I don't know what I'm doing. None of us do. How could we. We'd be living our own Groundhog Day. But I can guess pretty much what's going to happen, it happened yesterday, and the day before. I wait and look and hope for something to suprise me, and when it does I laugh or I'm afraid� but always I'm interested.
And if there isn't enough surprise in my life, I create it. I try and pretend I didn't so it can be a surprise, but I create it. The small encounters that I dramatise. The stories I read so that I can pretend surprising things are safely happening to me. The acts of random chaos that happen to others and allows me feel the wind as the juggernaut of life narrowly misses me again.
I think I'll try and create something surprising with my life, rather than out of the events that happen to me.
I went camping again at the weekend, a beautiful site, high on a hillside in wales, overlooking the Wye valley. In the evenings we watched the sun go down over the wooded hills opposite, while we sat around an open fire, drinking wine and talking. As it grew darker we lay back looking at the stars and talking about how the solar system came about and our scale in the universe.
Somehow living like this, and its only ever for� a few days or a week at the most leaves me feeling melancholy and unsettled, somehow feeling sad instead of happy. Most of the time I do feel relaxed and happy, enjoying where I am and what I'm doing, but there is another part of me that is somehow gently grieving, and this is the part that is strongest when I return to my day to day life.
I'm going to see Ikuru next week and I wonder how it will affect me. Its premise about living the simple life has made me wonder if that is what I have lost. It is a simple life when I'm camping, cooking food, eating, sleeping, talking, being in a small community of people you like and trust. This is not how I'm living my day to day life.
I read something by Suzuki about learning Zen Buddhism; he said there was no point in trying to add zazen into an already busy life. Adding another thing to do which becomes a pressure is the opposite of what you should be doing - life is too busy as it is without adding more. Rather do less, practicing once a week is enough to begin with.
I like the idea of living a more simple life I just don't know how to live it.
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