Sunday, October 21, 2007

Paddling Upstream

I was never the type who gets stumped on anything, but perhaps it is a reflection of my patterns of reaction that it took me quite a while to figure out one of the last questions in The Secret, that book that shakes up pretty much everything about my life. The question was What is your joy?

And it was rather difficult for me, because I was brought up to think life was hard, and that success means lots of suffering, otherwise you won't deserve it. So I spent the better half of the evening thinking what exactly it is that brings me joy. And then I realized they are really simple things, some costing nothing at all:
  • being in peaceful places with trees and grass
  • watching thought-provoking movies
  • reading books
  • writing stories
  • telling people they'll be okay
It is so important to me right now to seek out these things, because for the longest time I thought it wasn't allowed. I won't break your mind trying to explain it but I heard somewhere of this really cool metaphor about how most of people's lives right now are like having your hands over a burning stove and how there are truly wise people who will tell you to take your hands off the stove, but you reason out that your mother and your mother's mother and your father and your father's father all had their hands on the stove anyway so what sense does it make to take your hands off the stove? But will you not feel relief, they say. And you say, maybe, but this is how they taught me to live my life. And so you keep your hands on the stove for the rest of your life.

When really, all it takes to enjoy life is to take it easy. Nobody's after you.
Mood: crazy happy

1 comment:

Unknown said...

amen to nobody's after anyone. most of the time it's our past that let's us haunt us, fucking up the oh so beautiful now.