"Life is kind of like a Monopoly
game,
and you can't
play
a Monopoly
game
unless you have a
piece
- a Scottie
dog*
or a top
hat,
or whatever it is - and in life, I need one of these, and a
personality, and a
mind,
and all of those things."
...
This essay,
Know
Where Your Body Is At All
Times,
is the companion piece to
I am indebted to Joan "Joani" Culver who inspired this conversation.
If you're a frequent
visitor
to the amazing
Cowboy Cottage,
it would be a scene you'd have
seen
(double entendre
intended)
often
enough:
I'm
sitting
at my
writing
table in front of the picture
window,
compiling these
Conversations For
Transformation,
looking
out every
now
and then onto the cattle pasture and the sunset (or the sunrise or the
moonrise, as the case may be), then returning to my
work
at hand, alternating between the two. That's what the environment would
look
like if you came in just as
newideas
were forming.
There's
nothing
unusual about this. These
ideas
kind of form by themselves - that is, if I
get
out of my own
way
long
enough
and far
enough
to allow them to form by themselves. I push back in my chair, letting
them form,
watching
them form. That's
how
most of this
works.
If I'm
asked
"What are you
writing?",
the
authenticanswer
for me is this: "I don't
know.
Really I don't. Not yet anyway. But when it's
written,
I'll read it. That's
how
I'll find out. That's when I'll
answer
your
question.".
The chair I
sit
on when I
write
here like this, is a typical
common
or garden variety wheeled Office Depot grade-A vanilla
cubicle chair. I
stand
up, still reading what's appearing on my computer screen, reaching
behind me absent-mindedly (literally) with one hand, for wherever I
assume the chair's armrest is. It's not where I think it is. I,
absorbed in the emerging
ideas,
am not giving its location my
fullattention.
Pushed, the chair rolls out of my reach, away from
being
able to support my body weight. The
next
thing I
know
I'm almost on the
floor,
barely regaining my balance in
time.
Not a trip. Not a fall. No,
simply
not paying
attention
to where my body was located in the
physical universe.
I'm not hurt, just
shaken up
a bit. It's instantly, abundantly
clear
to me
how
I endanger my body by not
beingfully
aware of /
responsible
for it.
Being
absorbed in the emerging
ideas,
doesn't
get
me off the hook of
beingresponsible
for where my body is in space, and what I'm doing with it.
This essay isn't about falling. Yet topically, as I age (gracefully, I
hope) and as my
friends
age, there's more
talk
than there's ever been before about people falling and hurting
themselves, especially at an age when no one ever really wants to fall
and hurt themselves. No, this is about paying
attention
to where my body is ie where my
piece
is, about
being
in charge of it, about
knowing
where is at all
times
- in a
word,
it's about
beingresponsible
for it. I'm
discovering
maintaining this awareness, is
transformational.
It's life-altering. It brings
intentionality
back into
my life
and living when my
natural
tendency to take my body's location for granted, leaves it vague.
Here's what I'm
discovering:
placing my
piece
on the Monopoly board game of life, isn't arbitrary. It's
not kinda-sorta. It's very specific. It's very
deliberate.
It's very
intentional.
It's either exactly on the square it should be on (ie on
Mayfair or on Oxford Street or on Old Kent
Road if it's the British version of the
game,
or a utility or a railroad) ... or it's not. And if it's not exactly on
the square it should be on, then I'm not in the
game.
There's no gray area.
So if you
play
Monopoly,
know
where your
piece
is at all
times.
If you don't, you can't
play
the
game.
Like that in life, you must
know
where your
piece
is at all
times.
When I
say
"know
where your
piece
is at all
times",
I mean
know
where your entirepiece
is at all
times.
Don't focus on one part of your
piece
and so be distracted from the whole. The thing is to not let the head
directed at the computer screen, distract from the hand blindly
reaching for the wheeled chair, inadvertently pushing it out of reach.
Maintain awareness of your body as a whole inclusive of
all its parts. It's not merely
knowing
where my arms are. It's
knowing
where my "body/arms" are. It's not merely
knowing
where my legs are. It's
knowing
where my "body/legs" are.
Know
where your body is
at all
times.
Your entire body. At all
times.
Really.
*
... or "Scottie dawg" - if I
recreate
that rich, deep, Philadelphian accent.