The first time I noticed it, I was thirteen.
I was sitting on my pony, Comet, stopped in a small grove of trees in a big open field on top of a hill. It was winter, and the cold wind bit my fingers, nose, and toes. (I refused to wear gloves because I wanted to feel the reins. I refused to wear a hat on principle. And nobody’s toes stay warm in riding boots below a certain temperature.)
As I gazed across the bleak Virginia landscape toward the Bullrun Mountains to the east, bare tree limbs creaking in the wind overhead, Comet’s red mane blowing, it hit me—hard—that nothing in my life had changed. Nothing was actually new.
Oh sure, I’d never paused on top of that particular hill before. Had never seen exactly that view at that time of year. My powder-blue down jacket actually was new. And delightfully warm, thank goodness.
But that wasn’t what I was noticing.
In that moment, I realized that “I” hadn’t changed since the day I was born.
Yes, I remember my birth … being lifted out of my mother’s body after an emergency C section. The doctor’s gloved, impersonal hands beneath my bottom. The view of the operating room changing as he lifted me up. The freezing cold of the room. (Which was not heated to body temperature!) The sound of the scalpel and other metal implements hitting the metal tray …
Even the sound was cold.
Sitting on my pony, thirteen years later, I recognized the presence of the same observer—the same detached “I” that was present at birth—impartially witnessing the wintry Virginia landscape around me.
And nothing about that “I” had changed one iota.
Appearances
Sure, my body had changed.
Early in life, as a bottom-heavy toddler sitting in my crib, I wondered where the water my nurse delivered in a cup when I uttered the sounds “wah-wah” came from. Wanting to discover the source, I crawled, laboriously, over the bars of my crib, only to crash to floor, head first.
My first sense of being a “big girl” came at six on the wings of my first solo bike ride without training wheels, rushing down the steep hill on a neighbor’s lawn, exhilaration screaming through every cell of my being.
Now, at 13, my body was bigger. MUCH bigger! I was fast outgrowing Comet, and was about to advance to riding a much taller, difficult-to-manage, Anglo-Arabian horse.
I was pony-sized no longer.
But oh my! I’d accumulated so many experiences in the years since that first conscious moment!
Birthday parties, roller skating, twisted ankles, sleep-overs at a friend’s house, spinach, ice cream, my mother’s second marriage, visits to the doctor’s office, learning to swim, the first time I stayed up until midnight like a grownup, learning to ride, seeing the ocean for the first time.
My first almost-kiss by a boy …
And, oh my! The many different identities I’d experienced and advanced through in that time!
- Of being a short, unseen being that had to be wary of the cigarettes held in unconscious adult hands just at eye-level.
- Of being an eager learner, racing through the alphabet so I could get to the good part of assembling all those letters and reading my first book! Life was a series of minute-to-minute accomplishments then—getting to the top of the jungle gym and seeing the world from on high for the first time. Dodging the ball successfully at recess. Getting something right on the blackboard for the first time. Learning was fun!
- Of being the Class Dunce, sitting, stupefied, in a 4th-grade classroom organized back to front with smart kids at the back, dumb kids at the front, and me with my solitary desk pushed so far to the front it touched the blackboard, feeling shame.
- Of being a jock in grade and high school. Always the captain of every sport. Always in the lead athletically.
- Of being smart, earning that valedictorian award, beaming with pride, the shame of 4th grade forgotten.
- Of being an independent adult living in my first apartment.
- Of being a television engineer. working sports TV for ABC, NBC, and ESPN.
- Of being sexually liberated.
- Of being a married woman.
- Of being a divorcée.
- Of being a spiritual seeker.
- Of being a writer and journalist.
- Of being a borderline alcoholic.
- Of being a published author …
Identities all. Coming and going like waves crashing on the shores of my life. Taking form, having impact, then dissolving to nothing.
And the whole time, through it all, the Silent Watcher watched, unmoved, untouched. Steadfast. Wondrously “me” and yet not “me” at all.
What a mystery!
I remember running across the famous saying of Heraclitus, the ancient Greek philosopher who proclaimed, “There is nothing permanent except change.”
In other words:
Everything is change. Nothing but change is changeless.
How very right he was!
