Parable

I stumbled across this by accident. I quite like it.

An aging Hindu master grew tired of his apprentice complaining, and so, one morning, sent him for some salt. When the apprentice returned, the master instructed the unhappy young man to put a handful of salt in a glass of water and then to drink it.

“How does it taste?” the master asked.

“Bitter,” spit the apprentice.

The master chuckled and then asked the young man to take the same handful of salt and put it in the lake. The two walked in silence to the nearby lake, and once the apprentice swirled his handful of salt in the water, the old man said, “Now drink from the lake”.

As the water dripped down the young man’s chin the master asked, “How does it taste?”

“Fresh,” remarked the apprentice.

“Do you taste the salt?” asked the master.

“No,” said the young man.

At this, the master sat beside this serious young man who so reminded him of himself and took his hands, offering, ”The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things... Stop being a glass. Become a lake."

It Keeps me Running

On a camping trip last weekend, I was sitting next to this beautiful, intelligent woman by the fire pit. I wanted to ask her a little bit about herself.

"So," I said, and then stopped.

"Yes?" she said.

"I wanted to ask you..." and then I trailed off. I could feel my thoughts piling up, one on top of the other, like a traffic jam. I couldn't really think of any way of asking her to tell me about herself that didn't sound questionable or peculiar. Abort.

"Um, never mind. It's not important".

She got up and walked away.

Dope, I thought to myself. That didn't go very well. Now her most recent memory of you is going to be of a sub-verbal doofus. I sat there stewing for a few minutes. Then a feeling came up on me. It was a feeling of frustration and, from frustration, freedom. I had botched things, so now I could do as I liked without fear of further embarrassment. It was clear in an instant that I needed to communicate, if I was to communicate, through a better medium than idle chatter between strangers.

I walked back to my tent and got my guitar. Now I was on more familiar ground. Late nights, fire going, lots of cheerful people bent on beer and unidentified substances. Yes, this was an old, comforting situation. I could deal with this.

I sat down by the fire and started thwacking the strings, letting my self-recrimination and turbulence come bouncing out, lapping out in waves that hit the trees and the rocks and the bugs underground. There was no one in a ten-mile radius who was singing Radiohead with more fervor than I was at that moment.

Amazingly, the universe granted me a wish. She came bouncing back up soon after. I had thought she might be the musical type, and I wasn't wrong. She started inhabiting the musical space right along with me. I brought out a book of Beatles tunes and a flashlight. She volunteered to hold the flashlight. "How's this?" she asked, putting her arm around my shoulders and shining the light on the pages. We stayed like that and sang "While my Guitar Gently Weeps", our heads practically touching, her harmonizing with the lyrics, totally intent on the song and the emotion.

Folks, I don't ask for much, but every man needs a good moment now and then. Just a little crumb. A little twinkle. Doesn't have to be much. I'm not greedy. A moment that puts its arm around you and sings with you. It keeps me running.

Solitude

Solitude, though silent as light, is, like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone-- all leave it alone. Even a little child has dread, whispering consciousness, that if he should be summoned to travel into God's presence, no gentle nurse will be allowed to lead him by the hand, nor mother to carry him in her arms, nor little sister to share his trepidations. King and priest, warrior and maiden, philosopher and child, all must walk those mighty galleries alone. The solitude, therefore, which in this world appalls or fascinates a child's heart, is but the echo of a far deeper solitude through which already he has passed, and of another solitude deeper still, through which he has to pass: reflex of one solitude-- prefiguration of another.

--Thomas De Quincey