The Cocoon

We hang onto objects for dear life.

A part of the point of minimalism, I believe, is to face our own fears.  We are experts, at least in this modernized, Western-influenced portion of the globe, of coating ourselves in comforts.  It becomes a subconscious act after a while - seeking out the material ways in which we can sequester our own sense of safety.  Is it a post-COVID trend?  A way to manage the realities of an ever-changing world impacted by climate change, changing demographics and technological advances that, ironically, have us feeling more isolated than ever before?   

Perhaps the mystery comes out of us neglecting to suspend our need for answers to these questions.  Having an a priori understanding of our reality helps us frame self-knowledge.  We enjoy having a sense of control over a future that, certainly, we can never truly alter.  We will all, at some point, transition from this life and begin the journey laid out before us from million of years ago.  What happens, though, when we cease needing to answer those questions?  The Zen concept of 'not knowing' is a rough stump on our brain's ever-continuing strive for definitions of meaning.  Choosing to not know, even when a part of us is already forming an answer to our internal meanderings, is quite an undertaking.  It exposes our hearts and minds to vulnerabilities that society often frowns upon.  It begs us to consider letting go of our own perspectives, in the presence of others' perspectives, without accepting or rejecting any of them.  Take, for example, the idea of standing on the edge of a cliff.  A person can peer down from the edge of the cliff and see what is below, and choose to not know if that space exists at all.  The individual can choose to not question the safety of their location, to choose not to understand how the wind blows, or if their climbing gear will sustain a descent.  

That is an extreme situation, and many of us would not choose to access the experience in this way.  Yet we can sit back into our own lives, and wonder if we really do understand where our path has taken us, and if we have found fulfillment through our choices, in the people we have gathered into our lives, or or in what we've established as the basis for our own truths.  We can look at all of it, and question whether any of those choices have truly brought us peace, but can we choose to leave the question just as is?

Depression and anxiety arise, often, when there is a contradiction between what we perceive to be the right outcome or action as a result of our own activities or thoughts, or of others'.  We attempt to manage how we will respond to those results, our sense of safety deriving from the result of choice.  What if we let go of all of that?  What if we suspend our inherent assumptions regarding what others should say or do or think? What if we let go of our own expectations of ourselves?  In our capitalism-centered societies, we build our own understanding of 'success' on the backs of what we have achieved or completed, what we have sacrificed our selves for.  To stop doing so, assuming that we know the outcome of those choices, and to embrace a perspective of 'not knowing', would be taboo in many ways.  Yet I think life is a winding road, not fashioned by all the societal norms, generational expectations and supposed work-life balances that we artificially create over time.  Life, in its own essence, is undefinable and has depths that run deeper than any of us individually can ever understand.  Life carries us from before our conscious beginnings to beyond the last breath we ever take.  

Let us allow our own wave to wash over us, to carry us, to where it will.  Let us not know where that will go, or if there is even a destination.