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Fonz's Watermelon

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I read somewhere that when someone jumps off a building, if it’s high enough, their body disintegrates as it hits the ground in much the same way as if it were a watermelon.

When I took an overdose in my twenties that resulted in one of those very unpleasant trips to the hospital, I wasn’t even aware of my thinking around it. I had been prescribed anti-depressant drugs by my doctor, and at the end of an evening out with some friends for a few drinks it seems I had the thought that it was a good idea to take all the pills at once. Staying at my Mother’s home because of the state of my marriage at the time, I can hear her voice in my head even now, relaying to my stepdad what the doctor had said - ‘Oh no, that’s way too many, you need to call an ambulance right now.’

I’ve been on this planet in this lifetime a few weeks short of forty eight years. In the inevitable times of reflection about my life I see it has been rich, eventful, challenging, full, and any number of other adjectives to describe lived and alive. I notice a sense of peace about my mortality, I feel I have lived a full life already, and whilst there is much I still want to do and I definitely don’t want to be going anywhere just yet, I’m okay knowing that at any time it may be time to leave. I’ve no immediate, conscious desire to hear Elvis sing My Way whilst my body lay behind that curtain, but I do love the song.

Two divorces, numerous other breakups, the ten years of disownment by my father, that attempted suicide, sexual abuse, an incredibly lonely childhood, the crazy abusive marriage, the struggles with weight and feelings of pointlessness. Merging in thoughts with numerous holidays around the world, scuba diving in the red sea, the joy of fatherhood and crazy, laughter of friendships, six-figure salaries, big houses and fast cars, girlfriends and casual liaisons, intimacy in this profession, road tripping the Californian coast, and the delight of being in my dear Tsilivi.

Full thoughts of a very full life, one that can not accurately be represented in a few words or paragraphs. And what does it matter, anyways?

I catch myself wondering if I should go buy a watermelon to throw off my balcony, just to see what that looks like.

I can rationalise these thoughts - I couldn’t put my eighty year old mother through that, or my brother and sisters, and of course, no way would I do that to my son. Cue the discussion in my head of what is fair and what is not…

I’ve never been suicidal. There have been times when I thought I was. And that is the point.

I thought I was that thought.

Whilst standing on my balcony and noticing my judgment of a mother chastising her child, as they walk past below, a train of memories of my own father blasting into us children and threatening us, passes through my mind. That big old heavy freight train of judgmental thoughts rattles along the tracks.

Unlike the confused very young man, now I can see the judgments without believing I am the judge.

We should have voted to remain. My father should have come with us to the beach instead of reading in the car. The staff should be more friendly with their regulars. She shouldn’t wear that until she’s lost a few pounds. They shouldn’t have exploded that bomb. He shouldn’t jump off that building. Or maybe he should.

I’ve never been suicidal and I’ve never been sad. I’ve just believed in those moments that I am those thoughts, unable in those moments to see I am merely the thinker. And in the brief moments when I am acutely awake, I can even see I am not the thinker either.

All momentarily in a moment to moment life.

Only in those times when I have identified with the content of my thoughts have I sought to take action to manifest those thoughts into that identity.

As a child I’m sure I dressed up as some superhero. Looking back I at least like to think I did, even though I have no memory of such. And when I imagined that I was Superman, or more likely the Fonz, I thought what I thought they would think.

Until I didn’t. Until the thoughts left. Until the brief moment when I was the Fonz had gone. And the guy who imagined his body hitting the ground is the same guy admiring the soaring flight of a dove in the sky.

I am never my thoughts. Even the thought that says I am. It’s not necessary to leave this life to be free of our thoughts about it.

Freedom is already here, in that we are already free from our thoughts because our thoughts are not us. We’re free even when we imagine we are imprisoned and need to escape.

Twenty years later, I see very clearly that it doesn’t really matter what I think, unless I choose that it does. And even then, only I can make that choice matter.

I still care deeply what others think of me, yet I have chosen not to care so much about the fact that I care what others think of me.

I’m the one who gets to choose whether to observe my thoughts as if they are some documentary describing a conspiracy of how the world is and how it should be, or watch them as if they are simply an amusing sitcom almost too outlandish to be real.

And of course they never are real, and very rarely true. And those thoughts are definitely not me, however loudly they proclaim to be.

Maybe I’ll buy some peaches instead.
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