A Sudden Understanding
Where it happened
Excerpt from Sit With It: A New Paradigm for Living.
This book presents a new paradigm for relating to the people, objects, and situations in our lives. It describes a way of living different from what most of us are accustomed to. While this text diagnoses the root cause of the dire socio-economic and environmental predicament that humanity finds itself in, its primary message is about how we live our individual lives.
The inspiration for this text came from an unexpected encounter outside of a Starbucks in May 2015. An unkept lady selling white chocolate bars approached me in the parking lot. She told me that she was fundraising for her son, but the chocolate did not seem like your typical school fundraising candy. It looked like a box of retail candy, and I considered the possibility that it had been stolen. Nevertheless, I bought a bar and made my way towards the entrance of the café. The woman then surprised me by exclaiming, “I hope it rains today!” This struck me as odd considering that she was on foot. Why would she want to get rained on? I yelled back, “why?” She answered, “It makes my grass greener!”
A sudden understanding struck me at that moment. This statement by a vagabond shattered my long-held beliefs about the value of unpleasant things in life. It was as if I had caught a glimpse of a deep truth that I had never understood before. That night, and the following morning, a stream of images poured into my awareness. I felt the urge to draw them. This was pure unencumbered inspiration the likes I had never experienced before. The drawings looked like the doodling of a madman, but it all made sense to me. More sense in fact than anything I’d ever been told or read about the human condition
Over the next few weeks, I attempted to write a manuscript describing this new found understanding. I failed. It was too much to process all at once. After a year and a half of contemplation and consternation, I completed the text and the diagrams for anyone who might be interested. It has now been over five years since my encounter with the lady in the parking lot and, try as I might, I have not been able to discredit what I learned.
This book is for those of us who feel that there must be more to life than the drudgery we face day-to-day. It seems that we are never quite satisfied with our circumstances.
This message is for anyone who is curious to explore what lies just beneath the surface of our everyday lives. It is for those who are beginning to doubt conventional cultural interpretations of what life is all about.
There is incredible power within each of us. Our imaginative creativity combined with our physical and technical prowess allows humanity to influence the world in ways other species cannot. We can create a vastly different world than we currently inhabit, but our power is being squandered. We unfairly turn the people, objects, and situations in our lives into sources of pleasure, and cede our personal power to compulsive behavior. I don’t want you to believe me. What follows is an attempt to outline how you can find out for yourself.
