Love

The universe is what it is and while I might not really understand it, I do know that it cannot be anything more or less than that.

The laws of nature are unyielding. Certain things are necessities. Others are a choice. You can't change the first, but you can screw up the latter.

Be what you are and accept others for what they are. Not what you want them to be, or think they might be, and especially not just what you expect them to be. In any given moment love demands that you accept. Preferably without judgement, but if that is impossible at least acknowledge that it is what it is.

Less than that is not love.

It is fulfilling your own needs.

People don't want to believe that. They want to invent fairy tales about the people around them, make them grander than they are, or worse, but that's impossible. People are who they are.

Anything else is all in your head.

And I don't want to live in your head.

The good life

 

I am approaching what is surely the last twenty five years of my life and I find that staggering! Asking myself what I have learned about living, whether there is some profound lesson that has popped up and guided me after all these long years, this is what came to me.

Life is mostly what you make it.

We can't help some of the things we are dealt like genetic illnesses, or bone structure, or the color of our skin and eyes, but even these can be dealt with in different ways and that makes a difference.

Choosing to make the best of as many situations as possible leads to a much better life than choosing to wallow in the darkness. This is not quite the same thing as living for show, although that is a start. I think embracing my own deceptions and believing has gone a long way towards making me a happier person.

I choose to live my life as elegantly as I can contrive to make it. 

I don't want, or need, any scapegoats to blame for my shortcomings. They are mine as much as my abilities! Blaming God, or work, or the people next door for my problems doesn't solve anything and what I need for a good life are good solutions. Not excuses.

I do the best I can to eat right, sleep right, and do all those other things that help keep me healthy. I haven't always done that and I accept the consequences. I try to keep my mind open, clear thinking and curious. And then I just take what IS and deal with it the best I can, making my life as close to my fairy tale dream as I possibly can.

Eternal childhood

     

People invent gods to blame for their inadequacies. 

It is a way of justifying greed, jealousy, envy, bigotry, even grief. If I can blame the gods, or claim I am only doing their bidding then I am justified in doing almost anything.

Of course then it stands to reason that I cannot take credit for any achievements either. It is always god's will, or god's doing that made me who I am.

It is a way of living in eternal childhood. Never having to be responsible for my deepest decisions or feelings.

Terrifying to think of a world where childlike adults are running free and in positions of power. People acting on their basest impulses and sanctifying them in the name of God is a reality I would rather not face.

The Quest

 

The search for self is the longest and hardest search of all.

Hidden behind a veil of tears. 

Laden with a thousand trials.

More ephemeral than a dream.

More true than truth has any right to be.

The self is the most difficult of all things to find because it hides deep within me. 

Never far away, but always lingering on that edge that turns into nothing with a breath.

I seek it with fear and trembling.

Because I may find it and not recognize it.

Or not want to admit it is me.