A Repost of Something My Buddy Paul Bernier Wrote

Siddhartha Gautama, Ian & Me

Sun at 7:58pm

There are but few times in this life when I’ve felt like I’ve reached a new level of enlightenment. There was the time when I sat under the bodhi tree, fasting and meditating for forty days, but that may have been a hallucination caused by the lack of food. OK, so that wasn’t me, but there was the time when I quit drinking cold-turkey and delved into the philosophies of Kashmir Shaivism, but that was probably just the DT’s. There was the Grateful Dead show where, somewhere in between the horse-shaped clouds galloping across the sky and the bugs crawling all over my hands, I realized – “I get it!” I’m still not sure what “it” was, though. Maybe that was just the acid. And then, there was last night, at the St. Lawrence Arts & Community Center, where I sat and listened to a great friend, a wise teacher, and a beautiful human being – Ian Harvie.

I have flaws, like oaks that have grown on ledge, the roots reaching deep into every crack and crevice of the stone of my soul; steadfast, determined, refusing to budge however hard the winds of change may blow. I’m overly critical. Where others see beauty, I search for imperfections. Where others see perfection, I see an illusion, just waiting to be demystified by my keen eye and overindulged intellect. I’m quick to judge. I somehow think that with a mere glance at the middle pages of someone’s life, I know how the story begins and ends. And then I ask, like the misguided disciple to the Christ, “Who’s to blame for this?”

These are only a couple of my demons, and although I can recognize them, see the path they came down, and want desperately to send them back whence they came, there’s that part of me that I don’t understand, the part of me that’s left lying lifeless in my suicidal fantasies, while the real me walks away, eager to begin anew. It’s that dark twin who sneaks around in the shadows, providing the demons with shelter, feeding them, nurturing them…

From where I sat in the theater, my wife by my side, I snuck a peek, and just a peek, into how it felt to be in the minority, to be different, to be “not the norm”. We stood out. We were the freaks. We were the ones who voted for McCain/Palin. I’m not saying that I think that I have even a slight clue what it’s like to walk in the shoes of the folks who sat around us just because we spent an evening together. I didn’t have to feel the fear, or the rejection, or the emotional pain. It was more like being the one guy who didn’t get the joke while the rest of the room erupts in laughter; who’s left to wonder if the joke was about him.

At some point in the night I had one of those Dead show “I get it” moments – LSD-free. I can clearly picture the androgynous face of a person who sat across the room. I was unconsciously studying her. No…not really studying her…more like using her face as a focal point while my mind drifted off into quiet meditation. And then it hit me – none of us are different, yet we are all different. None of us stand out, yet we all stand out in our own way. None of us are freaks, and yet we all are freaks to some extent. None of us are in the minority, because we are all human. We are all one.

In an instant the hard lines that I had spent so many years drawing became blurred. The blacks and whites I had worked so hard to define were dissolving into shades of grey before my eyes. All the little boxes with all their little labels where I had categorized and kept people and things were being ripped open and emptied out, broken down and flattened, ready for recycling.

On the sidewalk outside the quaint little pub where we sat and talked and laughed about old times and new times and times yet to come, we left Ian and parted ways for the night, after one more of those incredible bear hugs. Until next time, and not for another twenty-three years this time around. Before we left he gave me his card. I tucked it into my pocket.

When we got home I found one lonely beer in the fridge, cracked it open and sat down to think about the night. I pulled out Ian’s card and turned it over to find –

“ALL THAT WE ARE IS A RESULT OF WHAT WE HAVE THOUGHT.” – Buddha

So true. Thank you, Ian.