Shadowboxing
“Playing
a sport or an instrument extremely well is not just thoughts, ideas, and
theories. It’s embodied. And until our true self is embodied almost constantly,
we will not have our true life, the one we really want.”
Charlotte
Joko Beck (“Ordinary Wonder,” Parabola, p. 39; Spring, 2022; Originally
published in Ordinary Wonder: Zen Life and Practice, 2021)
I don’t
know about you, but I am a lazy woman. I want everything to be easy and
painless. I want to read about a place and look at some pictures and think I
know something about it. I want to listen to chant and pretend I can even begin
to understand the ebb and flow of it without ever opening my mouth. I want to
read about something—like knitting, or gardening—and think I am ready to excel
at it without ever wrapping on thread or sticking a trowel into the ground. I
just don’t want to tax my body or my mind with the hard work of mastering a new
skill.
My
friend Isie, who used to be a copy editor for Southern Living, told somebody in
my presence recently that my writing had really improved over the time I’ve
been writing the blog. I had to stop and think about that—next month, will be
eleven years—every day (or almost every day) for eleven years. So, I should
hope that my writing has improved. I have a friend, Ladonna, who plays violin
(and anything else with strings on it) and has been playing since childhood. At
seventy, she still practices every day.
To become a master at
anything, unless you happen to be a savant, takes long hours of practice and
hard work over years. Reading about it, thinking about it, dreaming about it,
is not enough. It must be embodied; you must become one with the music, with
the words.
To read an article on-line
or to attend a zoom lecture on a topic for CE’s does not make you are an expert
on that subject. We humans are inclined toward easy-street and following the
loudest voices instead of assessing for ourselves and digging into things that
are difficult to understand or to do. It makes us easy targets for
misinformation and conspiracy theories, for following leaders with malicious
intentions.
Charlotte Joko Beck says
in “Ordinary Wonder”: “Shadow boxing is just jabbing a shadow, with no real
contact. And most of our thinking is shadow boxing. Part of waking up to the
present moment is to become aware of the fact that, usually, we’re just shadowboxing
and not making contact with life.” (p.40)
If we want the world to
change, we must embody the change we want to see, otherwise, we’re just jabbing
at shadows. Work is required for change to happen.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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