My own smallness is thrilling. By the crashing ocean or in a driving Kenyan thunderstorm I am this tiny thing and I matter so little that it is amazing; that I forget why on earth I operate with any sort of caution or careful behavior. I can live and love and laugh and hurt and cry and be and die and I can do it all at once, and it is amazing. It is amazing because it doesn’t matter to the rest of the universe. I can do anything and not hurt it. Anything can happen and things will go on and that is so freeing. I can go climb a tree and break my leg and the worst it can do is hurt for a bit. I can throw my heart at people and they can drop it splat on the ground, and the worst it can do is cause me some temporary pain. “Temporary” could mean weeks or months or even years, but what is that in the scope of infinity? How much worse is it for something like me, with ultimately so little to lose, to just sit here and do nothing? Invest nothing, feel nothing? I can do anything, because I am nothing. Bring it on.
Do you know what that means? That means what I am right now doesn’t matter to the infinite universe! I can, in this particular moment, be selfish or lazy or arrogant or overly-analytical, and I am not hurting the universe. I can be free to have my flaws, try to change them, to fall flat on my face in failure and the universe doesn’t care. I can feel anything right now—-I can feel angry or sad or unattractive or pissy or bored—-and it matters so little to the rest of the world that how much can those feelings actually mean? And if they don’t mean all that much after all, how much power do they really have over me?
Look, guys, we don’t matter and that is awesome. Maybe when you realize how little your pain or failure really counts in the grand scheme of things, it gives you freedom, and maybe that freedom provides you with the potential to do something that actually does matter.
Maybe others might not see it that way, and of course there are times that call for meticulous thought and care, but I know I tend to take myself too seriously and that inhibits me from doing things and being things and investing in people, from taking risks and living my life. And I get tired of that, of being so careful and worrisome. There’s freedom and thrill right there for the taking; all I need to do is chill out. Stop overthinking everything. And know that if I do chill out and stop overthinking, it’s going to be ok. Really, it is. Cause it’s not as big of a deal as I’m making it.
Embracing that is easier said than done, but something I need to remember.
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Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Monday, August 12, 2013
State of Being
I’m staying awake these last few nights but I don’t know what I’m waiting for. I’m waiting for something to happen, I think, waiting for a forward step, for the stakes to be raised just a little more. How, I don’t know, but I feel I am on the edge of something. I listen again in my mind to some abstract subtleties and the shapes of big words going clunk clunk clunk on their way down my ear canal. Halfway down they are interpreted and I can only hope I construe them accurately. Sometimes I need things spelled out for me. Sometimes I misunderstand the words, sometimes I misread the context. Sometimes the combination of the two confuses me, and some times I am afraid to assume one thing over another.
If I were a letter and all the world some ancient alphabet, I would be that rune with five different, fragile meanings, defined not by itself but by the symbols that come before and after it. What do I mean? I don’t know, it depends on what you mean. You go first, then maybe I’ll be able to tell. I am something all my own and yet I am defined as well by my context. How is anything it’s own thing unless contrasted against it’s surroundings? Isn’t it context that establishes the relevance of anything? How could I possibly be defined without it? Would I exist apart from anything if everything was the same? I could be, certainly, but would I be anything in particular? So my context changes and thus what it means to be myself also changes, while simultaneously I stay exactly the same. Somehow they are separate, what it means to be, and the being itself. At least it seems so to me sometimes.
I fall into such musings because of some personal conundrums of mine. For example, it seems to me that who I am in essence exists differently within the context of my body than it might if it dwelt in a different body. While I believe in an integrated, whole-person philosophy, sometimes it seems that my body and I are separate entities tied together by unfortunate circumstances. I am lively, adventurous and active. I love to run and move and climb and explore; I love to see and do new things. But my body likes to sit inside, though, and frankly be rather boring. The two of us are often at war; we care about such different things. I care about people and relationships and experiences and understanding and involvement in the world. My body cares about rest and storing energy and avoiding the discomfort of fatigue and pain. We seem to be two different people grafted together in skin and bone and brainstem. We are conjoined twins with very different dreams, but we’d never survive the separation surgery. At times it feels as if we exist begrudgingly toward each other; a loveless marriage of body and soul. There are times when we get along and I feel free of its weight, but the separation is always there, a rift between us somewhere inside.
