Diamonds

Still in the car on my way to Ottawa. A while ago I passed by Herkimer and I remembered there is something called the Herkimer diamonds and I wondered if this is where they had been found. I could tell that something different had happened in this landscape.

There were those remnants of industrial exploit: iron skeletons of some died away rusty use, large lots of with heaps of gray rubble, pebbles and rocks... a particular quality... of something forlorn and discarded. And seeing this float by my window and melt back into the green waves of the pregnant summer landscape I thought: isn't it true that we humans live like this with the earth ... wherever there is something valuable, we run to use it up or take it away. And then: isn't it the same with those humans among us who have something valuable to offer: others come and want to take it. Isn't this a form of exploitation too? Examining this idea I realized there are nuances both on the earth and among us humans. Yes, there are places on the earth that hold something valuable that hasn't been discovered by that many people yet, places that have remained more secret, more hidden, less exploited, less run over, less visited... less SEEN. And it was also true that the amount of visibility or exploitation has nothing to do with the value that place holds. In fact there might be places of enormous value that are still completely hidden.

And my thoughts wandered into applying this to myself: did I want to become someone who was more hidden or someone more visible? If I had the choice right now would I want to become someone as visible as a Byron Katie, whose face is pasted on book covers and book covers and more book covers? Who travels around the world offering her message, giving something of herself that feels valuable to other people to those other people. That is her life. At least much of it.

I had always thought of that as a beautiful way to live, but all of a sudden, for the fist time, I could see the beauty in being a more hidden person. Just like a landscape that has remained unspoiled and lives in a more gentle harmony with the fewer people that walk through it or live in it. That becoming well known and run over wasn't the ultimate best thing that could happen to me; that the measure of who I was, was not determined by how visible I would manage to become; and that I could probably lead a exhilaratingly happy life in obscurity. This realization is new in it's quality... like with so many things these day this is not a thought I hadn't had before, or rather this is not a conclusion I wouldn't have been able to draw in my brain, but the feeling of ease and groundedness it comes with is new. A different resting yet again.