Survival during the passage of time
I look forward to the monthly FULL moon Satsang with Sadhguru the mystic from South India.
Tonight was the full moon
20 September 2021
I realized that last Satsang on 23 august 2021 felt like it was yesterday
Normally from one month to the next I could count on experiences and encounters out of the ordinary or routine.
Before Covid 19 related isolation, I did about 10 days of medically related travel in which I was able to help or offer assistance to the indigenous people, another 10 days of travel, would be devoted to anthropologically oriented, in many cases which is of use to my work among the Indigenous people.
The rest I would use to travel, it does not mean that a visit to the Easter Island would be without some medical consultations or assistance, but in general, it would be to places where my mind derived lots of pleasure because of the ambiance and relationships: Quiberon in France, Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, Siem Reap in Cambodia and Doha in Qatar.
All that came to a halt in March 2020,, 19 months ago.
The excitement of organizing a vagabond life, booking and searching for airfares (comfortable rather than cheapest) and also hotels and returning to places with familiar places. All that ended up on the back-burner..
Two full moons appearing so close to one another , made me think. This is the survival mode. At one time there were only certain parts of the world in Survival mode, but now the entire world is on survival mode.
That has created, magnified in my case, a chasm between the social life I would like to lead and the comfortable life that was afforded me generously here in Miami.
I do not want this certainty, I like a little bit of chaos and little bit of adventure. Also share a little bit of my life with friends scattered around the world. My life has been a good collection of various experiences, always tinged with culture (needless to say food and people)
Routine lifestyle gives you a sense of being busy but it is inactive to the mind, as the Nobel Prize winning author said VS Naipaul, you need a little conflict to be creative and added, when you do not have a project in your life, you become old.
I have heard more talk about death and getting old and getting sick in the last two years than in other years of my medical career. It is as if people are tired and feeling helpless and willing to accept whatever is coming their way. They have lost their proactive desire..to be engaged
With that comes unhappiness, a sense of resentment and also a lethargy.
I do not want this frame of mind. Many people in Miami get offended when I say, I rather be somewhere else. It is very difficult for people to accept the fact that their country is only one of the many better places to be and there are millions of people living in many countries, some of them rather content with their lots.
In the last year, I have made only three trips, one to Cuba my beloved island, I wish I could be right there now, and two trips to France and Spain. I enjoyed the sensation of flying and movement and new scenery and the fact that the world is not static .
As we learn to live with this virus, I plan to go back to my previous life. I am so so grateful for the people who gave me shelter and many who gave me food and of course a place where I could continue to work.
I wish you an exciting year ahead.. don't wait till the end of the year to celebrate
The Champagne is on me, did you know that there is a southern Champagne region two hour away from Paris where they place much more importance on terroir and also use a philosophical approach to the agriculture .. such as respecting Full Moon, so that its connection with the land is respected.
Such is this wonderful life, my brothers and sisters ..
How to feel the freedom and continue to live the life of passion during these times (hopefully ending in one year) of meaninglessness that pervades the world now. Only absolute idiots will fall into the trap of the Evangelical preacher of Brasil whose video went viral when he preached that the Covid 19 is not a Catholic? Sadhguru the Indian mystic, Thich Nhat Hanh the Vietnamese monk all remind us that we are here and now .
When you are work with the indigenous people, as I have been in the past years, you become aware that Chaos is the normal state and absurdity is not too far fetched. I had my fair share of surrealism in Cuba, as well.
I have noticed that at critical moments in my life, new authors or philosophers or old ones laying dormant in the brain arrive to help me out of the situation . Today it was Albert Camus
Born in Oran in Algeria, this French philosopher, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 (The Plague, The Stranger are his better known works).
The Myth of Sisyphus .. what image is evoked in your mind ?
Once Sisyphus is aware of the futile nature of his punishment and task, he finds a freedom and even becomes attached to it. Freedom in the awareness of the absurd.
France has given me many things, I will always be grateful for its writers and philosophers. Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Claude Levi-Strauss, Marcel Mauss, Giles de Leuze, Michel Foucault.... and I stand in awe of the great masters of Clinical Medicine a century and a bit ago, in France .. Dupuytren, Babinski, Pierre Marie, Charcot, hundreds more..
and here is Albert Camus:
