March 03, 2021

03

We are looking for what?
What would it take to be 
satisfied and content?

What person, living or dead,
actual or fictional,
is your ideal of having lived
the way you would like to live?
So that, at the end,
you could be proud
of the life you lived?

Keep that person before you
as you step into your day,
and into each situation as it arises
in each day.
How would that person do it?
Do your life?
In this set of circumstances?
Here and now?
Do it like that!

Become the actress/actor
playing the role of that person
in the life you are living.
Do your best imitation
of the person throughout your day.

See what shifts for you,
what changes,
what transformations come about--
either in your life
or in your demeanor.
How are things different
in your life as the other person?

Changing our relationship with our life
can be life changing.
Because nothing changes
until we do.

–0–

02

Being in the moment 
is the hardest thing to do,
the hardest thing to be.

We are just passing through
here and now
on our way to somewhere else.
And, when we get there,
it will then be here, now,
and we will be on our way
to somewhere else.

Always going.
Never being where we are,
when we are.

Always impatient.
Always bored.
Always pining for better.
Anywhere but here.
Anything but this.

What can I say to change things?
I can only hope to say
what I see,
and to see what is there,
which is here, now.
Beyond that, the forces
of fate and destiny
are at play in the world.
"And the beat goes on"
(Sonny Bono).

In the meantime,
there is this moment,
and we can sit with it,
dance with it,
rush through it,
ignore it,
watch it
closely
to see 
exactly
when
now
becomes 
then,
and 
discover
for ourselves
that now
never ends.

It is always now.

It is here that is always changing.

And both are always calling for something.

Asking something of us.

What is it, here and now?

How can we help?

What does here and now need
from us?

What will we do about that?

Every moment comes down to this.

What will we do?

Here, now?

–0–

01

Things are the way they are
because it is easier that way.

Nature's course tends to be 
the course of least resistance.

Why waste energy?

Inertia is the tendency
of a body in motion
to remain in motion,
and of a body at rest 
to remain at rest.

Momentum is a function
of mass and velocity,
friction and slope.

Change happens over time
in response to its environment,
and in relation to its 
immediate surroundings.

How different we can be depends
on factors approaching infinity--
but, our tendency is 
to not be different at all.
And, our preferences strongly
impact our performance.

Put all of this together
and that is why
things are as they are.

It is easier that way.

The energy required to change
has to come from somewhere.
What is our motivation?
Alcoholics generally require
a near-death experience
to pop out of alcoholism
into "I'm Jim and I'm an alcoholic."

We are all alcoholics
on some level,
to some degree,
in some sense.
It takes a lot of effort
to exchange our way for The Way.
Why bother?
What's in it for us?
Who cares?
What do we care?
Things are fine just as they are.

And that is why things are as they are.

It is going to take a lot
for them to be different.

The Tao can only wait.
And let the dead bury the dead.
As nearly dying does what it can
to wake up those who can be waked up
while there is still time left for living.