There are limitations. We all have them. But I have found a tremendous degree of satisfaction in simply being conscious. I stopped drinking alcohol in order to maximize the possible clarity with the time I have. (And you never honestly know how much time you have.)
You don't actually have to swing a hammer or heft a shovel to be mentally involved--in fact, some places in your mind it is only possible to reach in repose. The work of the shovel and the hammer are not the only work to be done.
There are connections in everything. Consider the material of the chair you are sitting in. What it is composed of, where it came from. How it was made. Try to picture--or still better, research--what it took. What it cost. Try to understand it deeply.
Before you put a bite of food in your mouth, consider its path in and out of every refrigerator, box, truck, plant, pipe, train, harvester, hand--all the way to the ground. Past the ground, if you can conceive--or research--that far. What are its molecules made of? What changes does this produce in the eater, and the byproducts the eater leaves?
Assemble its history and
politics and culture, its advantages and its problems. Get its significance all over your hands. Get up to the elbows in it.
Study its people, its land, its struggles and hard times. The dollar that you traded for it, investigate where it goes. Dollars , like
energy , are not created or destroyed: only shift in form. After you pay with it, what does it pay for after that? And after that? In whose circle have you participated?
You flick the light on. What is that? How well do you understand it? Do you understand it, really? Part of the electricity running through that wire becomes the light that you see, delivered in pulses of 60 hertz-- while another part of that electricity is only responsible for carrying the first. Once it drops its load, it jumps back into the wire headed home to wherever it came from. But where is that? And what is it made of?
Stare intently at one leaf of the bush outside your window. What is the curvature, the precise angle the plant chose to position that leaf? Why does it choose that, and not some other?
Dribble some
water on a polyester bed sheet, and watch it bead and roll like marbles. Why does it do that? What in nature resembles this phenomenon? What is the advantage of this characteristic of water? Who benefits?
If a plant is sent to your room, dig your fingers into the potting soil it came in. Separate the pieces out in your palm. Try to identify them. Each one has a story. It is from somewhere: a depth, a time. They are connected somehow.
Great wisdom can be achieved this way.
Someone who cannot even stand up can reach this level of interconnectedness, and share it with other more physically capable people, who can't (or don't).
The hardest part of doing is thinking.
2
?
