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Never the Same Trip
by Alan Cohen
 I chuckled as I stepped from the rental car pavilion onto the shuttle bus
to the Kauai airport. The distance to the terminal was quite short, forming a
circle of about a quarter mile; if I walked the straight shot rather than taking
the bus, I probably would have gotten there quicker!
I set my bags on the rack, took a seat, and nodded to the driver. He
closed the door and stepped lightly on the gas. I joked, "I’ll bet you get
pretty bored making the same trip in circles all day!"
The fellow turned his head slightly, smiled politely, and answered, "I’ve
never made the same trip twice."
Oh.
"I always meet interesting people on the bus," he added. "I like to talk
to them and find out where they’re from. They usually have some good stories
about their vacation. I love this job!"
Oh.
What a huge lesson this humble driver taught me! I was stuck in circular
thinking. He was glowing with joy. He took a potentially monotonous job and
transformed it into a game he just kept winning. As the ecstatic Persian poet
Hafiz declared, "It’s all just a big love contest, and I never lose."
Boredom is not a condition; it is an attitude. Anything can be boring if
you bring a closed mind to it. Anything can be fascinating if you bring an open
mind to it. You can make anything out of anything.
A woman once sent me a small stone with a pencil drawing on it. The
rendering clearly depicted the profile of a woman looking up at a bird. It was
quite beautiful. As I looked more closely at the stone, I saw that the artist
had not etched these lines; she simply traced some lines that were already in
the stone. As I read the enclosed letter describing her art business, I learned
that she takes objects from nature and finds patterns in them. Then she
highlights those patterns. She does not consider herself a creator; she is a
magnifier. Her art reminded me of Michelangelo’s famous response when he was
asked how he crafted a sculpture as magnificent as "David." "I just saw David in
the stone," he explained, "and chipped away everything that was not David."
I am amazed as I observe little children watch the same video over and
over and over again. My goddaughter watched
Three Men and a Baby 21 times! An adult would be bored after the 2nd
or 3rd viewing. But children have a wonderful ability to always find
something novel and fascinating. They do not undermine new experiences by trying
to stuff them into old boxes. They live in the thrilling now moment, which is
always fresh and alive. As the Persian mystic Kabir noted, "Wherever you are is
the entry point."
The closest experience I can equate to watching videos repeatedly, is
listening to inspirational cassette tapes. I have listened to some of the same
tapes many times, and I do not get bored. To the contrary, I hear new material
every time. On one of my favorite tapes, a workshop participant asked
Abraham how it feels to keep answering the same questions over and over
again. "Oh, we’ve never answered the same question twice!" Abraham responded. I
wonder if Abraham knows the shuttle bus driver.
My young friend Matthew keeps me on my toes. One day when I went to visit
his family, he greeted me at the door and asked, "How are you, Alan?"
"Just fine, Matthew," I told him.
Ten minutes later he asked again, "How are you, Alan?"
My first impulse was to tell him, "You just asked me that, and I told you
I’m fine." But just as I was about to speak, I stopped and realized this was
another Matthew moment. Ten whole minutes had elapsed since our last
conversation. All kinds of things could have happened in those ten minutes! In
that period of time, people are born, people die, people have orgasms, people
get enlightened, and in the ocean just a few miles down the road, billions of
undersea creatures go through zillions of microscopic life cycles. For some
critters, ten minutes is the span of their whole life. If I were fully open and
available to the flow of spirit, I could be an entirely different person in ten
minutes! Of course Matthew had every right and reason to ask me such an
illuminated question.
Scientists tell us that there is no cell in our bodies more than seven
years old. Every organ is constantly rebuilding itself with new cells. Why,
then, does your body look the same, or older? Because the new cells go into old
patterns which are established and perpetuated by repetitious thinking. If you
could think and feel anew with every new moment, you would hardly age. In fact,
if anyone asks you how old you are and you answer with any number over seven
years, you are fibbing.
I think that Matthew, the Kauai shuttle bus drive, Abraham, all of the
children of the world, and all the animals, are in cahoots. I think they get
together and have secret meetings to figure out how to surprise, confound, and
entertain the rest of us who are marooned in the past and future. They are
dispatched by an insidiously brilliant conspiracy designed to keep us from
getting hung up in our creaking beliefs. Thank God for innocent souls who
delight in life; otherwise we might have it all figured out, and then what would
we do?
In the Bible, when Moses approached the burning bush on Mt. Sinai, God
told him, "Take off your shoes, for you are standing on holy ground." The same
instruction applies to us: Wherever you stand is holy ground. Wherever there is
life, the ground is holy, and life is everywhere. The question is, are you in
it?
No, it’s never the same trip. God is too original to do the same thing
twice.
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columns & articles by Alan Cohen.
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A Deep Breath of Life: Daily Inspiration
for Heart-Centered Living
by Alan Cohen.
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About The
Author
Alan
Cohen is the author of many popular inspirational books, including the
best-selling
Why Your Life Sucks and What You Can do About It, the award-winning
A Deep Breath of Life, and his latest book Mr. Everit’s Secret--What I learned from the
World’s Richest Man.
(The above books can be ordered by clicking on the book titles.) Alan offers four on-line courses throughout
the year and the
life-transforming Mastery Training in Maui. For
information on these programs and a free catalog of Alan's books,
tapes, and seminars, phone 800.568.3079, visit
www.alancohen.com, email info@alancohen.com,
or write P.O. Box 835, Haiku, HI 96708.
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