Mind Matter Meditation: A Pin
I am a pin. I prick. I am a sharp piece of metal that intrigues kids and scares their moms for the same reason — my thin pointed shiny body. In their innocent wonderment the tiny-tots put me in their mouths which is their mom’s scariest nightmare.
To find her baby playing with me innocently, a mom panics, shouts and then carefully puts me away. In one sense I am innocent too, more than her baby — I can’t tell if it was her baby’s skin or a thick Thermocol board that I just passed through.
Maybe, that’s what makes me a prick. I can’t distinguish. I can’t choose. But, I don’t mean anyone any harm.
Most of the time I am a useless piece of metal lying around waiting for some one to push me through a piece of paper or a fabric or a board. But to play with me like I am one of those furry soft dolls, might not be a good idea. I can hurt you. Though I don’t mean to.
When I see you all, I see a torso same as mine. But then you all have these distracting limbs. Your heads equally unkempt as your bodies, your thoughts dissipate all over. I can sense the flurry of your minds.
Your soul is not patient to wait and serve one purpose you came down on earth to fulfill. You can’t keep it together. Can you?
You love to move around. You get distracted even by a pin drop. You do not experience peace of sitting in one place, stationary, being yourself.
You have this urge to poke around into others’ matters. Even though they don’t matter to you. Your miseries are of your own making; of your own pokiness. And you call me a prick.
And to save your plight you try to cover yourself with layers of artificial sheaths. Thinking the sheaths are impenetrable. It’s a laughable proposition. When you get sharp pins in life, sweaters don’t help.
My thicker friend nail is very much like me, but bulkier. A lot bulkier. He can penetrate bricks. No, I can’t do that shit. It will break my point. My body will be deformed if you try to hammer me into a wall. I have my own purpose.
While my thinner friend needle is very thin and tall, she has her own special purpose in life. She is hollow. I wonder how can someone so thin can manage to be hollow and let liquids pass through her. She has just one purpose to serve; once in her lifetime. And that’s it. What a humble genuine person she is.
Blunt stuff gets used again and again. Like me. I am blunt compared to my needle friend. When you are sharp like her, you strike only once. But you do it will so much precision and impact that a hundred of us pins put together can’t make that immaculate puncture.
Once I was stuck to a magnet. I stayed there, I don’t remember how long. Maybe 5 years. Nobody noticed. Then a mom wanted to pin her daughter’s first scribble on a cardboard.
The mom started searching for a pin in her closet drawer. While the baby crawled towards the usual household rubble and laid her hands on the magnet.
She started to play with the magnet, which I had been happily clinging on to for last 5 years. She was putting the magnet in her mouth. Rolling it. Licking it. All the while, her mother was hastily shuffling things in the drawer. She was skimming the corners to see if she could feel my thin metallic cold body.
Then she heard the little one make a sound. She turned to see what the little one was trying to eat. To her horror and eventual delight she found me clinging on to the magnet.
My purpose was served when I pinned her baby’s first drawing on the cardboard. I held that piece of paper hard with my body. My torso pieced into the paper and then got fully immersed in the fabric and then the board. My head locked the paper in one place for everyone to see.
The mom was relieved. The baby would have to grow up to be a big girl before she can reach me and unpin me. By then she would big enough to know not to put a pin in her mouth. Well, it seems I will be meditating here safely for a long long time to come.
