I Turned Alien, and Was Glad

The impermanence of being human

I was driving down Strawberry Road yesterday, a forested route where the conditions for speeding are impossibly tantalizing, when I had a sudden and disturbing realization.

I got a glimpse of my pale arms and realized I am an individual, separate from the car, steering wheel, trees, and sky.

Holy rampaging loneliness, Batman, I’m an alien to myself!

I knew in that moment that every scrap of time in which I don’t think of myself as separate is happiness. Still on Strawberry Road, because it is long, I contemplated the fallout.

We spend the vast majority of our lives thinking of ourselves, as individuals. We do it on autopilot. I grip the steering wheel and pretend I’m a NASCAR driver, when in reality I’m prone to swerving and mumbling about the incompetence of other drivers.

Cars seem to be the setting where I have zen-like epiphanies.

I was once idling at the intersection of Campbell and Grant Avenues on a pleasant and overcast afternoon, listening to the gentle plunk of raindrops hitting the windshield, when I felt an unexpected oneness with the universe.

It only lasted for a few seconds, yet the residue made a profound impression that will never leave me.

But not yesterday, driving down Strawberry Road, where I felt like a soft-shell crab splayed across an open-faced slice of white bread, laying atop a dollop of mayo, ready to be served up.

Years ago, I unwittingly ordered a crab sandwich and discovered it was a whole crab, all legs and strangely covered in unnatural batter, ready for burial and definitely not a meal. In that moment, I saw the crab for what it (he?) was: an individual.

I reflected on what brought it to this unfortunate fate, as if the crab’s life flashed before my eyes.

I was expecting crab meat.

The Secret to Life Is … Disappearing

All the moments in which we forget ourselves are perfect and joyful.

Moments of joy are rare because we’ve been trained — especially in US culture — to think of ourselves as striving individuals who must “make a mark” and to relish our agency in the world and over other people.

We were handed the dark gift of dominion over the plants and animals.

That’s a boring tale we feed kids so they’ll gather gold stars. Reality is much more compelling than the narrative of winning contests in the game of life. To survive, we must believe we are in charge of something, I suppose, yet our true nature is to play a role in an infinite drama, as cells in a body.

The cells don’t know the purpose. They don’t create a God to speculate about their purpose.

The myth of agency is toxic, which brings me to the subject of how our mental health deteriorates as we gain more and more agency (power) and become permanently immersed in the mirage of self.

In our true existence, we have little control over life’s outcomes, but what happens to a person who can maintain the chimera of agency as he builds an empire, or directs her staff of servants to do her bidding?

It seems to this ordinary crab that this delusion must be the worst and most torturous form of existence.

We all want to be billionaires, but legend and folklore warns of the dangers therein:

“What profits a man if he gains the world, but loses his soul?”

This essential problem with wealth was modernized by songwriters Jack Rhodes and Red Hays in “Satisfied Mind, a hit by Johnny Cash.

But little they know That it’s so hard to find One rich man in ten With a satisfied mind

Scheming and Dreaming on the Road of Life

Satisfied Mind doesn’t provide a manual on how to find contentment, unfortunately, yet what made it popular is that most people know it’s true.

When we are young, we think money will solve our problems, yet it often creates more — and we are left disappointed that we fell for the bait.

Experience teaches us life is about love, for those who are lucky. For the unlucky, the dazzling chance of winning distracts. Gamblers aren’t known for being cheerfully lighthearted characters.

Being satisfied with what we have is true achievement — by letting go of the value of achievement.

I’m partial to the way Eckhart Tolle describes the ego trap, as a refusal to acknowledge the reality of the moment as fleeting. The genius of his writing allows me to relax into the here and now; it feels as if he’s projecting an authentic state he lives in.

He sings a tune we feel is strangely familiar but lost and out of reach. Somewhere in our isolated hearts, we know our human time scale and little, self-conscious selves are idiotic.

Tolle reminds us that the banality of everyday actions is a false veneer.

We are not well when we are trapped in our heads, our egos, and our body — cut off from all the other bodies — but I suspect the vast majority of people are chasing the next thing and falling prey to the belief that this next, better, shinier scheme will pay off.

Then I remember the words of my realtor, DuWayne:

“So much of life is out of my control.”

We were driving in a car, of course, when he shared this gem of wisdom. It was a mini-van, but I doubt that makes a difference.

Final Mundane Profundity

Losing the self seems to be both devilishly impossible and easier than falling off a paddleboard into a swimming pool.

When the self dissolves, it doesn’t happen because of any action or plan or attitude, so it feels effortless. At the same time, how to repeat it?

Why can’t I let the infinite spaces of reality inside more often?

The elusive truth window reminds me of the magic wardrobe in the brilliant children’s book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe — in which the portal to a magic world is unreliable. The wardrobe is often just a place to store old coats, especially to the adults who live in a mansion they can’t possibly appreciate.

One wrong turn is expecting to reproduce the same conditions because they feel safe, which is holding on to outcomes. We desire reliable punctuation of events, but life is only a series of events when viewed in the rear-view mirror or written on a calendar.

We love photographs because they capture a moment, then we blow them up and cage them in a frame. The framed images italicize what is, we know, written in sand.

I’m not sure if you can sidle up to Enlightenment level, but I feel closer when I have zero expectations about everything, including driving down the block to the gas station, emptying the dishwasher, and every little grain of time.

Who knows when the illusion of separateness might fall away?

I wish it were as simple as driving down Strawberry Road again, glancing at my pale crab arms, and hearing DuWayne’s sage words echo through the mini-van.

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Jean Campbell recently started her first Substack newsletter to laser focus on getting her book, City of Lies: A Street Hustler’s Omaha Journey published.