Renovations, when begun
Do not look like renovations.
Things stand displaced, disordered
There’s chaos…
Smoke and dust…
And everything looks like the debris
From destruction and loss.
However, it is the vision
Of what is to come
That allows us to not only
Live through the mess
But to also enjoy it!
My best friend questioned me
About my preferred mode
For staying in touch…
“Is it Facebook? Is it Instagram?”
“No… not really,” I replied
“Those are great for sharing your views
Or snippets from your day
Or some creative work that you’re doing…
I still like meeting one-on-one,” I replied
Well aware that it had been years
Since we had met and sat down and spoken.
I was suddenly acutely aware of the difference.
When you meet in person with someone
It’s about showing an interest in them.
When you’re on social media
The spotlight is only on you.
It’s about self-promotion, not connection.
It’s quite a travesty
How the design of modern life
With its work-for-survival culture
And its flawed rationale
That connectivity will strengthen connection
And its love for speed
(which it has renamed as ‘efficiency’)
Has robbed us of slowness and leisure
And has instead handed to us varnish and gloss
-Cosmeticised appearances of joy, beauty and success.
I miss the simplicity of the everyday
(Before it was conceived as a function
In the production of an ‘even better’ tomorrow)
It used to be content and self-fulfilled.
I’ve lost the ability to do nothing
I can’t recall the last time I allowed myself to daydream
Without feeling guilty for doing so.
In trying to be connected to everyone everywhere
I’m never truly with anyone, anywhere.
However, few things keep me grounded
Such as the memory of a slower time
When we stopped by or got together
For a one-on-one conversation
About nothing in particular.
A set architecture with walled spaces
Stairways and elevations, and paved pathways
With names and arrows for direction-
May serve as a design for order and ease;
But the human is a dreamer…and a seeker
And conveniences cannot take him to where he needs to be.
His heart soars when he’s inspired.
In the intensity of the present moment
Even time releases him- so that the fire in him
Can set aflame the fuel that lays silent, muted and wasted
All can be re-ignited, all can have their power restored
And the atmosphere can be uplifted from dreariness.
The human creates not because he can trade his creations
But simply because he CAN create…
And to do so Is to discover the divine impulse
By which one can recreate a world
Of possibilities and infinite directions
So that all paths can take you to the self you’re seeking.
Can the unreal ever be known?
Can the real ever be unknown?
Yet we confuse the unreal for the real
And believe to be true, our world of make-believe.
In it, we’re always striving for the illusory…the unreal…
While the real simply awaits our awakening.
Life is not complicated.
In fact, its simplicity frightens us.
Its nakedness makes us uncomfortable.
We dress it up in all sorts of fabrications.
We use the cosmetic to beautify the aesthetic
We routinely tell each other nothing is good enough.
We graduate in degrees of ignorance
Seeking trappings that can compensate for our misery.
And because we haven’t been educated to know
That happiness is what we bring; not something we ‘find’
We simply lack the sensibility it takes to see
And love, what stands in plain sight before us.
Knowing that your youth,
Your charisma and your confidence
Will eventually desert you…
And none will stay with you any longer
Than the first sign of your autumn…
And that friends and colleagues
Will also leave and go the way
Their dreams and desires take them.
Your neighbours will move…
Your neighbourhood will change…
And also that at some point
You will no longer be the right person
For the jobs that you have done
Day after day, week after week,
Year after year…
And your child now taller
In every sense…
Capable and young and free
Will someday soon, start seeing you
As her added responsibility…
Why then is this desire
To see yet another tomorrow?
To live yet another day?
What is its want?
Why does it remain obscure and voiceless?
If not for the fulfilment of desire
Why else should life beckon?
What must we learn from sorrow?
In living our lives when do we come to ask:
“For what is this life?”
For it cannot just be to foolishly chase
One more pleasure, or one more goal
When our experience shows us
That we live but in a world of appearances,
And make-believe and temporariness.
What is that ultimate hope
That we all cling to?
What is that permanence
That we feverishly seek?
Of what purpose is our inevitable disappointment?
I have no answers
But I have my restlessness
And an impatience and a disdain
For what we celebrate as meaning and success…
A delusional system of thought celebrating itself.
Time is our conveyor
But to what must we arrive?
Something within me wishes for another chance…
A chance to re-arrive to this moment
Free of an accumulated self.
Perhaps what we’re living for
Is not continuation;
It is the persistence to be free
Of who we’ve come to be
A liberation from the cage of the mind.
There are only five abilities you need to cultivate in order to live your life well:
1. The heart and intelligence to meaningfully support another.
2. A deep reserve of love to create possibility, energy, emotion and harmony, artfully.
3. The humility and faith to stay committed to your present.
4. The good taste to enjoy the simple things in life.
5. The self-confidence to remain internally free- free of fear, need, desire and regret.
The fifth is the outcome of the first four abilities.
Wanting to do something…
A search for meaning
And purpose and fulfilment
Or simply the desire for thrill and excitement
– Can all be traced to boredom.
Our being seeks purpose in doing.
When all of our doing
Progressively reveals to us
The utter futility of all our endeavours
Where things remain… not better, not worse…
We begin to look at life more inquiringly.
Life is the fount of eternal youth.
Each moment is a fresh possibility
In between your memory and desire
There is a silent and divine space
You’ve often sought this space
Like you do a shrine…
For quiet and peaceful reflection.
Your boredom was blindness
You could not see the necessity of nothingness.
Your boredom was ignorance
As your awareness was in a state of deep sleep
Your boredom was also the inertia
By which you moved towards your north star
Your boredom is your home
The sanctuary that you return to
When you’re exhausted chasing your dreams
Your boredom is what allows you
To keep things real.
What you were escaping from, is what you’ll end up escaping to.
When do our lives end?
Never.
They continue.
Death is not an end to life.
Death is the end of a form…
An entity… an identity…
Life is eternal.
It does not cease to be.
It ever renews.
An end only marks a new beginning
A new cycle of angst and small escapisms
Death is not a freedom
From sorrow… from misery… from conflict.
Freedom belongs to the realm of life.
It must be sought here and now
Not merely by way of vote, revolt or a bloody war
But through a life of surrender and devotion
To the altar of a higher realization.
This realization is an internal independence
From all that is external to us.
And is a firm awareness
Of what is intrinsic to ourselves.
The intrinsic is life.
The extrinsic is manifestation.
Freedom is not the end of undesirable circumstances.
Freedom is liberation from the very desire to be free.
The true end is that which is free of a new beginning.
We were living in a virtual reality
Long before we conceptualized it
As technology; and began to create
‘New uses’ for what was essentially
A flaw; and a limited self-awareness.
It takes us a lifetime (or many)
To seek and apprehend the truth.
It can also take a lifetime
(Or the equivalent of many)
To consume insatiably; just to fill in
The void of our ‘not knowing’.
We stand at the fork
Of two paths today:
One- the way of promises, things and feel-good distractions
On that path, we reconstruct our reality
And in doing so, make perceptible the contrast
Between the real and the created.
We applaud ourselves on this accomplishment.
The other path is devoid of a void.
It is what it is; you are what you are
It feels no need to respond and reciprocate
It makes no promises.
Postmodernism is a mirror
That will show you whatever you anticipate seeing.
It will sing for you the songs you wish to hear
It will set the stage and the actors
For the angst you believe you ought to be feeling
And create for you the struggles
You romanticize yourself battling with.
Our need today, is a freedom
From our own wants
Our need today, is a freedom from the cycle
Of creating solutions for self-created problems.
Our need today, is a freedom
From our own creativity.
Wit. Wisdom. Wonder... 