The difference between living well and living poorly is easy to attain and impossible to retain. It is a moving, shifting, changing balance point between all of the extremes, created by the fundamental absurdity at the ground of reality: There Is No Steady State Of Being! "All we want is smooth and easy" (Ogi Overman). All we want is what we what. All we want is to have it made... And stay there. And keep it. And never lose it. And maintain unchanging just right, perfectly, completely/utterly/absolutely IT-- just as it is right now-- forever. Growing up is coming to terms with how things are and how they are not and never will be-- and living at the fulcrum, the tipping place, "the still point of the turning world" between all of the polarities in the world. There is caring and not caring. Find just the right amount of caring in each situation as it arises, and camp out there. There is loving and not loving, having and not having, wanting and not wanting, going and not going, doing and not doing, playing and not playing, your best and your worst, and on and on at the center point among all of the possibilities. Our trouble is that we care too much or not enough etc. in each situation as it arises. And "just right" is a floating bubble between the poles on the carpenter's level of life. Find that! Go there! Be IT! That's having it truly made! When things are not right in your life, it's an indication that you are off-center on one or more of the see-saws, of the tetter-totters, of the tilt-a-whirls, of life. Move to the center and you have it made!
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Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 