Sapience... from a dropped blueberry
Eating at my desk (yes, a bad habit), I hear the soft plop of a blueberry as it lands—somewhere—on the carpet, which means I must find it, and quickly. Otherwise, I’ll forget and its purply juice will ooze and stain the beige carpet.
I cautiously tiptoe to the other side of the room to better survey the area around my desk. But I do not see the errant blueberry. I get on knees and belly, look under the desk, the bed, and the dresser, anywhere it might have rolled. I gingerly grope behind each leg of the furniture.
The blueberry continues to elude me. I close my eyes and let my ‘mind’s eye’ roam that ethereal space beyond the corporeal realm in hopes that memory of sound and sense of space will reveal what eyes cannot see.
With eyes still closed, it hits me. This practice of inner visualization is a place I (have) experience(d) quiescence that, on more than one occasion, helped me see / locate things elided in the corporal realm.
One example . . .
Years ago, a client file at the law firm where I worked went missing. We all knew it had to be in the office, somewhere, but no one could find it. While drifting off to sleep one night, after a week of searching, I mentally tabbed through each of the file cabinet drawers and ‘saw’ the missing file, in my mind’s eye, where it had been misplaced.
The next morning, I check and . . . cha-ching, I find it!
The thin file had slipped downward, between other files, to the bottom of the cabinet and, thus, not visible whenever anyone looked. Perhaps I was the one who misfiled it and, in that ethereal space, re-remembered (saw) me doing so. Allowing my mind to visualize, in a state of quiescence, helped find what was hidden.
The blueberry eventually finds me when I am no longer looking. Nestled behind one of the desk legs—a place I thought I checked—the pulpy meat, now beginning to ooze, dampens fingers as I reach for a book laying nearby.
I embrace the blueberry’s metaphors, its sapience. . . What we search for isn’t always at hand. And finding what we are looking for—like learning, exploring, and discovery—takes time. It also happens in states of unconscious quiescence, as we choose—not to give up, but—to move forward, recognizing that what may not be at hand may reveal itself when least expected.
- kvk
