It has been about a week, almost every morning. I am in the car, backing out from the garage while looking back and forth between the mirror and the back windshield, listening to the car sensor’s signals, and looking into the back camera on the dash (cool gadgets, but really annoying at times) all the while looking around to make sure I am not hitting any garbage cans, little bikes left in the middle of street, a flown away box, an animal, a kid (specially) etc.. It’s almost like juggling if you want to be really careful. I turn into the street backing up, and then start moving forward and looking quickly at the mirror to make sure no car is coming behind me and to my right as I am going to the right side of the street. Then I see something looking like a rat behind the car, almost 10 feet away, and running from across the street towards my house with almost the speed of light. You know what I mean, I mean really fastJ I was thinking, I hope it is not running to my house and I sure pray that he is not there when I get back. And of course, I normally forget about it by time I get home.
I kept convincing myself that the rat was probably going to my
neighbor’s back yard and since part of their fence is broken, it will go
out to the field which is behind our house. He was probably lost and
wanted to go back home(boy am I positive and with active imagination, I know I drive some of you crazy, but this is more funJ)
Couple of days later, same thing! OK, may be it is a very fast cat, said to myself, convincingly, “It could be possible! Just because all the my cats
were very lazy and demanding, I thought, doesn’t mean that cats are not fast.”
There; I took a deep breath and tried to forget about it – again!<
Today, I was leaving the house and once again, here it was. But, it really looked like a rat.
This time, I stopped the car to take a closer and harder look into the mirror and focus to
see him better (or her? I was secretly thinking it was her and while annoyed, I was very
proud of its persistence, speed and timing. It waited until I left – then it was time to cross
the road.)
So, I looked really hard and I . Yes I did and gosh darn it!
“It” was a spot on my mirror!
It obviously was my finger print smudge or something like that. Can you believe it? I was relieved, and happy; then it hit me: stupid! How could I be so convinced that I had seen some thing,? So sure that I was right that I made up a story about it and got deeper and deeper in to it and saw it almost everyday! How could I be so arrogant not to have even second thoughts?
Do you ever wonder about how “some” of the things we believe in, and spend lots
of our time and energy on, to the point of insanity, could really be an illusion? A
smudge on the mirror? Specially, if it is repeadetly occupying our mind and
effecting our life. What if I make sure it is “clear” before I look at the mirror the
next time? What if before I take my mind to the play ground to play a never-ending
game with these thoughts, I make sure they are not my imaginary friends – not smudge?
Thoughts are created and held by us almost automatically and habitually.
There comes a certain freedom with getting rid of clutter in our thoughts. Got Windex?