I recently spent four blissful days in relative solitude with my best friend at the beach. It was tremendous to take a break and read, eat good food, walk, run, talk and laugh until I could barely breathe.
On our last morning there I sat in the quiet of my room, eyes closed, looking and listening for images, thoughts and words, maybe from God. In ten minutes of quiet, I managed to write down a few words and descriptions of a variety of things including:
-wooden beads, stained and dangling
-different textured and shaped leaves
-brown corduroy
-big wooden barrels
-being surrounded
Though there were other images, I marveled over how I could (seemingly subconsciously) think of five loosely linked ideas.
And then I looked around the room where I sat.
I was surrounded by wood: wood walls, wood ceiling- dark brown and warm, knot-holed and smooth.
GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) is an idea I just recently read about: how what we take in- what we see, read, hear and taste- ultimately affects what we put out. Though I don’t doubt that idea, I sanctimoniously believed I was doing a pretty good job of being mindful of what I took in. Yet there I sat, marveling over the images I saw in my mind’s eye that had all been influenced, unbeknownst to me, by my surroundings.
I wonder what else I have unknowingly allowed in, that I am now letting out.
Where have my words and actions been shaped by influences I wouldn’t choose?
How often do we collectively act in a way we don’t realize- creating distance between us and others- by choices we don’t know we’re making?