The Body's Fiber Optics

 

The body does remember. It is in its fibers. It’s as if as humans we have fiber optics running through us all the time. It’s true. There’s no denying it. Although I have ‘Rainman-esk’ qualities where most don’t. It is my consciousness. Everything that happens stays current. Front and center. No, it’s not from any form of PTSD. It is from my childhood. I had much to remember. So, I decided early on to memorize practically every incident, then perhaps every spoken word, dates, times, or perhaps everyday items. And I have some kind of math skills. Math skills and above average math scores only to be seen on the standardized tests I had taken to my mother’s dismay.

My now deceased husband who was a high school math teacher said to me one day over twenty years ago, “You have the mathematical mind of a chemist.” I asked, “How so?” He responded, “Your willingness to just sit there for hours and do logarithms. It’s the one type of math that I despise greatly. You enjoy it.”

Granted, I’ve never considered myself any sort of genius. Slow learner? Absolutely. But once I get it. Get out of my way. I will do whatever it is repeatedly for hours, days, years. Why? Because I fear being called stupid. You see that happened throughout my childhood in school from First through Tenth grades. Then something happened, I began to pull As. Who knew a struggling dyslexic less than average student like me would suddenly get a B in Latin in her Junior year of high school. Which then became my lowest grade. What gave? Who knew.

I can say my most turbulent childhood home years were many. The harshest were probably my high school years. But I stayed the course. I remained loyal to the family needs. Back then, I didn’t discuss any of that with anyone. I just put my nose to the grindstone and did whatever needed to be done. Because I knew the one thing no one could take away from me was my honesty, loyalty, listening skills, and knowing how to keep quiet.

So, back to the body’s fiber optics. Every living vessel on this earth has memory that it stores in its fibers. Every living vessel has this. This writing today was strongly encouraged yesterday. Yet it’s about today’s date that every living American should not forget. It should be taught and reminded of. Every December 7^th, as much as I was not born till near twenty years later, I remember that date. It is not about trauma, it’s about respect. It’s about compassion. It’s about a reckoning. It is about humanity. It is about freedom. It is about ‘not taking for granted’ peace or the essence of peace that has surrounded this nation.

Even if your home is unsettled due to drug use, alcoholism, criminal behavior, neglect, and so forth. Perhaps even if you’re teased at school, you have no real friends. There appears nowhere to turn. Or it appears that everything is a mess in your life, in your city, in the world. If there is general objective peace, then you’re ahead of the game. Many people may shun me for speaking such a truth. But it is a perspective.

As a child, I’d feel so rattled, yet I convinced myself that I had one thing going for me. War was not on my turf. At least not a complete war, where your neighbors get killed, or your school has been wrecked by the enemy so much so it’s a mere shell of brick and mortar. There’s rubble in the streets making roads impassable. The food markets that once stood filled with all sorts of incredible eats were now either shacks or obliterated. Imagine that. I can.

The other day I heard a small plane flying overhead repeatedly for five minutes. I could not catch a glimpse of the aircraft. But I sensed it stalking. My mind temporarily raced in wondering if it was someone practicing to fly in order to create terror once again. This comes as I live close to NY City, to the point one mile from my home on top of a hill you could’ve witnessed the 9/11 attacks and subsequent  collapsing of the twin towers back then.

There is the subjective view I hold as well. As a nation, we are greedy, overweight, obese, out of shape, ungrateful. And we are greedy petulant children in insisting that we just have to biologically birth more people to this land. We are a provincial, stiff-necked bunch many going back to banning what they don’t understand. Our pure ignorance which we accept by allowing things we hear to be ‘Gospel’ of some sort has and it is undermining our country’s peace.  We had a saying when I was a child, “Believe none of what you hear. And half of what you see.” Tip: You need to read different media every day. Use Search Engines and read multiple articles from different media outlets not owned by the same organizations. Then MAYBE form an opinion.

The other aspect to our body’s fiber optics is feeling. Feelings that we may or may not understand, but are congruent with the essence of our safety, the safety of others and world peace. Yes, those gut feelings. The little chills we get up the spine are our fiber optics of our body. It is our soul speaking to us on another level. Being grounded means you are in touch with that aspect of your body. Yet also, we have the capacity to feel the earth’s fiber optics. It’s memories and to the memories of those that have passed on. It is not spooky stuff. It is the truth and it is our most precious given fiber optics of being human. Without them and the acknowledgement of them, we are doomed.--- Jody-Lynn Reicher