Don't Know Mind
So it was my high school reunion last weekend. It was really fun, and a little surreal. Surreal because, here's the thing, people change and don't change, both at the same time. And both of these things are good.
First, people change. So, I don't know if this is true for everyone, or is just more the case if you grow up in a small town, because, not only do you know people from high school, chances are, you've known them for a very long time, from elementary school, from when they cracked their head open on a desk and had to go to the office to get bactine put on it, from when they used to shoot spitballs at the ceiling, from when they broke their tailbone sledding down the hill at your house, through all the times they decided to change the spelling of their name for cultural and/or esthetic reasons. When you've known people for that long, they tend to get stuck in one period of time. And so, you go to a reunion thinking that, while you've grown and changed and been out in the world and hopefully learned some stuff, they're still the person you remember from high school, the person who teased you, or thought you were stuck up, or who maybe didn't even notice you (you thought).
I'm happy to report that this is not the case. Everyone has grown, and changed and learned some stuff. And most people I talked to had grown and changed and learned enough stuff that we could laugh at ourselves as much as we used to laugh at each other.
But, people also don't change. Why is this good? Continuity. We are people who remember each other. Some people remembered things about me I had forgotten about myself. We remember where we all came from, so we know each other in a different way (even if it's been cough cough number of years since we've seen each other) than people who only know us from work or even from college. We know that we were all dorky, or skinny, or short, or shy, or whatever. And so when we see each other as functioning, productive adults, it's both reassuring and revelatory at the same time.
What makes it surreal is when we try to integrate the person we see in front of us now with the stuck-in-time image we have of them from the past. But, actually, what this disconnect does is give us a glimpse into the true nature of existence. Both our own existence, and the way other people exist.
It feels surreal to have two images of one person in front of us, because we have the mistaken assumption that only one of them can be the right one, the real one. Our brain struggles to reconcile the two. But if we hang out in that space for a moment (what the Zen Buddhists call "don't know mind"), if we let ourselves feel that disconnect, we may discover something profound.
I'm sitting across from a classmate, and my mind is going, here's this interesting, intelligent, funny, grown up person who doesn't match with the skinny, short, yes still funny but in a different way image of this person in my head. Which one is the real one? The answer is both. Or neither. Both are the same in their level of reality. But neither are actually real. Our image of that person, or any person, is primarily a projection of our own mind. I say primarily because, it's not like they don't exist at all - your mind, for instance, can't turn Kelly into Shelli. But most of our experience of that person has to do with us and not them.
A high school reunion is a great venue for this kind of revelation. Even just on the level of: If I knew then what I know now. One example: Then: these boys are arrogant and cocky and won't talk to me because I'm not a cheerleader. Now: those boys were afraid of girls. Ergo: Those arrogant cocky boys were a projection of my own insecurities.
I know this is not a breakthrough, and logically, we all know this to be true, but when you sit down with someone who you knew then, and they tell you what they were really thinking and what was really going on, you get it on a whole new experiential level. And then, and then, you may realize that whatever story you told yourself about high school (and that's an important story, because those years are so formative), was just that...a story. And with new information, you can create a new story. If you want to.
And maybe that's the lesson here. You can always create a new story. About yourself, about anything that happened to you, about anyone you know. We're making it all up anyway, you might as well make up something good.
So that's what I learned at my high school reunion. Go Bears.
First, people change. So, I don't know if this is true for everyone, or is just more the case if you grow up in a small town, because, not only do you know people from high school, chances are, you've known them for a very long time, from elementary school, from when they cracked their head open on a desk and had to go to the office to get bactine put on it, from when they used to shoot spitballs at the ceiling, from when they broke their tailbone sledding down the hill at your house, through all the times they decided to change the spelling of their name for cultural and/or esthetic reasons. When you've known people for that long, they tend to get stuck in one period of time. And so, you go to a reunion thinking that, while you've grown and changed and been out in the world and hopefully learned some stuff, they're still the person you remember from high school, the person who teased you, or thought you were stuck up, or who maybe didn't even notice you (you thought).
I'm happy to report that this is not the case. Everyone has grown, and changed and learned some stuff. And most people I talked to had grown and changed and learned enough stuff that we could laugh at ourselves as much as we used to laugh at each other.
But, people also don't change. Why is this good? Continuity. We are people who remember each other. Some people remembered things about me I had forgotten about myself. We remember where we all came from, so we know each other in a different way (even if it's been cough cough number of years since we've seen each other) than people who only know us from work or even from college. We know that we were all dorky, or skinny, or short, or shy, or whatever. And so when we see each other as functioning, productive adults, it's both reassuring and revelatory at the same time.
What makes it surreal is when we try to integrate the person we see in front of us now with the stuck-in-time image we have of them from the past. But, actually, what this disconnect does is give us a glimpse into the true nature of existence. Both our own existence, and the way other people exist.
It feels surreal to have two images of one person in front of us, because we have the mistaken assumption that only one of them can be the right one, the real one. Our brain struggles to reconcile the two. But if we hang out in that space for a moment (what the Zen Buddhists call "don't know mind"), if we let ourselves feel that disconnect, we may discover something profound.
I'm sitting across from a classmate, and my mind is going, here's this interesting, intelligent, funny, grown up person who doesn't match with the skinny, short, yes still funny but in a different way image of this person in my head. Which one is the real one? The answer is both. Or neither. Both are the same in their level of reality. But neither are actually real. Our image of that person, or any person, is primarily a projection of our own mind. I say primarily because, it's not like they don't exist at all - your mind, for instance, can't turn Kelly into Shelli. But most of our experience of that person has to do with us and not them.
A high school reunion is a great venue for this kind of revelation. Even just on the level of: If I knew then what I know now. One example: Then: these boys are arrogant and cocky and won't talk to me because I'm not a cheerleader. Now: those boys were afraid of girls. Ergo: Those arrogant cocky boys were a projection of my own insecurities.
I know this is not a breakthrough, and logically, we all know this to be true, but when you sit down with someone who you knew then, and they tell you what they were really thinking and what was really going on, you get it on a whole new experiential level. And then, and then, you may realize that whatever story you told yourself about high school (and that's an important story, because those years are so formative), was just that...a story. And with new information, you can create a new story. If you want to.
And maybe that's the lesson here. You can always create a new story. About yourself, about anything that happened to you, about anyone you know. We're making it all up anyway, you might as well make up something good.
So that's what I learned at my high school reunion. Go Bears.
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