Men say women are difficult and vice versa.
Truth is, people are difficult. There is no magic "soul mate fairy"
that comes riding on a gold stallion with wings to deliver in your lap the
perfect person just so you can be happy.
It takes work. It takes two people to constantly give. Each has to work to be
good, loving, kind, communicative, supportive, caring people. It takes
self-control not to flip out on another when you are angered. It takes
self-awareness to recognize what you need to work on inside your own self to be
a great partner and it takes self-respect to not allow yourself to be abused.
My point is life is about finding people you can tolerate, and those who can tolerate you. Find people that are different
than you are so you learn and grow, as well as those who are the same as you are in order to
feel camaraderie, and find people who act out of a place of love and most
importantly, self-love.
There is no such thing as perfection in humans. We are fallible creatures. We
are made this way for a purpose. We are meant to make mistakes and meant to
succeed and learn from both. By doing so, we pass that knowledge on.
Seek the simple. Seek those who view the world with open eyes, past human
faults, past innocent ingrained beliefs and ideals, and directly into the soul
for that is where breath is and breath sustains life.
I wonder when I will cease seeing into souls and stare at the world with
blinders on?
Hopefully, never.
Alas, this is the path of a seeker. It is one filled with immense beauty
and insufferable pain.
Being
"human" [according to Merriam-Webster] means "a human being, a
person as distinguished from an animal or an alien. Susceptible
to or representative of the sympathies and frailties of human nature."
In
our world, being "human" has taken on an entirely different meaning.
All
ranges
of emotion from love to happiness to sadness to frustration to anger to
darkness to bliss are experienced by humans. Somewhere along the lines,
the term
"human" has been associated with being "perfect."
Perfect attitude, hair, skin, nails, clothes, body, education, family,
career, skills, life,
travel, adventure, love, and pretty much everything that most humans
definitely
are not.
Many
times in life we over think. Our minds are powerful tools, ones we have
yet to fully study and understand. Some days you may feel perfectly in tune
with all of your choices and surroundings only to be feeling outcast,
outspoken, rude, pitiful and eventually, self-deprecating. I
know I am not the only one who goes through this. If you don't, then you are
lying, or quite possibly, not "human."
Although
such phases do not last long, for me, thankfully, they are unsettling because
when you over think, you disallow your instinct to be in control, you tend to
become off balance that spirals your rational thought along with your own energy,
into massive loops of confusion. You may not be confusing to others, or maybe
you are, I can only speak for myself, however, the most important aspect of
being off balance is in regards to how you feel about yourself.
When off balance, I tend to react to things I normally ignore and get upset over menial
things. This is typically not the "me" of today so I search:
"Why
do I feel this way? What caused me to start thinking like this? Why am I
feeling out of control?"
Ask
yourself, you have all of your answers.
One beautiful
aspect of existence and having people put by us for various reasons
is that during such times, often without saying a word, some without
ever meeting me, sense that something clearly is "not right"
simply by reading deeper into my words, my energy, my response and my
actions.
As human beings we all wish to be
acknowledged, loved and recognized and that is not an egotistical thing, it is
a basic need.
Rational
and healthy communication is crucial.
It
absolutely infuriates me [there I go being "human" again] when there
is improper communication because this starts a chain reaction of misunderstanding
that leads to "what if" negative self talk and thinking. In turn,
eventually, a guilt ridden, self-loathing [for those of us who are
"human'] after effect. This is absolutely foolish when you think about it.
[Think for a moment, really, this is not meant to be
deep.]
What
I learn from being allowed to be myself is that I need to
look inside of me every day and not blame another person for the way I feel.
After all, it is my own fault feeling as I do no matter what another said
to me, how one treated me, or the actions of another human being towards me.
I
am in control of myself and am responsible and accountable for my
behavior. I
ask myself: "Why
do you feel this way? What caused you to start thinking like this? Why do you feel out of control?" And
guess what? I answer me. *smile* Yet without the guidance of those who are reading this and reach out in various ways
to acknowledge me, as a fellow human being, I may not arrive so quickly to a conclusion.
