Wednesday, April 4, 2012

A simple anecdote


What is a human life for?

It is for no other human to judge, not quality, nor quantity, nor any measure between, can justify the sieve of human consciousness through which a life must pass.
We are here simply because a force with no known controls directed the creation of our corporeal presence – and from the beginning we have no choice but to attempt an understanding of where our separation begins and ends. Identity to self as self or identity to the world as one of many, a sea of selves – all clamoring for specification that retains connection in some endless continuation of knowledge, of love, of desire for life, regardless of how the distinction is made – self or other self, or all that are, have been, and ever will be – where no separation can ever be made.

*******************************************************
I come by my curmudgeonliness honestly, and sometimes I fear genetically, too.  It simply can’t be helped. Perhaps George Bernard Shaw was really my father. That would suit me. I simply want to live life in full light, with no necessity for denial, no needful diminishment of horror any more than expression of joy, where all is equal, where all is integral, where nothing is feared, where nothing is fearful.

*****************************************************************************

What incubates, stays warm,
grows, remains silent.
We forget our awareness waxes and wanes like the moon.
We attend, something nags us, pulls at the edges.
Oh, how I would love to live in the numbness of prescribed routine.
Could I forget that it also has driven me to madness?
Is the constant vitality of pain a more potent force? Both are equal.
So the itch gets scratched and a new life bursts forth just as incomprehensible as the last.
Just as exhausting.
But where is there choice in that?
Choice is an illusion.
Eleanor Roosevelt was admirably aspirational – but ultimately, she got it all wrong.
Aspiration is not a substitute for courage.
Anyone can aspire not to allow one’s feelings to be lead astray by another.
Courage cannot be contained by conscious effort.
If it lives inside, it is only for others to see.
When noticed, we say:
“But I was just doing what I had to do.”
And so, of course, you were. That is why you can’t call necessity – courage.
For then you would have to call every day of your life—courage.