Guest Blog - by Andrew
The following is a post by my friend Andrew who lives in Minneapolis. He is a wise fellow and a great friend. Read on.August 29, 2005
My birthday was yesterday and now I am 27 years old. Martin Luther King orated his famous "I have a dream" speech on August 28, 1963. 27 is the age when rock stars die. 27 is the amount of time Nelson Mandela spent in prison. Now that I have reached my late twenties, what am I supposed to be doing? Planning a future, raising a family, focusing on the materialistic and banal world and saying adieu to my youth, that childish and ephemeral ghost whispering ghastly temptations in my ear. Why must I continue to grow older, why must the earth constantly spin, who started this unending forward progress which I so love and abhor? Why can't everything stop moving, stop descending into death, stop this terrible tarantula with Sir Entropy? Even mountains are worn down by the wind, the rain, the ice, the lichen, fires, rodents, campers, four stroke engines attached to wheels, madness, god, and Buddha's farts. What chance do I have, a mere mortal, a pathetic squishy mammal trudging along in a mindless stupor, gaping at rocks and trees, stuffing beans and tortillas into my mouth with relish and joy? None, I tell you, and I as well as everyone, every thing, will eventually dissolve into nothingness. Nothingness is nothing but a word, and as such, gives itself meaning by simply being. As an experience, though, nothingness is as full as the universe and some would rather call it everythingness, so as to explain the concept within a more positive context. But I digress.
What am I to do? I look around at friends, family, co-workers, bosses, random strangers, the waiter at the Longfellow Grill, a baby in a stroller, the river, the sky, and I see laziness and productivity, happiness and lethargy, sadness and resolution, in one word: the gamut. Some have a million dollars and yet never stop working at a job they dislike, because what else would they be doing? Some have a comfortable job and house and spend time doing things they love and like, because that seems to be the best way to do things, almost following Buddha's Eightfold Path which the bible ripped off as the Ten Commandments. Who needs commandments anyways? If God gave us brains, I suppose he would want us to use them? Evidently though, we are God's playthings, our ultimate fates determined by our action, inaction, or reaction to the swirling maelstrom of events that happen seemingly at random around us. Some have little money, yet manage to have a full life, travel, see the world, and obtain education in many things. People seem to use the bible or Buddha or veganism or sailboating or climbing the corporate ladder or climbing the granite dihedral or growing vegetables or dressing nicely or working out as their basis for happiness, and thusly creating from a hobby, activity, or creed something resembling a personal religion. I don't want religion.
All I want is freedom.
What the hell is freedom? Having nothing, being nowhere, or having everything, being everywhere? "Good Lord, Andrew, " you might be saying, "life is not so bipolar, not so diametric." True enough. But my point is how do you determine your personal direction, where is the frickin' Yellow Brick Road, and why am I such an amalgam of the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, and the Tin Man? Yeah, at least I crushed a witch and all the Munchkins are singing to me, but for chrissake's why is everything in so much color when I'm used to it being black and white?
I have talents and skills. Even a squirrel has talents and skills. In the ways of the this particular world I haven't achieved any substantial or minute material success in particular. But who's to say that on another planet or dimension I might not have reached the absolute plateau of mammalian existence, for although I do not have material wealth I know I have attained some spiritual wealth. What is spirit worth by the pound, in dollars? Forty two cents per? It's worth nothing in America, unless you have a church, a TV show, and a bunch of lackey sycophant followers. Give me twenty dollars and I will save your soul, heal your ills, and send you a spiritually enriching personally engraved keychain! Hallelujah!
No, I think freedom is being happy with where you are, what you are doing, and who you are doing it with no matter what. Intently content. Aggressively blissful. Forcefully fluid. I believe the knowledge that we are all on a journey in consciousness from a beginning point to an end point hinders freedom, but there is nothing to say and no one saying that you can't hug your friend, kiss you lover, jump up and down, sing "Oklahoma" at the top of your lungs, meditate, take a walk/swim/bike ride, canoe to the Gulf of Mexico, drink a fresh cup of organic and fair traded coffee, smell the flowers, throw a tomato at the wall, or consummate a tryst with bar of chocolate right now. All there is the Now, and the future Nows, of course, and the past Nows. ThatÂs all I've learned in 27 years of life, that I exist right Now and so do you and so do my cherry tomato plants and so does an Iraqi child and so does an Orca whale deep in the cold Juan de Fuca Strait and so does the computer programmer creating a malicious virus that will download my account information and destroy my computer (bastard). If that sounds like Zen pagan idol-worshipping madness, excuse me. I meant it to sound more like a Taoist mantra as chanted by a naked Mermaid in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But in any case, the Now is the Tao is the Zen is your Friends in the Trees in the Breeze and all that. So enjoy your day.
That's all I wanted to say this year. Hopefully my karma, and yours, is balanced and ready for some major changes toward the good stuff. I need a flash of Pan in the woods, I need emptiness on the shore by the lapping of the waves, a need to smell cedars and deer poop and mushrooms and pine trees. I need to play Go at midnight via candlelight. Happily I will do that next weekend, sans any unfortunate tragedies.
