Re: my “Fractured Wrist Chronicles”:

A dear old former lover of mine commented, on Facebook, last night:

• COME ON, ANN! It’s a broken wrist! 1,000’s broken everyday. Yes, I know, it’s your wrist, but enough is enough.

To which I replied:

• For you, maybe! And I KNEW you would be making this comment. As you remember, I’m constantly mining my life for meaning. Wish more people did the same!

(You see why we’re no longer lovers?)

Okay. But why do I mine my life for meaning? And why do I wish more people did the same?

I ponder this question, not because for me, unless I answer it satisfactorily, I will stop mining my life for meaning; because, frankly, I can’t. I’m obsessed, geared to go through life this way, seeking patterns in apparent chaos. Patterns themselves satisfy. Each aha! indicates, to me, that something is going on underneath the apparent randomness of events, and that this something, however mysterious, is deeply alive, intelligent, and purposeful. If all I can catch is little clues here and there, tiny bits and pieces of extraordinary, complex, synchronistic reverberations linking waves and particles well, then, even that is enough. It keeps me going. It’s why I’m here.

Everything in my life is grist for this mill of mining for meaning. And meaning continuously morphs, as perspective widens and deepens. For that is what it must do, continuously, or I get stuck, fixed in place, rigid and dogmatic. Even fundamentalist! Messianic! Knee jerk religious or patriotic! Yuck!

I have no choice not to be a Sagittarian, hungry for meaning. But I do have a choice as to whether or not I keep on moving or just stay stuck in some kind of “belief system” or “identity” that I use to keep me separate from everybody else and, hopefully, moving up some kind of socially sanctioned ladder by grabbing and throwing whoever is higher than me and stepping on the toes of whoever’s coming up from below.

Nope. Not for me this conformity that has been bred into us for centuries to follow the leader into oblivion.

But why do I want other people to do this, too. Well, for one thing, companionship. I like nothing better than a long juicy conversation over jasmine tea where we bring each other our stories, and nudge each other into further, deeper understanding of the narrative threads that we are weaving into the whole cloth of meaning that itself, continuously mutates like a kaleidoscope of color.

To find meaning in the events of our lives changes us, turns us from victims, pawns, into free agents, actively seeking to see and feel the ultimately indescribable mystery and beauty of the natural world, and the natural mind, its childlike curiosity ever hungry to engage in fuller, deeper ways.

Let’s face it, folks! We are the universe, playing with itself. We are the universe, at play.

How different, this way of life, from the usual 3D, polarized, either/or, right or wrong, good or bad, attitude that most people adopt, tenacious and with furrowed brow, trying to figure out once and for all what happened, to whom, why, and how to correct whatever horrible thing we see it as until the next horrible thing happens and whips us from that distraction to this next one, and we react to that, too, always seeing ourselves as superior to others who we judge as stupid, or ignorant, or lazy, or as we say the cabal would call us, “useless eaters.”

Well, this useless eater loves life! And she loves to mine it for meaning! And to share what she has discovered! And to put even that discovery in a broader, deeper context which, undoubtedly, down the line, will fission back into the cosmic soup which just keeps on stirring, stirring, a wise witches brew of continuous caring, compassion and connectedness with the one being that embraces us, all of us, whether we’re stuck or moving or in between.

There’s no way to get away from life. Unless you’re dead. But even then, you’re not. So you might as well come out to play. Why wait?