The Blackboard
When you feel lots of rules don’t apply to you and you feel alone.
When you’re a child,
the whole world scribbles on that little blackboard
we all hold close to our chests.
The rules you must follow to belong to a tribe are there.
Those rules help you build your identity in the human species.
You have no tool to understand
whether the ones writing are half awake or completely asleep and unaware
of what they are doing and saying.
You’re a child,
and you can’t in any way choose who gets to write on your blackboard
and who to reject.
Why not?
Because among the rules, the first one says:
Never erase the rules written on the blackboard
because they teach you what life is
and how you must live the life given to you.
Like an object, a present, life is given to you,
and like a thing you must use it.
That’s the rule: a huge truckload of dung,
but as the first rule states, you must not erase the rules.
Then suddenly you are 50 or 60 years old,
and one day a thought appears, out of the blue
like every other thought,
very seriously uttering:
everything written on the blackboard is BS,
and since you were born
you believed every rule.
The outcome: your life sucks.
Except that now you are aware of it,
aware of not being what’s written on the blackboard.
Since all those rules made you… you!
It’s not too late.
I didn’t mean it’s never too late.
For some it is. Forget it.
It’s just another rule on somebody’s blackboard.
Now it’s not too late for YOU.
It will be excruciatingly painful to change. *
I mean it.
You’ll experience physical pain and mental suffering
beyond your imagination.
Stop saying ‘I understand’ or ‘I can imagine’.
You just can’t.
But you’ve reached the crossroads.
And someone will try to convince you that you have to choose one of the
two paths.
Yet, this too is BS.
Because if that thought has suddenly entered your mind,
you can only try to understand whether is true or nonsense.
And if you try to do that,
then you can only choose the path with no return.
There’s no crossroads when that thought appears.
There’s only turning back and seeing that you can’t go back.
You can’t be who you were an instant before the thought.
Now you can only move forward, erase your whole blackboard,
and start writing your own rules.
*It will be excruciatingly painful to change.
Sleeping human beings love to say it. It might sound like it is.
However, the following words depict my experience.
Sleepers focus on pain.
Those who set out on the path to awakening focus on pain and practice.
Those nearing the end of the journey focus on practice.
Those who reach the end of the journey focus neither on the pain nor on the practice.
They enjoy the landscape.
© 2024 Marino Baccarini — 100% human-generated content but images.
Hope it helps.
