my little hero
Each new generation tends to be smarter. While living in rural Somerset, I observed our four-year old son’s play-acting in the garden from the kitchen window while washing pots. He explored his sharp-shooting skills with wooden blocks, building, destroying, building, destroying, building; and so on … it was his new idea of fun. His aiming was good.
Pots done, I attended to the next task, fetching the milk from the street-hatch, left there by Hope, our farming neighbour. She had poured three pints of milk into a bowl and covered it with a cloth. The cream had risen to the top, ready to be skimmed off, which led on to the next task, preparing the dessert for a birthday meal. At this point my son came rushing into the kitchen, wanting me to witness and applause his new sharp-shooting skill. My brain cells were committed to preparing walnut ice-cream.
I said, ‘Not now, later!’
This trick normally worked for a while, but that day he stood his place, watching me with a quizzing look.
‘When does now end?’ he asked.
Casting my eyes to the ceiling for help, I said, ‘Actually, now never ends,’ realising instantly I was in trouble. The child’s superior grasp of logic would demand, at least, a meaningful explanation, and I could loop myself into philosophical twists. My son had no need to query my shrewd answer, he went one better.
‘So when does later start?’
Time to admit defeat. Drying my hands, I said, ‘Now.’
* * *
The memory of the incident inspired me to draft a poem … NOW
Illustration by Daphne Joe Grant
Now is the in-breath
Now is the elusive arc
Now is the outbreath
Over and over
Out of nowhere pops the now
Or so we presume
When will we find you?
Why not tell us your purpose?
Where are you hiding?
Now is a trickster
Not taken in by mind-games
Now laughs inside us
Our time must be round
Or turn through a dark tunnel
Orbiting the now
Waste now and lose her
Weft now to now and she’ll dance
Wed now and be her
Now has no answer
Now is what is truly known
Now breathe her and bow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjwBWE64fG0 Interesting talk by Rupert Spira on perception.
A focussed mind helps us to achieve stuff, but is also easily hijacked by the rat-race, the relentless rush towards meeting deadlines in competitive environments, where no children interrupt and make us pause.
Apparently 10.4 million days are lost annually to work-related stress in the UK alone. And it costs businesses in the US $300bn (£187bn; €237bn) a year. No wonder the ‘Here and Now’ theme is in vogue again, even with hi-tech status. Take a biosensor device, called Pip 🙂 … http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29742908
There is another kind of stress, less talked about, affecting those who work hard for a living, as well as those who lost jobs, or get by on little, or anyone reflecting on human qualities, while witnessing a growing social polarity … as poignantly shown in this image …
http://gerryco23.wordpress.com/2014/10/24/the-fence-between-a-world-of-need-and-a-world-of-excess/