Over the years, I struggled trying to resolve the paradox of “same” and “change” housed in the same body. Until I finally realized paradox is just the way of things. It’s the fundamental nature of physical reality. How else to accept the fact that human beings are both individual and One With All at the same time? Both flesh and spirit?
Both/and instead of either/or.
So, why am I bringing up The Watcher versus personal identity? A topic that is incredibly esoteric, philosophic, and seemingly not relevant to daily life in the slightest?
Well … it might not have been relevant as little as 10 years ago. But today? Being aware of both perspectives just might be the Lifeboat of Sanity people need during these fraught and tumultuous times.
I am reminded, yet again, of a meme I posted to social media recently, picturing an elephant and a rabbit sitting on a park bench at sunset. The elephant asks the rabbit: “What do you miss?”
And the rabbit replies: “I miss the way I used to view the world before I knew too much about it.”
Since 2020 and COVID, my worldview and perceptions of reality have crashed and burned so many times (I mean literally hundreds of times) that I’ve finally reached the place of SAAE&A:
Suspended Assumptions About Everything & Anything.
I feel like Sergeant Schultz from the 1960s TV show Hogan’s Heroes, saying over and over “I know nothing!”
I know nothing about this planet, it’s history and origins. I know nothing for sure about its shape and size and ultimate nature any more.
Maybe ancient aliens were the gods and goddesses of mythology, maybe not. Maybe the planet and humanity were indeed reset and we’ve forgotten everything about the most recent high-technology civilization that covered half the planet a mere 200 years ago called Tartaria.
Maybe not.
Maybe the gorgeous soaring cathedrals and minareted mosques around the world were truly energy amplification chambers supplying free energy to the citizens of this world.
Maybe not.
Maybe we went to the moon despite the deadly radiation of the Van Allen Belt and paper-thin space capsule walls.
Maybe not.
Maybe the globalist takeover is succeeding.
Maybe not.
Maybe Charlie Kirk was killed.
Maybe not.
I can’t even tell if stuff posted on social media is real or not anymore.
The other day at an impromptu get-together I was reading a touching story I found on FaceBook to my friends about this abused kid of 14 being adopted and raised by a motorcycle gang that eventually put him through college and law school – and I’m all teary-eyed by the end and so are half my friends … then somebody pipes up, “That story was AI-generated.”
POOF! There goes the mood.
There go innocence and faith. There goes the last remaining shred of security I feel about the wisdom of putting my heart and emotions into anything anymore.
I’m almost embarrassed that I cried. Only the knowledge that tears are a sign of compassion and humanity—no matter what triggers them—saves the moment for me.
Floundering
My identity teeters on every level.
My identity as a US citizen and my faith in government is gone. My identity as economically secure and financially viable is getting shaky. My identity as an unbiased, pragmatic journalist is gone. (That identity bit the dust some time ago actually. Perhaps I can rely on a new identity as an activist?)
As new memories of old abuses are uncovered, my identity as the child I believed I was, raised by the family and kind of people I thought I was raised by, has gone bye-bye.
As my viewpoints and reality change, my identity as friend shifts as some of those most near and dear to me fall away and people of more like-mind enter stage right (or left as it were. Let’s not polarize.)
The entire fabric of society and my place in it has changed. Politics, education, religion, spirituality, history, economics, science, business … none of it is about what I once thought it was about.
“I know nothing!”
Well, except …
I know everything changes. I know that this is the nature of life. I know that things are changing at an exponentially increasing pace, and that this is a good thing because:
This world needs to change.
I know clinging to any one idea or identity or hope is futile, and actually counterproductive if not downright dangerous.
I know underneath the endless tide and crash of new waves and beneath the shifting sands of this reality where nothing appears solid and safe, there is safety and security and ultimate reliability.
I know here is a veritable (and venerable) Rock of Gibraltar in each and every one of us. An unchanging Presence that sees all, knows all, contains all, that is unaffected by all. A Presence that is eternal and wakeful that is, and always has been, “me.”
A Wakeful Intelligence that will be there at and beyond my passing from this physical existence that will carry me into the next life and then the next and the next …
And if that thought isn’t comforting, I don’t know what is.
Much love and aloha ~