"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
but in ourselves, that we are underlings"
Julius Caesar (Act I, Scene ii)
I would rather be deaf than blind. Sometimes I watch another person moving their lips and try to listen to what they have done or are going to do. It is not easy but once I shift from hearing what people say to watching what they actually do, the world changes for the better.
Season after season, reason after treason, I experience the slow repetition of the same old sensible grief and abject splendour settle into the soft daily grind we call a life.
It is not just about other people, it begins with ourselves. We pay too much regard to what we think and say, but are not willing to pay as much attention to what we do.
“Do you know what you say?”
Twelfth Night (Act III, Scene IV)
Herein lies the root of our anguish and the door to liberation. Shifting from saying to doing, impressions to implications, from reflections to results.
This challenge is grossly amplified (literally) in our information and data overloaded existence. We crave and hoard information as if it were a coat that could give us immortality. Kids hold 500 songs on MP3 players but only play 3 of them, we maintain e-mails that we will never read again, we buy magazines that contain more words to soothe us from confronting the real issues that we know we need to address (our bodies, relationships, household chores and prayer/meditation).
Confessions, promises, resolutions, bla, bla, bla. Commitments to follow through, to alter habits, to improve health, well-being, relationships and our contribution to society are all just so much noise. Preachers preach, they have done so for thousands of years and will continue for thousands more, it matters not what they or we say or hear.
Our deeds are tour foundation, the accumulation of our actions is the earth beneath our feet. These may be a rocks of lies or the firm rich soil of integral actions. When our words and deeds are integral that is - when we act with "integrity", we experience a connection and fulfillment that cannot be purchased or acquired. These are the moments of truth, when we are awake, alive, true, when we count, matter, make a difference. Every action we take influences the thinking and actions of the people around us. That is our unique contribution.
When a person 'scales' a mountain, they do so by putting the weight of their feet, step by step to the top. The next time you put the full weight of your foot on a weighing scale, imagine that the measure you see on the dial is the measure of your deeds. Just pretend. Imagine, if we were actually able to do this, how would it alter our perception of ourselves and the actions we take?
Marcel Proust put it best when he said “The real voyage of discovery consists of not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes” We have to wake up every day, every minute of every day, deliberately silence the noise in our head, cut through the noise of cheap words and watch with dispassion beyond the games and acting, to the deed. This begins with seeing our own actions first, because when we see these then everything else in the universe becomes clearer. What we see is what we get when we see ourselves with open eyes.
Words bury the truth. Our actions are the fulcrum, the pivot upon which our life turns. Our deeds are all we own, the only truth we wear, our only true possession, when all is said and done, it is all we leave behind.
Why does it take so many words to say something so obvious?
Now, whe’r it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,
a thought, which, quarter’d, hath
but one part wisdom,
And ever three parts coward,
I do not know
Why yet I live to say ‘This thing’s to do;’
Sith I have cause and will and strength and
means to do ’t.
Hamlet (Act IV, Scene IV)
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