Redux...

It seems everybody has a "way" that they think is best. It guides how they live, how they work, how they create, how they govern, and so on. Go to your nearest source of books and you will wallow in titles that offer to guide, improve, or impress you with their ease of application or time-saving capabilities.

I even offer any news channel to provide the same insight. This country criticizing another for not feeding their children; or this country enriching uranium for "peaceable purposes"; or even wars over ideology- religious or otherwise. Everybody is always trying to tell somebody else how to do something better.

At the moment I write this, I am also in a position to guide, mold, or amend my own daughter as she makes her way in the world. My friends balk at my parenting skills. They suggest that I need to "take care of her" and then lambaste me in the most judgmental way when I say, "She's an adult now, she'll figure it out." She is only one example of how I can and sometimes do offer guidance and direction from my own experience. Whether that is accepted is entirely up to her.

However, I woke this morning asking myself, "What makes you so fucking special?" I am a great big nobody in the grand scheme of things and yet it seems my opinion, insight, and life experience seems to be worth something to somebody else. Why is that? Don't we all go through pretty much the same shit in life but in different ways? My lessons aren't your lessons. My pain is not your pain. My heartache is not your heartache. My life is not your life.

Or is it.....???

You can see from nature that in order for all life to exist, a sense of connectedness or symbiosis must occur. Mosquitos may irritate us to no end, but destroy all of them and millions of birds, spiders, and bats would go hungry tonight. Bees and wasps sting us, but swat them extinct and flowers, trees, and plants would cease to replicate and thrive. This years beautiful leaves will die and become the duff on the forest floor for mushrooms, worms and the like.

In all cycles of life and love, there is this joining of fates; this...."with-ness".....that enables all of us to be apart of everything else around us. For example, I don't like olives. So when I am at a restaurant where they inadvertently put some on my plate (damn them), I am able to share this little morsel of evil with somebody who finds them divine. Because as we all know, the relationship with olives is love them or hate them.

We are together in this universe whether we like it or not. All we have to do is decide, make the conscience decision to be a bigger or smaller part of it all. That is the choice we have; opting out is not an option. It matters little to me that you have had a hard life. It matters little to me that you were hooked on drugs. It matters little to me that to want for nothing. Your success is always going to be someone else's failure. For there to be life, there must first be death.....and so the cycle continues.

What matters to me is how you choose to connect yourself to the rest of the world in order to make it a better place for those around you. What will you do today? How will you live your life? What ripples will you make in the world? Good? Bad? Indifferent? That is entirely up to you. Yet to do nothing is not an option, because your very existence is dependent on others....just as they are depending on you.

Now go be exceptional....just like everybody else.

Why am I awake?

I couldn't sleep, so I got to thinking.....or was it the other way around? Either way, I had a few thoughts about why I was not sleeping.

There is so much literature and research on the benefits of proper sleep, but little is said about the why of sleeping. Why do we sleep? The physiological purpose of sleep is to allow the body to rest, regenerate, and recuperate from the punishment we do to our bodies, minds, souls while we are awake.

Then I asked myself; Why am I awake? My mind made its own Cesaer salad (with real anchovy dressing) at the thought of this. It wasn't that I had something pressing on my mind, I just couldn't quiet it down long enough to let the rest of me to nod off to snoozeville. Then it hit me on a bigger level.

Why am I really awake?

The answer came down to something very, very simple. This may come as a surprise to you, but the only physiological purpose for the human body to be awake is to consume enough food in order for it to continue living. That's right...if you did nothing but wake from your restful slumber in order to consume the requisite calories that your body NEEDS to survive, then your work for the day is complete. OK, there is the other hierarchy of "needs" of food, safety, shelter (thank you Mr. Maslow for stating the bloody obvious), but look at what is right at the top; food.

What you do with the other 23 hours and 40 minutes is why we sleep.

