Normally I don’t retain a lot; I’ve likened my memory to a sieve from time to time. But apparently those things which some part of me knew were important to my journey—the survival of my physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual being—would end up in some mental pocket for me to remember and call upon to use. I didn’t even have to catalog them or memorize them to remember. They were just there. I recognized them only as ‘pertinent’ after I found myself pulling them out of that pocket and re-saying them over years of time. (I’ve had the luxury to collect data for years about this.)
Sometimes I’d hear myself, in some sort of earnest teaching “lecture” to a fellow-being, laughingly end my harangue with the disclaimer, “We Teach Best that Which We Need to Learn” (from Richard Bach’s “Illusions”). I’d then jokingly admonish myself, “I hope you were listening to what you were just ‘teaching’ because it was probably something you needed to hear.’
I’d quoted Richard Bach enough times that I came to immediately grasp the moment I started ‘teaching’ someone else, and I’d make a point to listen as I talked. It became so familiar that I was able to extrapolate even further: “We Bitch Most About that Which We Do the Worst.” (An original, not attributable to Richard Bach—I’m not sure he’d want it.)
Collecting data and extrapolating a conclusion is one thing I like to do. Here’s my research: If you hear yourself bitching with great vehemence about something someone else is doing that royally ticks you off, check yo-self…you probably be doin’ it, too, and this is your way of pointing it out to yourself—bitching about someone else. LISTEN. (Just sayin’.)
I can claim credit for retaining the phrase, “We retain that which is pertinent to our survival” for decades. Unfortunately, I did not apparently retain where I first heard it, but it has remained afloat, bobbing up and down in my conversations and questing. I’d use it to fend off a friend who’d ask me “Do you remember the time we went…found…did…said…played… visited…et al?” (And I wouldn’t remember.) “That must not have been pertinent to my survival.” Or if I were commiserating with a friend who was frozen with the tiredness of dealing with life’s everyday onslaught, I would hear myself relating an oft-repeated antidote for just that situation: “You just need another mule in the traces with you for a while.” (Apparently that had been pertinent to my survival, too.)
Collecting data over the years, I would hear myself repeating a piece of knowledge…a wisdom…an apt quote…a pertinent book paragraph…a lesson I’d learned…some advice that someone had shared with me that worked…some explanation to others…again and again. I recognized: that must have been pertinent to my survival. I had found it, used it to survive the journey of life, and found myself offering it as a gesture that perhaps might help someone else in their surviving.
Layin’ Down the Dots:
When one idea remained in my consciousness, my vernacular, my storytelling, my sharing (not to mention the import of the fact that I remembered it at all!) to be called forth again and again, it was labeled, ‘pertinent.’ Maybe it was a stepping-stone, a building block, a seed to sprout. Flotsam among the jetsam. Flagstones placed in the pea gravel of life. I called them dots. Dots of big truth. Dots of insight. Dots of understanding.
There’s a difference between Life with a Capital L and life with a little “l.” I sorta see Life (the Capital one) as a series of dots that we’re given, taught, seek out, learn, experience, fall into, teach. Those are the things that you “retain” (even when not intentional) and through sheer repetition (and some sort of feeling) seem meaningful. They are pertinent to your path, if not also to your survival and growing as an evolving human being.
Dots. Easy enough. And what do you do with dots?
If you’re a puzzler, you Connect-The-Dots!
And what’s the purpose of connecting the dots?
To reveal a picture (that you get to color any way you dang well please).
For me, I have always hoped that connecting the dots would reveal not just a picture, but “The Big Picture!” It’s a phrase that pops up again and again for me. Any job I had, I needed to see not just my part; I always needed to see “The Big Picture,” how my part fit into the whole. Doing an ad or a spot for a company, I had to understand the whole company first. I named my business ‘The Big Picture Company.’ Thinking in terms of ‘The Big Picture’ also comes in handy when the minutiae of the little life picture gets too heavy a burden. Just paint a bigger picture and the misery seems much more manageable in perspective.
Here’s another example I’ve retained for decades, and just now popped into my head. Can’t give proper credit, but I heard some fellow explain how, when he gets a really big problem to solve, or an issue causing him consternation, or a mad-at-someone-he’d-like-to-throttle, he begins to imagine himself rising up up up and away from it all, past jetliners at 30,000 feet, past the ISS, up up and more up to, I think he was like 30,000 miles up or so. How big does that problem look now? Manageably miniscule. Drawing my conclusion: Got a big problem? Paint a bigger picture and take a look at it from a higher perspective.
Now I firmly believe that dots do not drop linearly. Nope, this is not necessarily a linear thought process. Life (with the Capital L) is non-linear despite what life (with a lower case ‘l’) drags on like. A dot dropped in one decade may connect to a dot dropped a decade later. Paying attention to Life vs life—that is the Call. Remember those 3-D pictures where you’d stare at a bunch of squiggly art in a certain way (focus or lose focus whichever) and all of a sudden a 3-D image would pop out at you? It’s like that. Seeing the 3-D picture of Life in amongst all the squiggles of life.
Let’s start. You can connect two dots right here. If you have retained some pith of knowledge or saying or code or helpful antidote that you hear yourself repeating from time to time in an effort to share with another human being (Dot One), it is pertinent to you and your journey (Dot Two). See how easy Connect-the-Dots can be?
For me, I call these pertinent pieces “dots,” for a big “Connect-the-Dots” puzzle. Could they instead be called breadcrumbs, just like the fable foretold? Maybe they are the breadcrumbs we laid down to lead us back to safety.
I’m going to be dropping a few dots, some bread crumbs. See if something inside makes you feel they are pertinent to your survival or at least useful. As the saying goes, you can take what you need and let the rest rot. See what sticks and the rest will go through the sieve, right? This is what I have gleaned from a quest to “Know Thyself” because I have come to believe if you “Know Thyself” you will “Know All Others.” (Then comes the “Love Thyself” so that you can Love All Others.)
Connecting these dots could take decades, maybe a lifetime. But, to me, it was important to connect the dots. Maybe connecting the dots IS a lifetime.
First, let me tell you who Mesmarriah Miracle is.
Mesmarriah Miracle was born in a dream.