Open my mind a year and some change ago. Expanded my beliefs and discovered an untapped spirit, a caged soul who needed to be identified.
Never been a yogi, no poses for me. Can’t meditate, no quiet mind for me. Basket case, scatterbrain, mind racing like I’ve been chemically induced. A rush of emotions, questions, and ideas flooding all at once. Mad scientist with markings all over the place, only making sense to its originator.
Peace only comes when I’m submerged. Quiet only comes when I’m submerged.
Turning on the showerhead, streaming at full blast, the sound of water bouncing off ceramic tiles. Disrobing to step into my sanctuary, the hot water striking my flesh, steam engulfing the room. The mind becomes clear, the mind becomes quiet, peace has entered.
Fifteen minutes of utopia as nothing else matters. Fifteen minutes of self-therapy. Submerged under the hot streams, the outside world doesn’t matter. Submerged away from society, away from peers, away from family, away from responsibilities, away from expectations, away from mistakes.
Submerged under the hot streams, washing away the stress, washing away the pain, washing away the frustrations.
Inhale… Exhale… Inhale… Exhale.
Cleansing the body, the mind, the spirit, the soul.
Submerging allows me to surface.
The first sentence immediately catches my eye: “Open my mind a year and some change ago”. The only thing that I can think of that would relate to that idea is the impact reading The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz had on me. I believe I read it late 2014 (not too far from the release of J. Cole’s 2014 Forest Hills Drive, an album that also had a lot of impact on me), which would place this piece as written sometime in 2016.
It seems at the time I was reflecting on the level of enlightenment I had achieved and how that enlightenment then creates some level of chaos mentally. Your mind is constantly processing everything around you. Your friends, your coworkers, your family, work, the state of the world, the things you see on social media.
It reminds of the quote from Infinity War, where Thanos says to Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark, “You’re not the only one cursed with knowledge”. Or think about the common phrase “Ignorance is bliss” and how for individuals who don’t know better seemingly live more peaceful lives.
And for an individual like myself, it seems that peace came when I would shower, preventing my mind from wandering about things outside of my control.
