Lately, I find myself looking in the mirror less and less. There have been a few times where I catch my own eyes reflected back at me, and I stand there, rooted in a soft surprise. There, I think. That's me. By now, you'd think that the self-actualization process would be finished. And yet, still, in those rare quiet moments, I see myself again.
I've come to think that most of society does not want us to face ourselves. This year and the changes it has brought with it have allowed me more space than ever to sit with myself. In Eastern traditions, the practice of meditation encourages individuals to sit with oneself and to breathe and to simply feel the condition of being. Recently, I spent two weeks living on an intentional-living community in Lafayette, Tennessee called The Garden. Here, I learned how to start a fire, helped build a cabin, washed up in the creek, and meditated each afternoon. For me, with my writer's mind and my anxious, wandering thoughts, The Garden brought me, for the first time, peace. Silence.
Now, I live in Brooklyn and I spend my days applying for jobs and trying to fit myself into the box. I still catch my own eyes in the mirror. I still sit in silence, but the silence is different here. It is never truly an absence of sound, in fact, my ears receive the vibrations of all of Park Slope. If New York is an oral tradition, you must be here to hear it. To bear witness. I take in the sounds of the city; they remind me that I am here. That I am alive.
And yet-- it is crushing, the weight of this falling city, the weight of this falling empire I call home. As I search for a job in a marketplace of doom, I find solace in the small things here. Catching my own eyes in the mirror like an inside joke I have with myself. Rosh Hashanah dinner with my roommates. Watching the sunset on the roof. Autumn around the corner, no end in sight. I take a breath and begin to type again.
