August 27, 2021

01

Show of hands!
Raise your hand if you hate your job
and your life.
Look to see if your hand is up.
If it isn't,
you are in denial,
and possibly high.

The world is in the state it is in
because people hate their job
and their life.
And are taking it out on one another.

Who do you hate?
You are taking it out on them.
You hate your job and your life,
but that truth is too much to bear,
so you hate Republicans
or Democrats,
and experience the release/relief
of being able to express your hatred
at a safe target.

We have enemies to hate
because we cannot bear the weight
of the truth
of hating our own life.

Look at anybody who has enemies,
the Taliban, ISIS, Fascists, Nazis...
and look at their lives.
They all have lives no one would have.
They can't bear the truth of their own lives,
so they project all that hatred outward
on some innocent, unsuspecting, enemy
who just wants what everybody else wants,
a life they can be happy with and proud to live.

They kill women and children
for wanting a better life,
unable, as they are, to admit that 
they,too, want a better life,
and don't know how to have one.

They think getting rid of everyone
who doesn't think like they do
will solve their problems, 
and they can then settle into 
loving their life at last.

Which is delusional,
because they will still hate their life
and have to find someone to take it out on,
so it will be like ISIS and the Taliban.
They will hate each other,
and the beat(ing up on their enemies) goes on.

We need a way out of the vicious cycle.
It's easy and it is difficult.
We have to bear our own pain
consciously, mindfully, willfully, deliberately.

We have to square up with,
come to terms with,
face up to regularly
how we feel about our life (and our job).
This is the Final Solution.

We have to sit down with
and face up to
how it is with us
daily.

"This is how it is,
and this is what I can do about it,
and that's that!
And that is how it really is."

We have to bear the pain of THAT
realization.

This is called "Growing Up."

Everybody who has ever "Grown Up"
knows that there is no steady state 
of being called "Grown Up."

It is always a fluid, moving,
changing, shifting, fluctuating 
transitioning mode of becoming
called "Growing Up."

We are always Growing Up.
Or not.
Or refusing to.
Or having nothing to do with it.
With bearing the pain of how things are
on a daily basis.

This is the agony of the Hero's Journey.
It is never done.
We return home and no one wants to hear
what we have to say.

I tell you we have to grow up
and you don't want to hear it,
and I have to bear the pain
of rejection every day.

We all have to bear the pain
of the truth of our life
every day
or not.

And no one can do it for us.
Growing up is an inside job.
We have to face the truth of
"This is how it is,
and this is what I can do about it,
and that's that!
And that is how it really is."

How well we are able to do that
tells the tale.

How well we refuse to do that
tells a different tale.

Which tale are we going to tell
with the life that remains to be lived?

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