This post shares some highlights of a daily, self-assigned, homework exercise to explore the role of imagination in my day-to-day life. This blog is a direct continuation of the previous 2 posts; if you haven’t already done so, please head back and read those before proceeding.

 

• I was sitting in a park today and there was a free concert preformed by an Orthodox Jewish band. They were singing in Hebrew, songs I knew so well from my childhood. As I tapped my feet and sang along, I realized as a kid, I just assumed I would grow-up and continued to practice Judaism. My family was Jewish, our community Jewish, there were no other conceivable options. It made me see so clearly that my today reality –of being a devout Buddhist, practicing with a Buddhist community – was outside the scope of anything young child Alana could have imagined, and yet it is what happened.

 

• Eric and I were talking about our fantasy retirement: at least two homes, continual travel, country/city, etc. I am always imagining a life on the move, exploring, being in different places. But the reality is, I already have that in my life – back and forth to SF, having moved 7 times, lots of travel — and it hasn’t made me feel truly satisfied. I always move, trips end, I always look for more. Why do I let my imagination keep tricking me into believing the next thing will be different? That this ‘on-the-move’ retirement plan we work so hard for is going to make us happy, when the on-the -move life we have had so far has failed to do so, at least in any enduring way.

 

• An old childhood friend called me out of the blue today. She needed money, she was homeless, about to get kicked out of her hotel. Her parents had told me she had fallen on hard times, but it was still a shock to hear from her. When we were young, she was my hero, she was so popular, so mature, when we would play make-believe about the jobs and lives we would have when we grew-up, I believed her when she acted out teacher, or doctor, or pilot. None of those games were sufficient to turn her into the jobs we fantasized about, and none of the games ever predicted her grown-up reality — drug addict, dropout, homeless. Reality doesn’t conform to our imagination. Nor does our imagination predict reality.

 

• Every year –for over a decade – our office holiday party had been at the Marriot. This year though, it changed to a restaurant down the block. I got the invite, I knew it had changed, I had it in my calendar for a month. But every time I thought of the party, I kept imagining the upcoming party, I kept imaging the backdrop of the Marriot. Today, when I walked over to the party, I started walking towards to the Marriot before changing course to the restaurant. Even though I knew, I had the raw facts, my memory kept feeding my imagination with old data.

 

• I am in Japan, our trip was going so well so far. After stress and worry that things wouldn’t go as planned, I had started to convince myself it was smooth sailing. Then we got lost –taking the wrong train 4 hours in the wrong direction before having to about face. I was so stressed: I wanted to arrive at our next stop early to see the town, as we only have one night there. Had our trip gone bad from the start, I wouldn’t have been so upset, I would have expected it. But a few days of bliss left me unprepared, extra pained because I imagined only up and not down. What is more is when we finally did get to town, it was nothing but a bus station, a store and a small shrine. There was nothing to see –I stressed so hard, not for what I was missing, but for what I imagined I was missing. If I had known, I would have taken a later train and enjoyed the last city more.

 

• I walked into a fancy store today, expecting to be greeted immediately – after all, this was a high end luxury shop. But the employees just kept working, ignoring me. I made it all the way upstairs, walked around, still no greeting. I was offended, angry, didn’t they know I am important, I have money to spend, I walked out without buying anything. As I continued on to the next shop, a lower-end place, I realized I didn’t have the same expectation of service since it isn’t a luxury brand. My annoyance and offence arose not based on the service, but on my imagination of how I would be treated in a certain circumstance and my disappointment/ imagination of what it meant about me that I wasn’t.

 

• I was sitting in the onsen (hot bath) tonight and watching the steam rise. There was something my dad always used to say that came to mind. He said, “life is like smoke, smoke is an illusion.” But I see smoke, or steam in this case, is not an illusion, it’s just insubstantial. It blows with the winds, changes shape and then fades away. That is what life is like, shifting and insubstantial. And yet, I long for it. I cling to it. Why? I came on this trip to Japan because the last time I was here I had fun. I loved it. I assumed this time would be the same, I assumed I could hold on, repeat, find satisfaction. In truth, much has been different than my last trip to Japan; some parts fun, others not so much. I am born in much the same way as I decided on this trip: I see the wind blowing the direction I want to go and I imagine it will be like I want, like my past experiences, or my future hopes. I think it comes down to just me and my desires. But all it takes is a gust the other way, like a move from SF to NY, and it isn’t fun anymore. Its continual shifts through states I like and those I want until dissolution. My imagination of what it is and what it will be is the reason I take the plunge.

A final note on my process and concluding: I want to add a note here that, clearly these collection of thought/ daily exercise blogs don’t have a conclusion. In proceeding blogs you will doubtlessly see the fruits of these exercises fueling synthesis and conclusion. In fact, these little daily drips sometimes come back, even years later, and help hit a point home for me. I know concluding is a critical (and deeply ongoing) part of practice – a part that gets captured in many of my blog entries – but my conclusions often follow from a slow and steady collection of evidence. That is the phase of practice these particular ‘daily exercise’ blogs offer a glips into.