The Downside Of Knowing Where The Glass Sits
Say you’re holding a glass and you’re talking to someone and you know there’s a table next to you because during the course of your conversation you’ve been checking your surroundings. You have awareness of the things in the room.
Door, window and curtains, bookshelf, CDs on a shelf - check check and check check check, and there’s the table, right there off to your left, slightly below waist height, just within reach.
The conversation flows naturally, your visualization of the table doesn’t put you off because you’re not stupid or anything. But nor do you have supernatural powers.
So why is it then, when someone comes over with a book or something for you to look at, you can put down the glass perfectly on the table without looking? I mean really place it without slamming it down or hovering above the surface too long. And what’s even stranger is that when you go to pick it up again, you can stretch out you hand and know, just know without checking, how far away it is from the end of your fingers.
It’s because we all know our surroundings and our physical place in them. It’s like when you’ve been driving the same a car for a while, you know what size car parking space you can get into, when your passengers aren’t so sure. And you don’t even have confidence about being able to park it - it’s beyond confidence so there’s not even arrogance - you just: know.
What if that could extend to our quality? By that I mean whatever your name for it is. Call it influence, being, soul, being, personality, or whatever. What if you could act, do and say things and just be a certain way and know its place in the world and how everything you did would sit with people?
You would know every limitation and strength, because your self would be that car you know inch by inch. And you would know exactly what you could do, instead of the racing thoughts, anxieties and fears.
And beyond the reaction of others, if you knew yourself that well - knew your every reaction well enough to anticipate it and never tried anything you didn’t like because you knew you weren’t going to like it - life would grow tired very quickly. God, can you imagine if you knew your partners that well? How dull would that be?
Enjoy what you don’t know, right? Reach for the glass on the table, but when you get it inch perfect without looking, don’t be too self-satisfied with knowing your place physically, because too much awareness is too little discovery.
June 9th, 2006 at 6:49 am
I’ve never been able to do that sort of thing without looking.
And I can’t parkl well to save my life;)
June 9th, 2006 at 7:39 am
Are you the sort of person who never looks at the person they are talking to? So unnerving!
June 9th, 2006 at 9:01 pm
I was beginning to like that state of ‘being’ for a moment.
I can’t do the glass thing. I managed to break the bottom of the glass by clanging it against the other glass which then had shards of glass in it *sigh*
June 9th, 2006 at 9:05 pm
I make eye contact, but I am an intimidating presence and so I try to judge how muc to make. People don’t like being intimidated.
June 9th, 2006 at 11:05 pm
Maybe it’s just me then. But I am pretty poor at eye contact.
June 10th, 2006 at 12:02 am
Yeah but you don’t fill half the room and look mean.
June 10th, 2006 at 8:48 pm
This is bullshit. My wife has been driving for forty years and she what size car parking space she can get into.
June 13th, 2006 at 12:14 am
Cliff you have that male brain-bit wot I don’t which sits in there and gives you exact information about how wide your car is. I’ve been driving 3 years right (sorry, am drunk, this’ll be a ramble I can feel it) and I still have this thing where I look at a space and go ‘yeah, that’s doable, my car is a bouncy castle shaped like a puegeot 306, and it’ll all be fine, just whack that parked family of 4 and make them cry, go on Steve it’ll be a laugh’. It is costing me loads in cash and self esteem. I mean, what do they make bumpers out of nowadays? You might as well strap a fucking baby to the front of your car. They are meant to BUMP, surely?
Anyway, the parking/life analogy is a good one. I think parking is a rehearsal for a decorous death - putting yourself out of the way, not obstructing those around you who want to get a move on in life. People who park badly - nobody’ll go to their funeral. Life is all about knowing your width. Yes.
Erm. Nice new look by the way.
June 17th, 2006 at 11:41 am
Thanks Steve. That’s a compliment coming from a designer. You weren’t driving when you wrote this, I hope.
July 7th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
I’ve been having fun following a chain of random This is This links at the bottom of your posts.
And I arrived at this one, which I particularly like.
Sometimes I become suddenly aware of the fact that I know exactly how wide my car is and where its edges are, and whether or not I’m going to hit the cars at the side of the road. And then I get freaked out and bump into stuff.
Well OK then, I don’t. But I feel like I will.
July 8th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Thanks Clare - it’s nice to know you’re reading the archives. All the best.