It makes me wonder, what is it that makes me? Am I what I feel I would be separate from my body, or am I the two of us combined? Is my true self a boisterous and fun-loving person because that is the way I was before my body made me more subdued, or has my true self become a more subdued person because that is how I have now been forced behave? Who am I, in essence: my “soul” alone, or an integrated combination of my physical self and immaterial self? I know this is somewhat of a classic question, but the contrast seems all the more bright to me. In theory I would say that an integrated body and soul makes one who they are (to put it very simply), but in practice it is difficult to apply the concept to myself, considering how very different I seem to feel from my body.
But we compromise, my body and I, and we do alright compared to many other body/soul relationships. We are dysfunctional, we admit, but we have seen worse. Many bodies are far more frustrating than my own, and in that way I am lucky. But I still wonder: does my body hide and suppress the “real me”, or has it become part of my true self? Can I exist apart from the context of my body? Or has that context become a defining feature of my true, essential self?
Answer me, all ye philosophers and seekers of meaning. Tell me who I am.
.
If I were a letter and all the world some ancient alphabet, I would be that rune with five different, fragile meanings, defined not by itself but by the symbols that come before and after it. What do I mean? I don’t know, it depends on what you mean. You go first, then maybe I’ll be able to tell. I am something all my own and yet I am defined as well by my context. How is anything it’s own thing unless contrasted against it’s surroundings? Isn’t it context that establishes the relevance of anything? How could I possibly be defined without it? Would I exist apart from anything if everything was the same? I could be, certainly, but would I be anything in particular? So my context changes and thus what it means to be myself also changes, while simultaneously I stay exactly the same. Somehow they are separate, what it means to be, and the being itself. At least it seems so to me sometimes.
I fall into such musings because of some personal conundrums of mine. For example, it seems to me that who I am in essence exists differently within the context of my body than it might if it dwelt in a different body. While I believe in an integrated, whole-person philosophy, sometimes it seems that my body and I are separate entities tied together by unfortunate circumstances. I am lively, adventurous and active. I love to run and move and climb and explore; I love to see and do new things. But my body likes to sit inside, though, and frankly be rather boring. The two of us are often at war; we care about such different things. I care about people and relationships and experiences and understanding and involvement in the world. My body cares about rest and storing energy and avoiding the discomfort of fatigue and pain. We seem to be two different people grafted together in skin and bone and brainstem. We are conjoined twins with very different dreams, but we’d never survive the separation surgery. At times it feels as if we exist begrudgingly toward each other; a loveless marriage of body and soul. There are times when we get along and I feel free of its weight, but the separation is always there, a rift between us somewhere inside.
It makes me wonder, what is it that makes me? Am I what I feel I would be separate from my body, or am I the two of us combined? Is my true self a boisterous and fun-loving person because that is the way I was before my body made me more subdued, or has my true self become a more subdued person because that is how I have now been forced behave? Who am I, in essence: my “soul” alone, or an integrated combination of my physical self and immaterial self? I know this is somewhat of a classic question, but the contrast seems all the more bright to me. In theory I would say that an integrated body and soul makes one who they are (to put it very simply), but in practice it is difficult to apply the concept to myself, considering how very different I seem to feel from my body.
But we compromise, my body and I, and we do alright compared to many other body/soul relationships. We are dysfunctional, we admit, but we have seen worse. Many bodies are far more frustrating than my own, and in that way I am lucky. But I still wonder: does my body hide and suppress the “real me”, or has it become part of my true self? Can I exist apart from the context of my body? Or has that context become a defining feature of my true, essential self?
Answer me, all ye philosophers and seekers of meaning. Tell me who I am.
.
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Let Them Eat Cake
Lately I’ve been wishing I was more philosophical; more intellectual. I’ve been thumbing through books that I hope will make me smarter; grasping at strands of abstract thought that I hope will give me answers so that I may give them to others. So that I may use them to be more sure of myself. I’ve been both drawn to and intimidated by those more intelligent than myself, hoping wide-eyed that I might steal in on the heels of one of them to become something of a shadow in their world. I listen furiously to what they say, even the things I don’t understand, trying at least to tuck some bit of information into a wrinkle in my brain. Surely I will absorb through osmosis whatever I immerse myself in? I can only hope.
