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The other day, I heard someone utter a remarkable statement.

“I’ve seen it all.”

This person had spent fifty or so years on planet Earth, and was attempting to convey that at some point, we all come to a place in our lives where we realize that we’ve met every type of person we’re going to meet, that we’ve seen all the ups and downs life can throw our way, and that we’ve pretty much experienced all that life has to offer.

This might seem like a radical and rather negative assumption, but to some extent, most of us agree with it. We feel that once we’ve been in a relationship for a few months or a year, the ‘crush’ has to go away. We feel that the view out our front window is the same every day, and therefore not worthy of our attention. We feel that there are no new ideas in the world. We get tired of the body we’re in, of the same old emotional patterns we suffer through, and of our incessantly worrying mind, which can never seem to settle down and just relax.

But the magical thing about the world is that it is never the same from one moment to the next. If we grow complacent in life, it is clearly a disease of our own minds, and not indicative of the world we live in.

Consider, for a moment, the clouds.

When you see clouds in the sky, each one has a totally unique shape. No cloud has ever looked just like the one you are seeing, and no cloud will ever look just like it again. Ever.

The scene outside your window changes every day, too. So does your body, your emotions, and your thoughts. And when it comes to other people, they are constantly in a state of flux. How can we grow bored with someone if they are a new person in every single moment of life?

This magical and constant change is a reality – it’s not something we have to believe in or brainwash ourselves into accepting. When we let our bare awareness observe, this is the wondrous world we find ourselves living within.

It’s our usual, accepted view that is more akin to brainwashing. In order to perceive the world as boring, we have to accept a doctrine for which there is absolutely no proof (indeed, no evidence) – a doctrine that states that people never change, that the world plods along in endless cycles.

If you are in a long-term relationship, this is the perfect place to observe how aware your mind is of change. Do you find your companion to be predictable, boring, or irritating? Observe your mind when you think these things. If you do, you’ll discover that it is your mind that is dull, and not the other person. No person (including you!) can help but be a miraculously changing, ever-shifting phenomenon. The world is also in a constant process of blossoming, dying, and evolving. So are you.

What happens if we allow ourselves to see how the world really is?

This is what life is all about. There is nothing else we need to do.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 2:05 am and is filed under Being Present. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be queued for moderation and posted as quickly as possible.