cover the universe with drawings we have lived (experiences)

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Each one of us, then, should speak of his roads, his crossroads, his roadside benches; each one of us should make a surveyor’s map of his lost fields and meadows. idea art creative draw life imagine 

Thoreau said that he had a map of his fields engraved in his soul.  And Jean Wahl once wrote … [“] The frothing of the hedges / I keep deep inside me [“] … Thus we cover the universe with drawings we have lived.”

Gaston Bachelard

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“You have to live a life to understand it. Tourists just pass through.”

Prince

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Well. This is about Experiences and how each experience we have creates an imprint. In other words. Why experiencing things & experiences are important.

Let me give you a reason not only for living, but experiencing Life. And I don’t means “savoring Life” type trite bullshit. I mean experiencing what is going on around you and being aware, to participate in Life … and actually experience the realities of the here & now <and not divert your attention toward some imaginative “boy, I imagined something completely different than what is occurring”>. Nor am I going to hijack any of that nutjob Eckhardt Tolle’s “live in the now” nonsense.

All I will suggest is that each experience, especially when you pay some attention to it, etches something in us.

Think of it like acquiring a tattoo. If you do accept the tattoo metaphor <or is that an analogy?> it seems to me you should take some care with what gets engraved upon you.

dance color cloud skirtWhy care?

The fact is Life is in constant movement and it can become incredibly tiring trying to dance with it all day long. In addition, your dance partner, named either ‘good’ or ‘bad’, typically arrives without invitation. I would suggest more of us would be slightly more content if we didn’t focus on the fact our dance partner made us smile <lets assume that is “good”> or is a complete asshole <lets call that dance partner “bad”>, but instead focus on the dance itself.

That, my friends, is experiencing Life.

The steps, the movement, that path and arc of the dance and the fields upon which our feet are placed in their movement. Thoreau tells us ‘ he had the map of his fields engraved in his soul.’ That is because he not only walked them, but he saw and felt the steps as he placed them.

This is all about recognizing the value of being aware. And it is this perceptive appreciation of the time & place, past & present, permits us a healthy balance of reality and memory.

Even better?

This awareness actually permits us to embed the moments better in our heads. This isn’t to say we will remember it correctly <because psychologically we suck at correctly & accurately remembering things> but rather the moments themselves are engraved upon us.

To be clear. This ‘thing’ we embed is actually a reflection of the natural gap in our minds between the complexity of reality and our ability to experience the complexity. What I mean by that is we tend to view reality heuristically. Therefore we don’t truly see reality but rather a simplified translation. Unfortunately, this simplified version naturally builds in some blind spots.

Now. There is a whole bunch of psychological mumbo jumbo about dimensions of recognition’ and ‘symbolic complementariness of the person’s first-hand life events/involvements’, but it is much easier for everyday schmucks like you and I to think of it in a linear fashion — any initial connective personal involvement in a moment begets some reflection <how it may relate to other moments> which inevitably creates some ongoing narrative in our head.

Aw. Forget all the psychological stuff. Simplistically, the map of our Life is engraved upon our minds (if not our soul) assuming we actually are aware enough to experience the map as we traverse it. That is why awareness matters — our universe deserves to be covered with our drawings.

I am fairly sure a lot of people will read this and be shaking their heads going “I have great memories … I could cover my universe with drawings, you aren’t telling me anything of value”.

And you may be right. Absolutely. You may be.

But I would suggest that most people would actually end up papering their universe with someone else’s drawings of their experience … like taping postcards on the wall of everywhere you have been. That is not covering your universe with drawings of what you have lived.cage bird tattoo

Those are simply superficial surface expressions of real actual experience.

Let me go back to my tattoo metaphor.

If I were to get a tattoo on my soul I imagine, at least me, I would not choose a tattoo of a postcard, but rather I would prefer choosing an expression of what I felt when I placed my feet where that postcard was. In other words, I don’t want my tattoo to be a tourist with Life, I want it to be an expression of how I lived it.

That’s all I’m sayin’.

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Written by Bruce