Heroes Not Zombies

Vineyards consist of several parallel rows of vines, each plant pruned and tied onto wires which run from stake to stake. The cognac makers call each row a “wire” and a contract between a grower and a distiller will detail how many “wires” are being sold each year. As best I understand it, this is the unit of agreement – a number of wires, not a number of grapes. Interesting, huh?

This photo is one of many like this which I’ve taken over the years. I love how the Sun catches the wires at certain times of day. It makes them vibrant. It makes them sing.

You can tell this is a Spring photo from the fact that there are no leaves on the vines yet, and that beyond the vineyard the trees are full of blossom. Everything has its season.

This image of wires sets off my train of thought along two different paths.

Firstly, it reinforces my understanding of the world as multiply and massively connected. The wires are a symbol of connection for me. They connect the plants together, they connect the growers to the distillers, and they create the basic structure of each and every vineyard. They are an underlying, foundational, creative structuring force which makes the vineyard look and live as it does. There are many such patterns, forces and structures running through and below our lives. There are many, in fact, which give us the forms of physical reality in which we live. I love it when we glimpse these patterns and become aware of the flows of energy and change which shape our lives.

Secondly, the phrase from neuroscience “what fires together wires together” comes to my mind. Although I think the metaphor of wiring for the elaborate, complex set of relationships between neurones in our brain is somewhat overdone, the truth is that it seems that our habits of thought, feeling and action, do actually change the physical structure of the brain. When we think, feel or do something repeatedly we lay down strong, fast pathways of neurones which not only make it easier to do or think those things….they make it harder to not do them! They become the underlying structures which determine some of our unconsciousness activity. To develop new, different, thoughts, feelings and actions, we need to consciously choose to initiate them and repeat them. That’s great news actually, because as well as “what fires together wires together”, we have discovered the brain is “plastic” – not made of the material we call plastic, but has the characteristic of “plasticity” – it can constantly be remoulded. We are not stuck with a set of thoughts, feelings and behaviours. We can change them. We just need to consciously choose to do so, and to repeat what we have chosen. That’s at the basis of the teaching about creating new habits by doing them each day for 30 days. It seems that by that time we’ve created new pathways, or new wiring!