I hear people say, there isn't enough time to do ____. (I can't find the time to exercise, talk to my family, mow the lawn, play with my kids, etc.) I have also heard the excuse that there aren't enough hours in the day to do ____. We each find our own reasons to fill in the gaps as to what we do and do not have time for. We try to cram the highest level of productivity into our time allowed being awake. Without realizing that it impinges on giving our bodies the chance to recover from the damage we do during that time. We go and go and go until we can do nothing but stop from exhaustion. We drive ourselves to that point mentally, physically and spiritually because we think that makes us accomplish more. When in fact, we can fulfill our obligations to our awake time in just 20 minutes of eating. After that, we could very well go back to bed.

I felt comforted by these thoughts. I know that this is not the be-all, end-all of this issue and maybe it does over-simplify things a bit. But considering the amount of effort we go to to complicate our lives, don't you think it is time for a bit more simplicity?

How to be dead

I don't understand a prevailing theme I see in films these days. It is the drama or such that hammers home how bad we should all feel if we find ourselves alone when we die.

Let me set this straight; unless you know exactly the moment you are going to die, you are going to die alone. There, I've said it. I see it as incredibly selfish of a person who insists on people being near them when they die. The themes I see is that they are afraid of dying, afraid of being alone, want loved ones around them, etc, etc, etc. I have no intention of bestowing the burdon of my imminent demise so that it can be carried on like a blood stain on your favourite shirt.

I say that the goal is to live well while you are alive. Cultivate those relationships that mean something to you. Be good to yourself. Be good to others. Seize every moment you can out of this short existence. But when you are done, just go crawl into a hole and be done with it.

Sort out your fears before you die. Resolve anything left undone before you even go to bed tonight. Do it. You will sleep better, you will live better, you will die better. If you did not wake up in the morning, would you be satisfied with your life as you left it? If not, then you either die alone, die unhappy, or you better sort your shit out and sort it out fast. No regrets. Nothing left undone. No burdon for those left behind. Live with abandon, leave with dignity.

It's not really funny...

I used to get humour from my own random wanderings of thought. I used to enjoy trying to find ways to express those thoughts. I used to have ways....motivation, outlets, templates of potential.

I used to laugh for no reason, and really thought it was funny. Now I find myself laughing if only to keep from crying.

This may sound like a pool of pity, but instead it is more hopeful than that. It seems I have found that proverbial plateau that I have been looking for since I kicked my drug habit. OK...not so melodramatic....I am talking about the serum for melancholy that has been coursing through my system for the past...mmmm....12+ years.

I have found my balance. My creative surges offset by my mind-numbing droll loll have found their even keel. I found myself taking some pictures last week that I actually liked. I have found my honest voice that still retains its effervescent sarcasm tinged with the smile of a cynic without malice. You may say that this sounds like the old drug addled me, but now I don't feel bad about it. I have come to accept that the person I have been suppressing is the person I really am...minus the guilt for being so.

Now I don't have an excuse for not being my true self....and that's not really funny.

Another Renewal

I don't know what brings me back. It is a sense of guilt for not staying true to myself for continuing to work with the outlet I have given myself to open up, share, and be honest with myself; regards of who is reading. Notice I don't use the "tracker tool" on this blog I don't care if anyone ever reads this. It is time to stay true to myself.

I am stuck in self-perpetuated limbo. I know this because I want to make a drastic change in my life. I can feel it. That sense of not openly receiving the joy that others offer so selflessly. The crime of indecision hiding behind brutal honesty. The longing for those things I used to have but do not any longer. Sometimes it comes in a song. Today it was "Come On Get Higher" by Matt Nathanson.

"I miss the sound of your voice.

I miss the rush of your skin.

I miss the still of your silence as you breathe out and I breathe in.

If I could walk on water, if I could tell you what's next.

Make you believe, make you forget.

So, come get high and loosen your lips.

Faith and desire and the swing of your hips.

Just pull me down hard and drown me in love."

You know who you are. You have been in my mind today; making me want to reach back to a very dark place and attempt to believe that I could shed some light onto something doomed from the start.

....and to think that I believe this to be a positive transformation for me.

Redact

Sorry, I just didn't like this video anymore. Puppies rolling over can only be cute for so long before you just want them to get up and go away.

Virtue or Vice?

This picture came from the collection of Two Blocks Square yesterday and I just wanted to say... I am proud of this 40 year old body.

This may be vanity or pride, but that is the cross I bear.