It’s 9-11.
Eighteen years ago, I was at Gold’s Gym in Salem, Oregon, enjoying a morning workout. Suddenly, I noticed people standing gape-jawed underneath suspended TV sets. Glancing at the screens, I saw the first tower aflame. I hurriedly wrapped up my workout and headed home, listening to the radio on the way. When I got there, the second tower had been hit. I was amazed – and thought it 2% dubious – that both towers would come down as they did. It seemed the destruction originated from below, not from fires a hundred stories up.
As the day progressed, I was astounded that something could happen so suddenly, without warning. It seemed to have come literally out of the blue. I knew we had enemies, of course. We had been at war in the Middle East. But this? How could this happen?
It didn’t take long for people to start flying American flags out of their car windows, or from antennas. People from all over the US came together in a common cause of healing, seeking to understand the tragedy they had just experienced. The whole world joined in to extend their common empathy.
“Today we are all Americans,” proclaimed Jean Marie Columbani, the editor of the popular French magazine, “Le Monde.”
I was also caught up in the patriotic fervor. I proudly taped a flag in the rear window of my car. I believed then in the sovereign blessedness of America, in the eyes of God. I believed then that this land would only sustain a “righteous” populace, and that this was a wake-up call.
My patriotism, if you can call it that, has changed dramatically.
Whereas before I thought it possible to change and refine America’s democracy from within, I no longer do. I have my own reasons for this sad belief, and they’re the same as many other inhabitants of this land. Simply stated, the powerful are in power, they’re driven by the same, and money is what fuels their apocalyptic engine, not the will of the people. Simply stated, America is under siege, and not only by renegade pilots. Those in the halls of our own government, and in corporate boardrooms, can also cause tremendous damage to America’s democracy. And are.
But this short essay isn’t about America. It’s about our lives. Well…maybe it’s about both.
Sometimes we look within ourselves and see a beautiful metaphorical skyline, with trees in the distance. A peaceful photograph. If all is not quite serene, at least it’s a controlled chaos; a known disorder that operates within the bounds of what we’ve come to expect. New York City, one of the prizes of western culture, is a fine example of this, as are our very lives. Most mornings there are no storms on our horizons, and dozens of planes dance through our internal skies in an orderly fashion.
And then, inexplicably, a jet veers off course. Within seconds, one of the towers in our lives is on fire; one of those that make up our skyline. A big one. And then, a second jet makes impact on a separate tower.
My question is this: when did the trouble start? On 9/11? On the morning we find out that our spouse is cheating? On the Friday we get handed the pink slip, or when the officer cuffs us for driving under the influence? When did these “jets” really become a problem? I submit that the problem began well before 9-11 happened. We just missed the signs.
How?
As it was for America on September 10, 2001, so it is for us. We can look at our lives and choose not to see the warning signs. We can go about our lives, addicted to pro football, social media, sugar, popular culture and accumulating “things.” We are free to be staunchly Democrat or Republican, Conservative or Progressive, religious or “spiritual,” with all it means to self-identify as such. We’ve become masters of labels, complexity and multi-tasking.
This is the prerogative of humans: to get as many planes in the air as we can if we wish, and let our oversized cerebrums in the control tower figure it out. Make no mistake, the number of aircraft flying around us can be impressive – and we still have time to post a smiling selfie to Facebook.
But there is a cost. And that cost is a certain jet. And that jet may come at any time.
We live in this world. This is no fault of our own. And we live in a land commonly called, “America,” a tremendous blessing almost beyond compare for most of us. Comfort and ease are abundant, and expected, and cheap. Yet, many of us are “living lives of quiet desperation,” as Thoreau once said, well over a hundred years ago. As a people, we chase distraction after distraction. Ancient wisdom would say we do this in order to keep from seeing within ourselves, to keep from knowing who we are.
The trouble is, “within ourselves” is where the jets are, “distraction” is how the powerful rulers govern, and “desperation” is the result of a marriage of the two. Mindfulness alone gives us access to the morning sky, that which holds all the aircraft we can see, and evicts from bloody control the power-hungry rulers of our minds.
How do we become mindful? There isn’t space here to talk about it, honestly. Like our lives, short essays are only so long. The good news is that, the only thing more available than instruction about how to be mindful, is mindfulness itself. Instruction is an online search away. The practice itself is as near as our next breath.
Of course, in the search for more consistent mindfulness, it helps to take a few distractions out of the equation. You know, order a few planes to land. We can cut out alcohol, or television during the weekdays, for instance. We can pick up a book – preferably by Eckhart Tolle, Brene’ Brown, the Dali Lama, or any number of authors that teach access to Depth that transcends mere belief and rote dogma. We can choose silence as we drive, over the radio. We can choose not to decrease our debt load, and spend more time with our treasured relationships. All of these things, the pruning of some and the grafting of others, help give us access to something within ourselves than the mere collection of interests and goodies.
In short, the ability to see our own minds, which is what mindfulness is, is the only way we can observe our own internal nation. It’s the primary way we access clarity within ourselves, to be able to monitor all the jets we have buzzing around our sacred skies. Consistent mindfulness begins the process of personal civil disobedience, the forefather of independence from the tyranny of our own minds.
Mindfulness won’t stop all the drama we experience, but it will give us a better perspective from which to monitor it. With mindfulness as a practice, as a new standard for our inner nations, we increase the chance that we won’t have to experience the tragedy of personal 9/11s.
At least not as frequently.
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Photo: IStock