Thursday, September 22, 2005

So about waking up


Waking up to life means appreciating it in all of its magnificence as well as its insignificance. Life is a gift. It seems possible that I never had to exist; that my mother if having never met my father might have then married another and birthed another, or may have never ended up giving birth at all. Actually, it seems there are an endless number of scenarios in which I, in fact, may have never been born. For each and every person on this earth there is nothing tangible but the present. We have no recollection of what happened before our birth and we certainly have no recollection of what will happen after our death. All we have is this gift of life. We have no real explanation for it, I mean we may have come accross the right explanation but we can't prove its correctness. We have tried; there are obviously a number of hypotheses. Yet, not one of these can be proved, and most can only be justified by faith. Faith is powerful but it is possible that it could fail us. To this degree we don't have much to go off of other than that which were given, or happened upon. Life.

It makes me feel sandwiched really. On one end of the spectrum, before my birth, there was nothing. Then there's me now, alive (the only thing I know). And then on the other end of the spectrum there is death, another void. I have maybe 80 or so years of this, barring any unforseen circumstances, and then it's over. This is the same for every person that has been born and is to be born. As far as we know, we only have this one life. We might have faith that we will be born again but like I said before; faith may fail us. That is reality. Even if reincarnation does happen to be a correct assumption about life, we don't remember our other lives and thus we still only have this one.

Existence is precious. To exist is phenomenal. It IS a once in a life time chance, pun intended. We don't know why we were given the chance to live only that we have it. The worst part is that we take life for granted. We shouldn't but we do. I believe that if we knew we were taking it for granted, we would think about not taking it for granted. Perhaps we would even wake up.

That is why this blogg is called wakeuptolive. Because everyone of us, myself included, owes it to themselves to wake up. It isn't easy. I don't claim to know exactly how to wake up, but I do believe that I'm figureing it out.

It begins with a paradox. Two thoughts, or in this case concepts, that we know should contradict but in fact do not. Freedom. Freedom can be defined as the condition of being free of contraints. Control is the opposite. Or at least we have been conditioned to believe that it is.

In America, and in most of the "free" world, we believe the human being should be allowed to do as he pleases; at least as long as he does so without harming another. We brake this rule all the time but it is still a sort of unspoken rule of humanity. The problem is that we often taken freedom for granted and we abuse it. I am speaking specifically of certain kind of freedom, personal freedom. To often we yes to ourselves. We hardly ever say no. For whatever reason, and I have my hypotheses, we always want to say yes to whatever desire presents it self in our minds. We want to eat that piece of cake even when we know the consequences. We don't want to volunteer (though there are those who go because they want to do something good) because we'd rather hang out with our friends or watch TV, even though we know what we should do; when the opportunity arises to have sex or to do drugs, we often want to say yes and do even though we know the consequences. "Yes" is abused and no is almost never used. If we do use no we use it for the wrong reasons, we use it because we think we should not because we believe we should, and there in lies the problem.

I'm tired, but I'm nowhere near finished. Until next time.

for life and for love

Friday, September 02, 2005

Shut me out


Why have a cared this much, for this many years? What do I have to show. Dare I reflect?

Love isn't an excuse for insanity it is insanity. It's got me in knots that are too tight for my bitten finger nails to penetrate. But this is love when it's rejected; when it's cornered, and then boxed in. I have no outlet. So I write this down in hopes of catharsis. To escape. To break these walls down. But I know I'll just wind up tired and I won't be able to clean up the mess. I'm already tired. I'm sick. The emotional kind. The kind that makes you lose your appetite even if you were hungry. And I know I'm a good sport but I still feel sligthly empty when I lose and completely empty when I never win. I start to question why I should show up to play. But I always do, and I always bring team drinks. I do it out of sincerity. Because I believe in the cause and in the dream. Because I wake up proud that I loved. Proud that my heart is larger than you could ever imagine. Proud that at least I know what love can be.

True love is robust. It pushes you forward, it makes you stronger than you could ever be alone. It scares you because you wonder what would happen if it were somehow taken for granted. And upon being taken for granted, if it were ignored. Would it then cease to breathe? Would you cease to breath? You wonder. And then you stop.

I have to walk away from this. I will teach myself not to hang onto your every word. Not to assume that because you don't want to see me today that it doesn't mean you don't want to see me. Friends are allowed to be busy. It's just that it hurts when busy seems to be used as an excuse. The worst excueses are those that use half truths as foundations. It's not honest and friends are honest.

So I tell myself to shut up as I feel shut out. To quiet my head. I can change. I am not static. I am free. I feel better. I love without regret.