The Sunbather in Me
“When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter: As you see him, you will see yourself. As you think of him, you will think of yourself. Never forget this, for in him you will find yourself or lose yourself”
― A Course in Miracles
For eight straight weeks, I lay on a sofa bed recovering from knee surgery. From a window near my resting spot, I could see a slim man in his 40s doing yoga every day from dawn to dusk. Not Vinyāsa or even Yin yoga, but more of an 80%-lying-on-the-yoga-mat-and-20%-downward-dog-stretching kind. I watched him enjoy the morning breeze with the cypress trees, stretch under the warm Northern California sun, and pack up his mat when Karl the fog rolled in from the Pacific Ocean after crossing the Golden Gate Bridge.
Lands End Trail next to Presidio, San Francisco. © San Francisco Travel Association
I called him “the sunbather.” Initially, I found this peculiar scene amusing, but as I learned more about him from the neighbors, I began to resent what I saw.
His name was Craig. He went through a divorce last year, and his ex-wife took custody of their child. One of our neighbors offered him a free sofa to stay on, and he had been there ever since. Craig didn’t work. In fact, he wasn’t even trying to find employment. He claimed to be a photographer or some kind of visual designer and played a banjo-like ukulele. He liked to talk in grand mystical terms — words like consciousness, oneness, nondualism, peace, and love for all.
Nobody knew what had happened to his ex-wife or their child, or if they were real at all, since he often referred to his past marriage as “an illusion” and quickly shifted the conversation to “universal love.” Occasionally, we saw him with a young woman wearing a fedora hat decorated with feathers. He used to bike around the city, up and down the hills, but as summer came, sunbathing in our neighborhood became his new favorite activity.
In a nutshell, as I understood it, Craig was a California hippie. I felt a burning rage rise in my chest every time I glanced outside the window after completing another task at work, only a couple of weeks post-surgery. There was Craig again, doing nothing with his life. My thoughts rampaged about his “uselessness” to society and his “irresponsibility” toward his child. Words like “lazy,” “freeloader,” and “parasite” popped into my mind, despite the fact I barely knew him. My rage and hateful thoughts stirred so much pain inside of me that they overshadowed my knee pain and ruined the scenic view from my window. I even rushed back to the office with knee braces and crutches, partly because I could no longer stand watching Craig sunbathing.
The last time I saw Craig was the following spring at a community potluck. I briefly said hi and later learned from my roommate that he was planning to attend a men’s retreat in Costa Rica after recently raising enough money on GoFundMe. After that, he was set to move to a farm in Ojai to dedicate himself to promoting “universal oneness” — and not just any farm, but an organic farm. I must have rolled my eyes skyward when I heard that because I remember my roommate bursting out laughing so hard at my expression.
I never knew what happened to Craig afterward, but I did know what happened to me. The sight of Craig sunbathing became a semi-permanent imprint that haunted me. It flashed in my mind when I took a break and gazed at the bay from the office, when I zoned out during a workout, or when I took a long walk without any podcast to distract me. I tried to suppress it, to ignore it, but that image, along with the burning rage in my chest, lingered on and on.
Then one day when I was between jobs, I was relaxing in a park, it suddenly dawned on me: Craig, or at least my perception of Craig, was a reflection of the part of myself that I had neglected the most — the part of me that longs to break free from the capitalist machine, the part that’s exhausted from being the “good family member,” the part that can’t bear putting everyone else’s needs before my own for another day, the part that still wants to believe, with full faith, that “the universe will take care of you.” I envied Craig, partly because he seemed so free, and partly because I had never allowed myself to “just let go”.
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung proposed the concept of shadow projection. The shadow, the unconscious aspects of our personality, particularly those we deem undesirable or unacceptable, are often projected onto others so that we can see them. Instead of recognizing these traits within ourselves, we see them as defects in other people. We are triggered not because of someone else’s behavior, especially if it seems disproportionate to the situation, but because we have abandoned, or suppressed that same trait in ourselves.
I still think of Craig from time to time, though now it’s without rage or envy — more as a reminder to slow down. I picture him lying on that weathered yoga mat among the towering cypress trees, facing the salty breeze from the Pacific Ocean, his face lifted toward the sun and looking so satisfied. It makes me smile a bit. I hope he’s doing well in Ojai. I wish him freedom. And then, I wish myself freedom— the sense brought to light by Craig but born from my own heart.
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