Because sometimes I feel like I have exhausted every good thing in myself. Like I have nothing left to give the world, nothing left with which to impress. When I am out of creativity and light, I can only hope that the Creator will help me make something beautiful, help me to draw beauty to myself and reflect it back into the world like the glint of a broken mirror in the sun.
An eternal effort can be exhausting, but when I turn it over to the rhythm that the Master drums within me, the experience is rich and it is called life and I eat it up like chocolate cake. That isn’t to say it is easy, even after the letting-go bit is done. Chocolate cake isn’t just all the tasty stuff put together, you know. It’s mostly bland flour, really. There’s sour baking soda, there’s bitter cocoa, and the oven gets so miserably hot. It’s not all sugar and vanilla and comfort. As a child I was mortified to learn that there was salt in the cookies, but Mom said they made the cookies taste better so then I was ok with it, but it was still strange to me that not all the components in something so tasty were tasty by themselves. A five-year-old’s first lesson in “The whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts.”
But altogether cookies and cakes are delicious; I find that even the bad ones have some redeeming qualities. They’re being served at the party in the Now suite on the eighteenth floor of Mortality, and they’re for me; they’re for everyone. For all the would-be magicians and the planners of plans, dreamers of impractical dreams and the artists under the bridges with their cans of spray paint; spray-on anger, spray-on angst. You Picassos, you; you Michelangelos and you don’t even know you’ve made the overpass your Sistine Chapel. For the used-car salesmen and the sk8r punks; calling all the thumb-suckers and the overbearing mothers. Come you pseudo-scientists who love to experiment with the boundaries of life, calling all time-wasters and procrastinators. Calling all attention-addicts and all you nerds from your basements; calling all thrill-seekers and adrenaline junkies, all you hippies with unwashed hair. All the intellectuals and philosophers, creators and consumers, criminals and congressmen, ladies and gentlemen, tramps and gypsies. Calling everything I’ve ever wanted to be, everything I have ever been and everything I have tried desperately to avoid becoming, everything it has never occurred to me to be. There’s cake for you and cake for me, because every day is Eternity’s birthday and we’re invited.
Just so you know.
Because sometimes I feel like I have exhausted every good thing in myself. Like I have nothing left to give the world, nothing left with which to impress. When I am out of creativity and light, I can only hope that the Creator will help me make something beautiful, help me to draw beauty to myself and reflect it back into the world like the glint of a broken mirror in the sun.
An eternal effort can be exhausting, but when I turn it over to the rhythm that the Master drums within me, the experience is rich and it is called life and I eat it up like chocolate cake. That isn’t to say it is easy, even after the letting-go bit is done. Chocolate cake isn’t just all the tasty stuff put together, you know. It’s mostly bland flour, really. There’s sour baking soda, there’s bitter cocoa, and the oven gets so miserably hot. It’s not all sugar and vanilla and comfort. As a child I was mortified to learn that there was salt in the cookies, but Mom said they made the cookies taste better so then I was ok with it, but it was still strange to me that not all the components in something so tasty were tasty by themselves. A five-year-old’s first lesson in “The whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts.”
But altogether cookies and cakes are delicious; I find that even the bad ones have some redeeming qualities. They’re being served at the party in the Now suite on the eighteenth floor of Mortality, and they’re for me; they’re for everyone. For all the would-be magicians and the planners of plans, dreamers of impractical dreams and the artists under the bridges with their cans of spray paint; spray-on anger, spray-on angst. You Picassos, you; you Michelangelos and you don’t even know you’ve made the overpass your Sistine Chapel. For the used-car salesmen and the sk8r punks; calling all the thumb-suckers and the overbearing mothers. Come you pseudo-scientists who love to experiment with the boundaries of life, calling all time-wasters and procrastinators. Calling all attention-addicts and all you nerds from your basements; calling all thrill-seekers and adrenaline junkies, all you hippies with unwashed hair. All the intellectuals and philosophers, creators and consumers, criminals and congressmen, ladies and gentlemen, tramps and gypsies. Calling everything I’ve ever wanted to be, everything I have ever been and everything I have tried desperately to avoid becoming, everything it has never occurred to me to be. There’s cake for you and cake for me, because every day is Eternity’s birthday and we’re invited.
Just so you know.
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