A Born-Again Only Child- The Conversion Process

Well. In a strange turn of events, I, have just become an only child. I should have seen it coming, all the signs were there. My mother's erratic tears, high pressure shopping excursions, definitely the whole puppy thing, and yet it has somehow still come as quite a shock to me that our home has been vacated by my younger siblings in favour of academia. I can't help but feel like some sort of ceremony should have been held, perhaps with musical accompaniment, or at the very least someone should have rang some sort of bell. Really there should be an on-call orchestra available for situations like these, so that I can be sure I'm not the only one swaying to an emotionally-riveting symphony of melodrama several times a day. 

Now, I should clarify that I have in fact been my parents' only roommate once before. But I was 2 years old and likely more concerned with hurriedly replacing my childhood sense of wonder with the conceptualizations of my community and the ability to divide the world into categories. OK I realize that was a cheap shot. But it's fun and easy to critique society without offering any practical alternatives so don't make me erase it, K?

That said, I'd love to share with you one of my Current Self's favorite paradoxes. I think it is so beautifully hilarious that so many spiritual movements advocate the unraveling of the conditioned mind as a means to attaining true bliss, even though we all presumably started off unconditioned (at least to a far greater degree) to begin with. So basically, we spend our whole lives trying to still our minds, let go of our egos, and dissolve the boundaries of conception we've constructed while simultaneously slapping on more and more layers of delusion to our unenlightened minds simply by virtue of having developed attachments to "our lives" throughout our lives. But- and here's the punch line- most of us, despite our best efforts, have also spent our whole lives moving away from that ideal, which we once embodied in so many ways as children, as our increasing age provides us with more opportunity to crave, to conceptualize, and to cling. Even funnier to me is that I think it's a brilliant endeavor!

Yes, I agree that it is overly simplistic to cast the child as a wholly spiritual ideal- but I do think the idea of directing the quest for happiness inwards, as a navigation through the layers of delusion and division we have acquired throughout our lives (and are likely acquiring even as we search) is an absolutely beautiful one, and inclines me towards thinking of the universe as a playful and ridiculous prankster. I love laughing along with it (and by "it" I mean my absurd personification of a phenomenon I completely do no understand and have not even researched enough to realize the depths to which I do not understand it) and wish I didn't forget to do so on such a frequent basis.

There is a quote attributed to the Buddha that reads, "When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky."

Now, let's be honest here- when things are going great, I'm feeling really "spiritually in tune," maybe I'm wearing something long and flowy, my hair curled nicely that morning, the sun is shining, I freaking LOVE this quote. Love it! Think it's just tops. BUT *smile collapses quickly into stern expression* if I'm menstruating, a little overtired, frustrated by absolutely anything, (let alone if something actually tragic has just taken place) and have passed my threshold for optimism, THEN THIS QUOTE IS ANNOYING AND THE LAUGHING BUDDHA JUST LOOKS OVERWEIGHT AND DRUNK. 

 Because when I get really emotionally bound up in something, my mind decides my fun friend the universe is now a jerk, my overly complex rhetoric flies out the window and I completely forget everything I thought I had figured out about what makes me happy. In fact, I find the suggestion that I should get some perspective, acknowledge the absurdity of the situation and laugh, to be quite obnoxious. I'm starting to find my self absorption exhausting. Cue the orchestra  (in case you didn't notice, I just realized in this blog that I could italicize things)

But you know when someone puts something so simply, yet it resonates so deeply- like it's struck the truth chord inside you? Like you knew it all along, but you didn't even realize you did, and now you're SO HAPPY AND COMFORTED to be reunited with it on a conscious level. In my biased verification of this theory, I file those instances as evidence and anxiously await the day that they outmuscle slight hunger pangs in determining my emotions.

WHATEVER I met cool backpackers in India with Sanskrit tattoos who meditated every morning AND agreed with me, so it must be legit **plays the final desperate card, loses credibility in attempt to gain it**

...So ya, I was once an only child 20 years ago, but I don't think I made it so complicated back then.