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ROCKING CHAIR WISDOM
Friday Oct. 16, 2015
Life.
Experience.
Life experience.
Statements.
So alike, right?
Yet we conjure nuances of feeling at their mention …
Start with life.
All things start with life.
All our life we are 24/7 operators of this human body called life. Our body of work, is called our experience. Then this gets confusing …
Experience, by definitions I’ve read, is about things that happen to us, including our powers of observation – of ourselves and of others ~ not merely existing.
Combining these two, life experience, seems more like my resume. Or my report card. Seems more about what have I done? And what have I learned from it?
So what?
Yes, there should be some point to this …
Cannot imagine life, as it must be for so many creatures, lacking capacity to experience life and recognize their memories, their entire lives, as learning experiences of meaning and value rather than some evolutionary food-chain motions, from conception through to death, dust …
How empty life, must be, if it was only life.
How pale experience would be if we lacked capacity to recognize we are having them as they happen – seeing through them beginning to end, and sideways too – cross-sectioned, transparent, examined under our microscopic analysis.
Or, simply stated, ‘that was fun’. Or painful. Or shameful. Or enlightening.
Life experience, to me, seems like sage advice of wise men on mountaintops, or grandmothers in rocking chairs – people we go for help, for understanding.
Maybe I’ll shop for a rocking chair …
It occurs to me that I’m still seeking while at the same time feeling sometimes sought-out.
I’m still here, searching for my mountaintop.
Mark Kolke
written / published from Calgary, AB
morning walk: 0C/32F, no frost on windshields yet … hat weather, mitten time, Gusta-the-sheddingmachine seems grateful for the chilly clime, she’s sporting her new coat and ready for any turn in the weather (while my vacuum cleaner groans from sucking up her debris) – we soldiered on, nostrils enjoying the crisp calm air amid morning traffic, noise and kids being dropped at the daycare
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