Salt Pot-Opportunities

A while ago I wrote that for building a remarkable life you need to meet ten people a day. That is what president Kekkonen did. Since writing that I have learnt two things. One is that you can never meet one person only. The other one is that you never know, who all those you meet are .

Recently I met a lady who has lived for thirty years with her head covered with a scarf - always. Meeting her you simultaneously meet the elderly man who raped her and harmed her when she was a young girl.

When we meet somebody with some kind of peculiarity, we tend to forget that "las cosas ocurren a consequencia de otras cosas". Due to this same principle - things occuring as a consequence of other things - we can also change what may first look final and permanent. This particular lady does not wear the scarf any more. Her hair is growing again. What was hidden in her mind for thirty years has been processed in therapy. That is why her mind does not need the visible sign of missing hair to tell us that she has been badly hurt.

We always leave footprints. Some of them are dirty and heavy, others have a healing effect, some are exciting and inspiring. Last week I visited some new friends. I am very excited about the footprints they set on my mind. Sometimes I think that I tend to meet people to be able to avoid people. I do not pay an unconditional attention to the person who I am talking with. I´m not totally present. Learning to know people who are present and who have an authentic interest in the exchange of ideas that is going on is like to finding a treasure. These two meetings are still having practical consequences: I have been arranging my study, filing papers and throwing useless scrab away. A refreshed mind wants to have refreshed surroundings.

Uffe´s footprints - audible and visible - are still in the house. Yesterday I collected his lead and harness, kept them in my hand to find out what to do with them, and then put them back to where they normally are. We used to go out for an hour´s walk every day. It was normal, no matter what the weather was like. I used to know exactly what was happening in the nature. First in the spring come the blue flowers, after them white, then yellow and then all the green starts growing up; in May and the first weeks of June you can enjoy beautiful concerts in the mornings and evenings. In August only bachelors sing. Others are busying to get their family ready to fly to the south for winter.

Now I need to build new things to make my life normal again. I just realised that we have a very comfortable armchair that we hardly ever use. Uffe wanted to have it for himself. That´s why we had to put a big, blue china ball sitting there. I took the ball away. Sometimes I could just sit down and read in that particular armchair. Just now my occasional mastery of Spanish lets me enjoy detective stories by Donna Leon. Venice is worth visiting every now and then. That armchair is a perfect place for visits like that.

Objects are something that resist our thoughts. Objects are the part of reality that are not directly controllable by our thoughts. Thoughts are under our direct control. We can work and modify them. But if you want to work an object you have to do a series of concrete activities and deeds and they are subjected to certain places and limitations. A salt pot is an object. If you want to use it you have to turn it upside down for a while. - When something unnormal happens in life, the mind may use that as an opportunity to function in the same way the salt pot does.