Inhabit Like Bonnie
One of my goals in life is to walk completely around Waban Pond like my dog-friend Bonnie. Bonnie is a sensate being who is completely at home walking around the pond. She fully inhabits her body as she circles the pond sniffing the various smells in leafy nooks and crannies, marking her territories, tasting the grass and twigs, listening to the sounds, and alert to the swans, ducks and the geese. She is an extension of the soil that she walks on and is extended by all of nature that surrounds her. She is connected to the earth.
When I walk around the pond, a few minutes after I have noticed a few trees or some kind of light from the sun and clouds, I find myself lost in thought: creating a narrative about myself or another person, maybe indulging in a resentment about some offense another person committed, planning a project, or thinking about when the next Celtics game will be televised. Before I know it, the walk is over and I haven’t noticed much other than maybe someone I saw on the path talking on a cell phone. It’s almost like I had a blackout and I don’t know how I got from one side of the pond to the other.
Humans are sensate. We share that trait with Bonnie, but many of us have never learned to truly inhabit our bodies. Many of us have been taught not to inhabit them because our bodies were seen as impure, animalistic, inferior to our mind or spirit. In fact, we were taught that the mind is higher than and separate from the body. Many of us are taught to dislike our bodies by a culture that defines good looks based on retouched pictures of surgically and chemically-enhanced bodies. In some sense, we are taught to objectify and judge our bodies, rather than own them, appreciate them, and fully inhabit them. As a result, by not fully inhabiting our bodies, it leads to us not noticing or respecting the connection our bodies have to this earth.
If we never learn how to truly inhabit our bodies, we can never know what Bonnie knows-that we are one with and connected to a planet that inhabits us. Unless we learn to inhabit the living organism that is our body, we can never truly know the living organism that is our earth. The earth is a body. The Amazon forests are its lungs; the rivers are its arteries and veins; the ozone is its outer protection-a bit like our skin. The earth is a complex system of organic and inorganic compounds combined into a single, self-regulating and living system that is working together to maintain life as we know it.
This is our challenge to face. By not knowing how to inhabit our bodies, we have come to see the planet not as subject, but as an object to be exploited, neglected, extracted from and abused. This is why we are in the midst of a climate crisis today. If we can learn to walk around the pond like Bonnie, then we will discover that the planet is our home to be noticed and protected. If we do that, it will protect us, sustain us and provide for us. Only then will we understand that we are at one with and connected to our planet that inhabits us.
Be well,
Bill