Buddha Puzzle Pieces

So this is a function of writing to think. To order my thoughts. I'm bursting with thinking, right now. I read this book yesterday, Criss Cross, by Lynne Rae Perkins. There was this particular part that I am still spending time thinking about:

It's a good thing to get out of your...surroundings. Because you find things out about yourself that you didn't know, or you forgot. And then you go back to your regular life and you're changed, you're a little bit different because you take those new things with you. Like a Hindu except all in one life: you sort of get reincarnated depending on what happened and what you figure out. And any one place can make you go forward, or backward, or neither, but gradually you find all your pieces, your important pieces, and they stay with you, so that you're your whole self no matter where you go. Your Buddha self.

So there's that. And along with that, there's this line that someone wrote, about what he learned from relationships, and it said, "Be calm, always." I think about that all the time. How I'm seeking that calm. Not in my life, because that would bore me. But in myself. I have all of these superficial ways of creating that calm, superficial, but they help. Creating an ordered space around me. That makes me feel calm. Reading and writing, too, are some of the only things that allow me to sit still. I am sure that yoga helps. But I have a hard time shutting my mind off, ever. So it's something that I'm striving for continuously, and I find myself thinking that sometimes, at difficult moments: Be calm, always. Like a meditation. Because I know that I am naturally restless and that's a part of me, and it's a productive, passionate part of me. But it isn't always productive. And it's only a part of me.

I think that right now, I have all of these puzzle pieces of my "Buddha self" floating around me. Different epiphanies and thoughts and big ideas and I'm trying to put them all together, or at least some of them. I don't even think I'm close to finding my Buddha self. I think it takes a lifetime. I think for me, part of that puzzle is being a mother, having children. If I never do that, I won't have that part of myself fit together, or figured out. Or I'll have to find it some other way. But I think that this is what I'm trying to do. Either waiting for the pieces to coalesce, or trying to do that actively, actively put them together.

I don't really know how active it can be, because you don't even really know what to snap together. I wouldn't even know how to try to draw a diagram, or what to label. So I think that you just have to let that happen. But I also remember in college, I had this sort of spurt where everything I read or watched was about paralysis--emotional paralysis. This inability to take action or move forward. That's what I was thinking about at the time, working through. Clerks, Judge on Trial, Hamlet. All kinds of things. But it wasn't on purpose, it wasn't like any of these professed to be about this theme. So either I was just drawn to them-- subconsciously snapping pieces together. Or, I was finding the themes there myself.

I have always said that the artist's intention doesn't matter. That once a piece of art is let out into the world, it becomes owned by anyone who sees it, hears it, reads it, feels moved by it. We regularly find themes and ideas that the author never dreamed of, because those themes are within ourselves.

When I ate lunch with Jack Gantos, I talked about how each of his stories in Jack on the Tracks is really about Jack deciding what kind of person he wants to be. That there is always this internal conflict along with the external conflict. And then it all kind of comes together, coalesces, in the last story, my favorite, Beauty and Order. Buddha pieces snapping together. It was so obvious to me, I was certain it was intentional. But it had never crossed the author's mind at all. So was he subconsciously snapping pieces together, or was I? Does it matter?

But I love this idea that every new experience we have is like living one tiny, entire life, in our quest for wholeness and enlightenment. Depending on how we do, what we make of it, it moves us forward, or backward, or we stay in the same place. There are some people who are moving backward more than forward. Some that get stuck, paralyzed in the same place. Some more forward relentlessly. But most of probably shift around between all three, hopefully always moving somehow forward, no matter how slowly. But I think that it is a long time before the outcome is determined, of you who you are, I mean. It isn't set for a very long time. Most of the time, it could go either way. I do think that the choices you make come to determine the person you are, over time, rather than the other way around.

When I think about the kind of person that I want to be, I want to be someone who, after you talked with me, walked away feeling good about yourself. I think I am a long way away from being that person, but that is who I want to be. I want to be a person who chooses to take risks in order to connect with people, who works to create a community, and who isn't afraid to be vulnerable. I think that I am much closer to this goal, although it still hurts a lot to reach out and not get so many people reaching back. I try not feel ashamed by this, or like it makes me an unlikeable person. I think that it's good that I try. I just feel like we can't all go around being cautious all the time about everything. I'm not going to give up that part of myself, that part that is trusting and open. I like that part. I think that is one of my puzzle pieces. A middle one, that connects a lot of the other ones together.