first blended thoughts on being
How many times have you found yourself trying to clear your mind of thoughts?
When we are born, we are like a blank canvas. We have some roughness typical of that type of fabric, formed by several fibers intertwined but still untouched by any brush.
We come to this world stripped of labels, language, or meanings. Our knowledge of the universe is born and dies in each experience, in each moment. Our first contacts are not motivated by reasoning but only by looking to respond to our most basic needs, such as breathing, warming the body, or touching. Gradually we become aware of our own existence and we start to learn the meaning of things and time, conditioned by the context in which we grew up.
In no time we already identify ourselves with everything around us, forgetting almost completely how it is to feel the air filling our lungs, how it is to feel the subtle warmth when the skin of someone approaches ours, we forget almost completely who we are. We learn that what we already lived is past and what we have not experienced yet is future, with the certainty that time exists, failing to understand the present that becomes no more than a verbal tense.
We learn to be so much, that we unlearn what it is simply to be. To exist in the now.
We are no longer the owners of our existence but puppets at the mercy of the automaticity of our brain, of our thoughts that constantly remind us of what we have to do, of our fears, our guilt, of what we don't have and what we want to be, of what others think, defining what is good or bad, what is ugly or beautiful without allowing any questioning.
I came close to my 30's like that. Lost in the midst of so many stains, so many colors, and smudges, not knowing what was underneath those overlapping layers of paint. And the fear I also learned of death made me want to be that white plain canvas again. I know well that white canvas I will never be afresh, but now I know that it exists in me and that I can see it and feel it.
I am 32 years old and I have been a nurse for 10. I can not deny the privilege that has been being able to observe human behavior as also the uncountable opportunities for interaction with people in the most diverse situations of emotional and physical challenges. Facing the mirror of our existence is both admirable and frightening at the same time, but it is above all transformational.
I believe that we are all expanders of each other and the creation of this blog emerged from this belief, that the sharing of knowledge and experiences allows us to evolve.
I've been writing for myself in notebooks for two years. Fifteen days ago, I chopped the left index finger on the immersion blender while I was trying to remove the last portion of cake dough from the little machine. I injured tendons and other nerve endings.
It is curious that the first lines that I’m writing for the world are accompanied by the completely new sensation of touching the keys of a computer with one less finger. Don't get me wrong, it is still here, but I've cut the connection (at least the direct one) that tells my brain that it exists. Does it make me less or more?
