It was here that I realized
that the Tricoops are anything but an isolated community of 44 free radicals.
They are deeply embedded in a much larger community at UCDavis of – how to
describe them? – ‘moon language’ people (it’s a Hafiz poem, check it out,
beautiful). An eccentric, friendly bunch, generally so so kind, open, ready for
connection because they have all felt its potency. I am so lucky that I can
count myself a member of one of the hubs of this huge moon language community.
The Tricoops are really where it’s at, and every time I come home from a party
with some amazing people that are my
housemates, my heart jumps at the joy of that realization.
Finding my place
Last weekend was significant in many ways. One of them is
that after a month of being here, I felt ready to step forward and into a real
role in the community. I facilitated two meetings where a bunch of buried
tensions and unspoken hurt feelings and misunderstandings needed to come to the
table. All it really needed was the request to open up to each other as a
group, and what happened after that was just magical. I just can’t understand
how we as the vast majority of humanity ever got ourselves into that
predicament of swallowing our concerns and closing off to others. Open, honest,
respectful communication is the answer to everything. It’s what I’ve
experienced time and again I have taken part in it. It shakes loose worries and obstructions
that you never even knew were there, and harbors such a beautiful,
transformative power. Being the one to break the silence made me feel like a
real member of the community, contributing in a way I know taps into some of my
greatest competencies and passions. In truth, I know that this is where my path
lies. Some of my greatest strengths and focal frontiers of personal growth – intuition,
social awareness, empathy, and diligence – all come together in this role as
facilitator. That role embodies and synthesizes all my greatest lessons in
life, because it’s the lessons I’ve always been drawn to most. And
here is a place that calls on me to take on this role. Here, right now,
in this precious life of mine, I feel that I’ve begun to bloom.
Second Tricoop meeting
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