I’m fortunate in that I have an extraordinary assistant who reminds me every chance she can get that it’s time for me to write.  If she didn’t remind me, I would forget.  There is usually so much going on in my mind and therefore in my life – just like you I imagine – that keeping on point is rarely the foremost thing in my mind.

My wife, Luz Delia, often comes to me to ask if I have done something I promised to do, and, for the life of me, I never remember the things she reminds me of.

Is it, do you think, because I am getting older?

Or do you believe it’s something else altogether?

Do you think that the things I promise to do aren’t to me the most important things to do, or that I am so self possessed that I am only interested in any moment in time in what appeals to me most in that moment?

This is a very interesting question, I think.

Interesting, because I think of myself as being intensely conscientious, that promises I make are never made haphazardly, or indiscriminately, or thoughtlessly.  My promises, I have believed, are my bond.

Yet, if I look at myself more closely, and keep what Luz Delia says to me in mind, it is obvious that I am not exactly who I think myself to be.

That my promises are evidently not always my bond.  That my promises are, according to my beautiful and sincere wife, Luz Delia, while not made insincerely, are often made without a thought about what it is going to require of me to keep them.

Perhaps that’s it.

Perhaps a part of me is always ready to make a promise, but that part is not the part that needs to keep it.

Perhaps the part of me that seemingly blithely makes a promise has every intention of keeping it, but has no idea of what it’s going to take to keep it, of the time, or the effort, or the insight, or the capability – or the interest — to keep it.

Perhaps that too is what it means to be a man, a human being.  That we so often believe ourselves to be someone we actually rarely are.  I think of myself, for example, as a serious man.  And I would believe that you who are reading this blog would believe me to be that too, otherwise why are you reading this?  But, am I truly what one would call a serious man?  How many lapses of seriousness do I fall prey to?  How often do I simply wallow in unseriousness, in lazy mindlessness, in not being interested in anything other than feeding myself, my urges, my pleasures, my lassitude, my wandering mind?

And, with that in mind, how often is that true of you as well?

What does it mean to be a serious man?

What does it mean to be serious?

This morning on my radio show, having gotten up late, and rushing into the studio just in time to do whatever it was I was going to do – I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do on my show, other than that I was going to do it for an hour because that’s how long my show is!

I just began, as many times I do, I just began talking, and allowed my mind to scan my desk in front of me looking for something to hang on to, because my mind was completely incapable of thinking of anything whatsoever to say.  And there, within easy reach was my always faithful black and yellow book, I AM THAT, a compendium of interviews with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj – (now there was a serious man!) — and I just began to read.

It couldn’t have been any better even if I had planned it!

I read for the entire hour.

And my entire life ran there before me.

The questions I am asking here, all of them, a complete waste of time.

The way in which I am asking these questions, all a complete waste of time.

The motivation for my asking these questions, all a complete waste of time.

My life, all a complete waste of time.

But, not really.

The writing, the act of being here, the connection to this question, the connection to you, as I ask these questions.  All of these are real.  All of these arrived in the moment I thought, “Blog time”, in the very moment when that sense of awakening pressed against my mind.

And a part of me said, “Yes!”

And that part then said the rest to you.

And all of this occurred without a word from my assistant, or a reminder from my wife, Luz Delia.

Isn’t that remarkable?

Aren’t we all?

-Michael E. Gerber

 

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