Inner World
It begins in the dark, warm and wet environment of the womb when our senses begin to develop. Body temperature and the texture of embryonic liquid upon our cheeks and palms, its taste and smell. The sound of a heartbeat and swooshing of blood, the gurgling of organ liquids and sounds from vibrating vocal cords, twitching muscles and creaking bones, light through the skin. Joining this inner rhythm are other sounds outside the host body from other human beings, the radio, television, the chaos of the street, the wind, animals and the sounds of nature as a whole as we try to find our equilibrium in an flurry of movements. What we make of these factors as an embryo trapped in the isolated chamber of the womb is a matter of personal uniqueness.
For a period of three months and possibly even the entire nine months, images are formed from the concoction of conversations and different environments and conditions our host encounters until a storm of sounds, temperature and movement draws us to a faint light pulsating from a contracting vaginal opening that signals the readiness to bring us to a new world.
So we try to break through, first with our hands, then legs and other parts of the body until something whispers “use your head”. We push in rhythm with the shrieks and pressure from an agitated host until we finally break into the light. For some of us, it is a less tumultuous experience when the embryonic sac is split open by an instrument so threatening it could in fact end what was just about to begin. There are some of us who even bear the scars of scalpel and forceps that found its way beyond its limits under the klieg lights of the operating room, the brightness of the day or artificial light. We are welcomed not by cheers and a pat but by silent oohs and ahhs and the final slap on the back that brings out our first audible sound….waaaaahhhh.
Liquid now replaced by air, darkness by light, stillness and more vivid sounds, sights, taste, touch and smell brings us into new awareness. We look for the familiarity of the comfort and security in the womb. We try make sense of what we imagined in the dark and now see in the light as we find our way in this open space full of so much more than what we had in the last nine months. We connect the sounds we heard with the things we see. We navigate from one to three dimensions and even ten. What an astounding feeling.
For the lifetime ahead of us, we attempt to reconcile our inner and outer worlds. From the concepts we formed in the womb and the conclusions we make with the information that we have to the reality of the outside world, life becomes a matter of aligning both inner and outer worlds.
Life is like trying to figure out what the world outside is trying to tell us. It’s just there and we navigate our way like a wild river ride. We find our place and live with it. We move with its rhythms and play our piece to keep in harmony as life unfolds before us. It was simple until we realize one thing.
What we see may no longer be what it appears to be. There are pretenses and lies. Wrong interpretations. Deliberate misinformation. Fiction. Delusions and illusions. Things are no longer just natural and what is. There is a lot of unnaturalness and deception. We struggle to discern which is which. There as as many worlds and truths as there are people we encounter.
As we go down this maze, our own world view is formed, altered and reframed depending on the information we receive and how we process this information with the information we already have. We act in accordance with our world views and how we see ourselves in relation to the world(s) around us.
It is no longer just a puzzle but a mystery.
When we retreat from the external world and embrace the treasures of our sojourns whether as a victorious sperm that bested a million others found its egg or an egg in waiting found by a sperm and together began a journey, we wonder where it all really began and is there even an end when in the stillness of the rhythm of life there is only what is.
