What I'd do come the Zombie Apocalypse...maybe

So. Where was I?  Ah yes, Caz’s questions.  These were they:

“Who are you?

What are your values?

Where do you want to be in the growth of your being?

Where or who do you want to be in five years time?”

And then she added:  “Short and honest answers only.”

And I sat and stared at the screen for a long, long time.  And then I slowly typed:

“I don’t know.

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

I don’t know.”

Which was certainly short and, to be honest, very honest. But those questions stayed with me, and are still with me.  A few years ago, I would have answered them very differently. I would have said that my values were these: to be honest, to be kind, to be brave.

But, you know, the more I live, the more I feel there is always another side. If you are always honest, you might not be kind, for example. And if you are always kind, is that always the best thing for people? I mean, I have learned the most from the people who have been (ostensibly) very unkind. And brave? Surely that’s always good?  Well, not necessarily. Sometimes one’s bravery could hurt others.  It’s not so simple.

Five years ago I would have said that in five years’ time I would like to be a best-selling fiction author, travelling the world for the price of the odd talk or book signing.  Now? 

Who am I?  What is this thing people call Jane Alexander?  Am I my body?  My mind? My emotions? My elusive ‘soul’?  All? Or none? So I meditated on it (while rowing at the gym as it happens) and went further and further inwards and arrived at…a tiny glowing spark, a shimmer – one tiny oh so tiny part of creation. 

And I felt that was cool. But then, really, if I am at root, just one of gazillions of sparky little sparks, where is the need for this ‘growth of my being’?  I am.  I just am. Not particularly good (I mistyped god there – made me smile), not particularly bad.  But really, once again, I found myself wondering (wandering) ‘What is the point?’

And then I got off the rower and switched to the bike and, because I thought I’d pull myself back to the here and now (cos I really had gone off a long, long, long way while moving backwards and forwards and going nowhere) I opened a book and read the story of a wise Indian king who once dreamed that his people were going to be poisoned by evil rain which would drive them crazy.  He tried to warn the people but they didn’t listen. So, when the rain came, everyone drank and everyone went crazy.

What did the king do?  Well, he drank the water and went crazy too.  

You have to wonder about that story.  He knew what would happen but he still drank. Was he empathetic? Did he dread separation from his people?  Was he cowardly? Did he fear being alone amongst mad people (I've often thought, when people talk about the zombie apocalypse thing that I'd probably just run out and go 'Oh just bite me, for pity's sake, and let's get it over and done with')?  Or did he realize that his "wisdom" was one-sided and that he needed to go back to ordinary, mad, crazy, everyday life (the same life everyone lives) in order to become enlightened there too? 

www.jimbenton.com 

It’s easy to step aside from the world; to watch the ‘crazy’ people on their hamster wheels being busy and striving to achieve, to win, to make money, to gain prestige.  It’s much harder, I figure, to dance through the everyday madness. Or stumble, with bits dropping off here and there, if we follow the zombie line.

It may be tempting to leave your body, to leave your mind, to leave the planet – because although the world is very beautiful, it can equally be very depressing – but maybe that’s a cop-out.  Maybe enlightenment is insanity? 

  

Four questions?

Ah, apologies, my sweet companions of the road. I have left you high and dry. All these bank holidays have befuddled and confaddled me. I am juggling a lot right now and Time is playing tricksy.


But fear not, the Pact remains and the Journey is starting. Who is coming along? Well, every kind of person, I suspect. I love those who trust, so much – the ones who just launched in and waved their hands eagerly in the air - without having a clue where we're going or what we're doing: Louise Nash, Vivienne Tuffnell, Sessha Batto, Mud in the City spring to mind. But then again, I love those who question and those who doubt too. Will every person be sweetness and light? I hope not. There is room for the tricksters and the plain awkward squad as well as the sweet honeys (cos you can’t make pearls without grit).

Must every person be an artist and a bleeding heart? Hell, no. We need someone to make the sandwiches; someone to pitch the tents; someone to tell us when we’re going just too far, going way too bonkers, and that playing hopscotch in the storm in metal gumboots isn’t the brightest idea. Fire alone burns too bright, too fast; Earth alone gets mired in the mud; Water alone seeps and evaporates; Air alone gets spread too thin. We need one another. We need the contrasts.

My lovely niece Sophie (wise Water) came to stay for the weekend and we talked books and music, life and love, spirit and soul. But above all we talked about people and assumptions and generalisations and about jumping to conclusions. We’re so quick to judge, to condemn. Someone on Twitter said he could never countenance talking to a royalist or anyone who wasn’t a socialist. Another said she was going to unfollow anyone who had tweeted about the royal wedding. It’s interesting what pushes our buttons; what makes us decide a person is okay or not.

I’m seeing it again today on Twitter as the world erupts with fevered excitement over the death of Osama bin Laden. It’s that tribal ‘you’re with us or against us’ thing and I confess it puzzles me. I hate terrorism, I really do but I can’t punch the air at a man’s death; no, not even his death. Hate the acts, not the person, surely?

Anyhow. I told Sophie how one of the most wonderful experiences I have ever had was going on silent retreat for a week. I hadn’t a clue what people did ‘for a living’ or any of the mundane facts about their lives. I just got a sense of them from – what? – intuition? A feeling? Heart?  Soul?  I snatched clues too from their images – some of us painted (obsessively in my case) in the studio. At the end of the week I felt extremely close to a few people. When we talked, I found my favourite people were, variously, a psychiatrist, a surgeon, a nun, unemployed. All titles that come laden with preconceptions.  Halleluyah - we’d by-passed all that crap.  We knew one another as people, as fellow 'pilgrims'.

‘We ask the wrong questions,’ I said to Sophie.
‘I hate that we’re defined by what we do,’ she replied.
‘It’s always the same four questions, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘What do you do? Where do you live/come from? Are you single/partnered? Have you got children?’ I suppose we’re trying to pin people down – to fit them in boxes?
‘What are the questions we should ask,’ I pondered. ‘If we really want to know what makes a person tick at a deeper level?’
‘Questions that open up stories, I think,’ said Sophie. ‘Questions that stir emotions.’

We debated this for so long we lost track of time and Sophie nearly missed her train. We didn’t really come up with any concrete answers either. But we sort of roughed out these for starters...

• Which is your favourite sense? If you could only experience the world through one sense which would it be?
• Which piece of art (music, book, poem, film, TV show, performance etc) most rocked your world?
• Your house is on fire – all people, animals and vital documents are safe – what one thing do you rescue?
• If you were a god/dess, which one would you be?

Did we pick good questions? What would you pick? What are your answers to these four?