Fishing the Conundrum
I’m a planner, a productivity junkie, a people pleaser. I’m often not that productive by capitalistic standards, and I worry about my worthiness, at which point I generally cook something. It can bring great joy and great exhaustion. Especially while on vacation at the beach with family, where planning and eating and organizing the day are at least somewhat useful but potentially overwhelming and stress-inducing, both for the planner and those who feel over-planned every…single…minute…of the day. There is a fine and oft-disputed line between under- and over-planning.
If you are exhausted just reading this sorry about that. The truth here is that under all that planning and productivity, I have a longing for the guilty pleasure of empty space, for the peace of mind that would be required to just be in…nothingness.
I am on the beach on a chilly cloudy day, in walking meditation: God is, I am. God is, I am. God is, I am…let’s try: empty and meaningless. I contemplate the words, releasing overthinking (again and again). Haltingly, periodically, I dip my toes in what may be actual empty and meaningless. I imagine staying with God-energy, BEHIND my thoughts. Apart from the movie-projector with all my ego’s thoughts, experiences, judgments and opinions dancing across the screen. I watch the movie with God.
The ocean waves roll out endlessly, as they always have, pulled by the moon since the earth began. The vastness of that observation helps me stay with God and not be tempted to step into my tiny projector screen. But it takes practice and I repeatedly have to let go of temptation, and stay with God until I’m aware again of those words: empty and meaningless. A separation occurs somewhere over and outside me and I’m simply aware of a presence. THE Presence of infinite potentiality that is God-energy. I am aware that standing in empty and meaningless allows me to see the movie of my life from a place of infinite possibilities, not just from the meanings I have assigned in my movie life.
How can a place be empty and meaningless and also contain infinite possibilities? How can it be both empty and full at the same time? That mystery, that conundrum allows me to see meaning as a human construct plucked out of the infinite possibilities of God-energy where conclusions are not drawn and meaning is not made. And THAT means my human mind has a CHOICE. Looking only through my assigned meanings limits my ability to see other possibilities.
I stumble upon a fisherman, of retirement age, his long surf-casting rod and reel resting in its holder jutting out of the sand. At his feet lies what looks like a rocket launcher. Or one of those air guns that cheerleaders use to shoot T-shirts out into the stands during football games. I ask him what it is and he says: “It shoots my bait and hook way out into the ocean, way beyond how far I can cast, to where the really big fish are.” Claiming no formal engineering skills, he’s made this thing himself, and shows me the construction: the battery-powered air gun that fills the long chamber, the valve that releases the air into a tube holding the end of his line with hook and bait, and a few other bells and whistles that make no sense to my non-mechanical mind. “Are you catching anything?” I ask. “Nah, who knows if they’ll bite today.”
Now, there’s a guy open to possibilities. Allowing myself the space away from “productivity”, the space to enter the conundrum of emptiness and the ocean’s infinity, transported me beyond the day’s agenda…and released me to exactly what I longed for: a space for any possibility I desire—my “really big fish’— to arise from God’s infinite supply.