I may ridiculously crucify myself for no apparent reason other than I
choose to. I
was
sitting on my couch watching a movie with my son, William, he is 15
years old
and I looked at him, I mean I really looked at who he is and I asked him
to please give me a hug. The smile on his face was so wide that I
began to smile too. He gladly and lovingly hugged me with all of his
might and
we did not let go, not just yet. I told him that without him in my life
that my
life would be horrible and I mean that, wholeheartedly. Hugging
my son was touching the divine. You
see, children are insightful and full of unconditional love, gifts we tend to lose as we grow older. In my own child, I felt bright, magnificent
light that illuminated me, and I wondered did he also feel that from me? At
that
moment, I realized my purpose, regardless of what interests me,
what my career is or is not, and who is or is not in my life. What
mattered and does matter was right there with my son. In seconds, every single
confusing thought disappeared. That
is the beauty of love. The divine essence of existence. The
fact that we are placed here for various reasons and most times, they are quite
simple. We make them complicated. I
realized how blessed I were then, although I have always been aware, yet
sometimes we forget in the busy-ness of life. Then everything around me was a
gift, the sunshine, nature, my home, my work, my friends, my family, the fact
that my limbs work and that I have the means to utilize technology to talk to
all of you right now. For today [and every day] I suggest something extremely simple. Do this right now. Look around you and find
your divine. It exists. You just may have your eyes closed at the moment. So,
take the time to work through whatever you are dealing with, just don't stay
there. And
always, simply, be human.
I sit in the dark quiet of my sanctuary, the place I come to write,
and am overcome by a stabbing inherent fear that books, like many of its
authors, shall one day become extinct.
This revelation came to me because I was forced to purchase a tape
cassette recorder to listen to a tape, and as I held it in my hand, found
myself thinking: I cannot believe I found one to buy. Think of LP’s. (Oh, how I miss LP’s.) There truly is nothing like an
album. Artwork, like tattoos, scrolled across the flaps of the cover and
on the inside. That’s when the band invited You inside of Their minds for an hour or two. (Then I wondered if I purchased a turntable, would I be able to find a needle to set beneath the arm?) Thank goodness for eBay, garage sales and used bookstores. You must take pride in being the owner of a used bookstore. A secret
society where members peruse old wooden shelving like mad Norsemen,
pillaging layers of books, blowing cobwebs from dusty covers, uncovering
a treasure or two. A book is the fruit of self. Knowledge unsurpassed. Everything I have learned has come mainly from books. Don’t get me wrong. I adore mainstream bookstores. As a rule, I live in them. Soak myself up in an overstuffed chair, an Italian Soda by my side, a
stack of books at my feet, music I have never heard before playing
overhead as I delve into Welsh Heritage, Kool-Aid Acid Trips, Nature,
Photography, Art and Poetry. When entering a bookstore, I bypass the front tables streamed with
discounts and deals. New authors with their third book published about
the exact same things they said in the first one. I head straight to the
back, where the literature is hiding. You can always tell they attempt to hide it. Ask someone working there exactly where the Lit section is and they point you toward… someplace… over… there. (In reality, they have no idea what Literature is.) Poetry
is the second section I visit, then on to biographies, music, art,
photography, and lastly, the horribly sad cart where tattered books lie
that nobody wants. The cart of misfits. It is here I always find a volume to keep. Maybe because I, myself, am a misfit and that’s okay. I like being different.
I am surrounded by books. They are best friends to me. A book is life itself breathing inside, waiting for you to discover an entirely new world created by another’s psyche.
How truly fascinating. An old book possesses something entirely different. They are my
favorites to own. I often wonder how many people cried, felt happiness,
pain, grief, love, enlightenment from handling this book now in my
possession. The corners are tattered a bit, sure, but this gives it persona. It tells you it doesn’t fuck around, man, and it is meant to be read because it has been read. Now it’s your turn to ride that steep climb up the first hill of a coaster. Get ready, the turn is coming; you can feel it now, can’t you? The existential drop of your belly as you lift from your seat and
remain airborne for a millisecond that lasts a lifetime, just to be
dropped straight downhill into an inferno that brings you around dark
corners, through forests, screaming wild and flipping pages as night
turns into day. This causes me to think of not only the books, but the writers
I pay homage to. Where have they all gone? Why is it that they are
noticed after their death, after their struggle, after their entire
lives have been a complete and utter hell interspersed with momentary
lapses of euphoric bliss? I use the word homage well, because they are all quite stone cold dead. (Ahh, but not in the pages. Within the pages, they survive. This is
their gift, the gift of any writer to the reader. Regeneration by pure
esoteric thought.) I think of Hemingway… poor Papa. No longer could he write, he could
not think after they strapped his brilliance to the electro shocks and
stripped him of his gift. It is no wonder he chose solace with one of
his prized shotguns. Kerouac. The thing with Jack is he saw so much fucking beauty,
traveled so far, ran with bums, slept in alleys, and walked in freezing
temperatures in order to feel life in his veins as his own blood. Jack set out on what he meant to do. Jack had a purpose, and when it was met, he was done. Tired. Down. Jack was beat. I could talk for hours on authors gone home, yet fear boring you right out of your mind. Besides, you really should be reading something of worth. Lawrence Ferlinghetti must be lonely.
“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to
live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same
time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn,
burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders
across the stars.”