I was out for a walk and I saw a swirl of leaves blowing around in the wind. I decided to try to use it as an Ubai, a metaphor for my own confused and upended life. I closed my eyes and began to imagine my own objects, details of places and people, from my Cali and NY life, swirling around me. All out of my control, moved by forces beyond myself.

Suddenly, I opened my eyes and realized I had made a huge mistake…the leaves out in nature were swirling around each other, moving this way and that in the wind, a constant changing mass. But in my own mind, I twisted the scene, I ‘internalized’ everything, those ‘metaphorical leaves’, swirling around me — I was the sun, the gravitational force around which these objects, people and places all revolved.

My little Ubai exercise had unmasked ego, the lie of alana-centricism quietly lurking beneath even my most ardent efforts to contemplate my limited control. This, I realized, was the deep extent to which my view of myself and this world are poisoned. At the time, I didn’t press any further. Now, years later, I frequently get a flash in my mind of swirling leaves and it reminds me to double check on that ego.