The Bumper Sticker of Life
A walk on my most precious beach. Varberg, south of Sweden.
Life is precious.
That’s a bumper sticker or a greeting card or Facebook post some of us roll their eyes at. It’s common. We all know it. As a sentence it’s not inspiring, almost boring. Yet most of us know or sense that it is both true and important. And sometimes, when something out of the ordinary happens, even the most stony-hearted can be heard uttering the words, with a far off gaze - to the nothingness of the sky or the nothingness within:
Life is precious.
What is it we cannot fully appreciate about the meaning of that sentence, when life is going fast? What is it we see when we actually mean every word and the moment feels breathless?
A few days ago I had a session with my coach. She is this adorable woman where I feel safe and loved. She sees me and with me. And in this seeing she disrupts my thinking. What comes out of that is not what might be the wording of an ordinary coaching session: she doesn’t push me. That seeing instead allows for my mind to look in new places, where I might have avoided going or to find paths I might not have seen before.
In this last session our exploratory conversation allowed an insight to happen in me. Nothing strange about that, that happens all the time in her presence. However, this time, it was an insight around something I have known to be true, in my mind, my whole adult life. I have known with my mind, yet the insight brought that knowing to another dimension.
The insight had all of the qualities of an ordinary human insight. An expanding sense inside, a temporary freeze of time, a physical gasp, widening of eyes etc. Classic insight stuff. You might experience insight somewhat differently but I’m sure you know the feeling of it; the seeing inside, compared to knowing with your head.
The funny thing was comparing notes. This not at all unfamiliar thought transported itself from knowing with my mind to knowing with my whole being. Completely different feeling and implications.
How I see it: an insight is the sense of Truth. Knowledge is the sense of information processing and storing: -Where in my gigantic brain library does this piece of information fit, how does it relate to other information pieces, when would be a good time to use this information, what new information could be stored next to it and is there any information that would revoke the accuracy of this bit of data. Insight could be described with the fancy words, like illumination or elevation; perhaps like a fraction of enlightenment.
Life is precious.
Where is that Truth with capital T? Moments when we see the preciousness of life deeply could be those moments that halts life for a moment. Maybe when our child is born, when a loved one dies, when we hear a particularly sad or happy story.
We realise it. Life is precious.
So, again, where does this happen? What is the same about all moments when we realise the truth of something? What is a prerequisite of an insight?
Is it as simple as another bumper sticker: “The quieter you become, the more you can hear”?
These might be the words of Ram Dass or Rumi, not sure. What would becoming quiet have to do with appreciating every moment with a dying person or looking at every millimeter of your newborn for hours, not needing to do anything else?
As I see it, to become quiet has a quality of stepping outside of time. With time I mean the invention that measures seconds, minutes and lifetimes. In the realm of clock time, we always have something to do. Something that needs to get fixed, handled, cleared, accomplished. Always in relation to minutes, hours, days. That is not a quiet place. In clock time we tell ourselves how much we have to deal with before x. Always in relation to time. When a child is born or when we fall in love, that kind of time lapses into a whole other kind of time. The big Time. Eternity. The eternity we can see only from the deepest sense of Now. In our child's eyes.
It’s common for insights or the preciousness of life and people to visit us... well...seldom. The really big events have a way of pulling the handbrake and bring us out of head and into the moment.
However, the words of Rumi-Dass points to a possibility.
If we get quieter in this moment, the same thing happens. We can see every moment deeply. In the quiet we can hear, we can see. That child we stared at for hours as a newborn is now sitting, frowning, at our kitchen table. Perhaps that child wouldn’t appreciate us staring at him/her for hours. We could however do it with our heart’s eye, and also sneak a peek at the wonder of every millimeter. We can step out of time, at any time. When we do, it’s inevitable:
Life is precious.