Mountain Meetings While Meditating On The Move
Today was a day of chance 'meetings on mountains' with 'fleeting friends' who we should have liked to stay with a while longer... We met kindred spirits, who you know in a minute, as Richard Bach said in his book 'Illusions'...
'Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years'.
Anadi and I were half way up the steep steep climb from the stream to the top of the world near Tojas del Angel...
'There are people on the path ahead...' I said... 'Did you see them?' 'Yes' he replied... After climbing for awhile longer, we looked up and Chris and Paul, our 'friends to be' were sitting on a rock enjoying the view...
Ola we all said as we were walking by...'What is that other word we learnt...?'
'Que tal' Anadi replied... It is the informal way of saying 'how are you/things' which we learnt from Antonio last night.
By now it was clear that the common language between the four of us was English, and so the conversation became longer than a greeting in Spanish...!
Chris and Paul - both university professors from the States, now living in France - are holidaying in a tiny little village just above Pitres...
They were making their way up the mountain with a picnic; Anadi and I were more than happy to stop and chat... The picnic idea seemed a very good one too... Another time...
We both felt a little weary today, the mountains do not get any less steep for tired days, so standing on the rocks chatting with our new friends was fun...
Chris and Paul said that their jobs are more in university administration now, but Chris used to teach law and ethics and negotiation... 'I loved negotiation' he said... 'It would have been interesting if Tim, who was out for a few days development work, were still with us', I said... 'He is a lawyer'... Paul told us that he specialised in marketing and accreditation, and we shared them that our existence is nomadic, and about the work we both do...
I told them both of the unexpected turn Anadi's platform has taken, to incorporate an 'athlete management system'; Chris said... 'That is fortuitous, life is more like this now. I am seeing it with the students today. They are willing to try new things and not assume they will be doing the same things always... They are more adaptable...'
Later as Anadi and I sat breakfasting in Bubion we talked of our chance meeting in the mountain... Anadi said that he imagined that having taught over a length of time, they must have seem the attitudes of students to their life paths changing, opening, becoming more adaptable as Chris said...
It was interesting to notice that even within my ongoing exploration of not being 'defined' by what we 'do'... In sharing how we have lived, where our skills and energies have taken us in life... The choices we have made, the career paths we have chosen, that even within a few moments together on a mountain, we leant about the true people, and we shared the truth of ourselves with them....
We did this through telling one another something of our human journey and experiences...
The arenas in which we have seen ourselves... It doesn't matter what we 'do', but it does matter if we lose ourselves in the doing of anything, be that our work, our sport, a relationship...
If we exit from ourselves, and make the 'thing' a distraction, then we die inside, and the joy leaves our lives...
Whereas if we are expressing ourselves through whatver we are doing, then there is no limit...
It is not uncommon to seek success, status, money even, hoping these things will enable us to do what we want and that we will then know who we are...
The other way round works better... To know who we are, do what we enjoy and love... From this everything else will spring, money, success and status...
And if it doesn't we won't mind!
And so to finish, another quote from Richard Bach....
'Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a false messiah'.