Happiness and Peace,
Andrew French
My birthday was yesterday and now I am 27 years old. Martin Luther King orated his famous "I have a dream" speech on August 28, 1963. 27 is the age when rock stars die. 27 is the amount of time Nelson Mandela spent in prison. Now that I have reached my late twenties, what am I supposed to be doing? Planning a future, raising a family, focusing on the materialistic and banal world and saying adieu to my youth, that childish and ephemeral ghost whispering ghastly temptations in my ear. Why must I continue to grow older, why must the earth constantly spin, who started this unending forward progress which I so love and abhor? Why can't everything stop moving, stop descending into death, stop this terrible tarantula with Sir Entropy? Even mountains are worn down by the wind, the rain, the ice, the lichen, fires, rodents, campers, four stroke engines attached to wheels, madness, god, and Buddha's farts. What chance do I have, a mere mortal, a pathetic squishy mammal trudging along in a mindless stupor, gaping at rocks and trees, stuffing beans and tortillas into my mouth with relish and joy? None, I tell you, and I as well as everyone, every thing, will eventually dissolve into nothingness. Nothingness is nothing but a word, and as such, gives itself meaning by simply being. As an experience, though, nothingness is as full as the universe and some would rather call it everythingness, so as to explain the concept within a more positive context. But I digress.
What am I to do? I look around at friends, family, co-workers, bosses, random strangers, the waiter at the Longfellow Grill, a baby in a stroller, the river, the sky, and I see laziness and productivity, happiness and lethargy, sadness and resolution, in one word: the gamut. Some have a million dollars and yet never stop working at a job they dislike, because what else would they be doing? Some have a comfortable job and house and spend time doing things they love and like, because that seems to be the best way to do things, almost following Buddha's Eightfold Path which the bible ripped off as the Ten Commandments. Who needs commandments anyways? If God gave us brains, I suppose he would want us to use them? Evidently though, we are God's playthings, our ultimate fates determined by our action, inaction, or reaction to the swirling maelstrom of events that happen seemingly at random around us. Some have little money, yet manage to have a full life, travel, see the world, and obtain education in many things. People seem to use the bible or Buddha or veganism or sailboating or climbing the corporate ladder or climbing the granite dihedral or growing vegetables or dressing nicely or working out as their basis for happiness, and thusly creating from a hobby, activity, or creed something resembling a personal religion. I don't want religion.
All I want is freedom.
What the hell is freedom? Having nothing, being nowhere, or having everything, being everywhere? "Good Lord, Andrew, " you might be saying, "life is not so bipolar, not so diametric." True enough. But my point is how do you determine your personal direction, where is the frickin' Yellow Brick Road, and why am I such an amalgam of the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, and the Tin Man? Yeah, at least I crushed a witch and all the Munchkins are singing to me, but for chrissake's why is everything in so much color when I'm used to it being black and white?
I have talents and skills. Even a squirrel has talents and skills. In the ways of the this particular world I haven't achieved any substantial or minute material success in particular. But who's to say that on another planet or dimension I might not have reached the absolute plateau of mammalian existence, for although I do not have material wealth I know I have attained some spiritual wealth. What is spirit worth by the pound, in dollars? Forty two cents per? It's worth nothing in America, unless you have a church, a TV show, and a bunch of lackey sycophant followers. Give me twenty dollars and I will save your soul, heal your ills, and send you a spiritually enriching personally engraved keychain! Hallelujah!
No, I think freedom is being happy with where you are, what you are doing, and who you are doing it with no matter what. Intently content. Aggressively blissful. Forcefully fluid. I believe the knowledge that we are all on a journey in consciousness from a beginning point to an end point hinders freedom, but there is nothing to say and no one saying that you can't hug your friend, kiss you lover, jump up and down, sing "Oklahoma" at the top of your lungs, meditate, take a walk/swim/bike ride, canoe to the Gulf of Mexico, drink a fresh cup of organic and fair traded coffee, smell the flowers, throw a tomato at the wall, or consummate a tryst with bar of chocolate right now. All there is the Now, and the future Nows, of course, and the past Nows. ThatÂs all I've learned in 27 years of life, that I exist right Now and so do you and so do my cherry tomato plants and so does an Iraqi child and so does an Orca whale deep in the cold Juan de Fuca Strait and so does the computer programmer creating a malicious virus that will download my account information and destroy my computer (bastard). If that sounds like Zen pagan idol-worshipping madness, excuse me. I meant it to sound more like a Taoist mantra as chanted by a naked Mermaid in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But in any case, the Now is the Tao is the Zen is your Friends in the Trees in the Breeze and all that. So enjoy your day.
That's all I wanted to say this year. Hopefully my karma, and yours, is balanced and ready for some major changes toward the good stuff. I need a flash of Pan in the woods, I need emptiness on the shore by the lapping of the waves, a need to smell cedars and deer poop and mushrooms and pine trees. I need to play Go at midnight via candlelight. Happily I will do that next weekend, sans any unfortunate tragedies.
Happiness and Peace,
Andrew French
JB aka JayBee created this post at 7:47 PM.
