(Don’t) Be Serious
About a spec and a universe ― and a gentle smile.
Seriously
If you are serious, that’s OK because it means that something is meaningful to you. If it is deeply meaningful to you, it makes you deeply serious about it. And that’s fine!
You care about people. You are serious about their well-being. You are a good person for doing so.
You care about things because they are meaningful to other people. Yes!
At the same time, don’t be serious.
Everything is very relative. You can relativize everything away. Or someone else can do it for you. I might do it for you. Look at time and space ― infinite time and space. Then look at you. Infinite really means infinite. The further you go into this, the more you become infinitely small in comparison. That never stops. You are infinitely small.
So, don’t be serious about anything. It’s not worth it.
You may feel like this doesn’t fit together.
If you feel this, that’s good. Keep a while with the feeling. It doesn’t fit. It really doesn’t fit ― seriously unseriously.
Is it all a joke? Is the universe a joke, or is your life a joke? What’s the meaning of all this if, from infinity, all that is meaningful is infinitely small – a speck on the wall?
The speck
I was meditating once, in a group, and we were sitting turned to the walls of the room, the zendo, the mediation hall. Before me, on that wall, there was a tiny speck. So I meditated for forty minutes looking at this speck.
It became the most important speck of the universe ― to me.
It was the most serious thing one can imagine ― completely unseriously.
Of course, just a speck.
Then I looked through a window, and I realized that the speck was infinitely important. And while staying infinitely important, so became that little leaf of a tree.
And so became I;
And so became the other people in the hall.
And so became everything and everyone in a special way.
Seriously unseriously.
You can accomplish great things in your life and gently laugh at yourself.
That can be anything, doing great things in doing just small things.
Being unserious may be the most serious thing you can do.
You are the speck on the wall.