Monday, November 28, 2011

idk ~vs~ ikr


Someone once told me there were always signs – signs that would have guided me had I paid attention. I gave them the “yeah, yeah” nod and smile I often offer when I’m not totally convinced that what I’m being told is actual and factual (isn’t that a song? J). But then, as is always the case when presented information I hadn’t previously known or considered, I mull it over, toss it around in my mind, seek validity if I feel its warranted and eventually reach a conclusion.

And to further augment the validity (or lack thereof) of this idea, I stretched it out to cover different aspects of my life, for research can’t be singular or biased if you want to reach a solid answer. If signs worked here, they should also work there and everywhere.

So it was that I set about paying attention to all the little things I had previously ignored, or so it seemed, during my days. Now mind you, I didn’t overindulge in this latest mind bending caper of mine (I have too many other things brewing to pay too much attention to any one thing to be honest), but I did take note when something happened that might give me a push in a particular direction or offer an answer to a question I might have bouncing around in my head.

I took four separate scenarios, as to not overwhelm myself with “everything” and looked for whatever might guide me to take (or not take) the particular path these scenarios lived on. I wasn’t looking for conclusions or definitive answers (those will happen with or without signs); no, I was just looking for signs…

I didn’t write any of it down so I can’t give you any hard numbers, but I discovered that yes, there are signs. If you look hard enough, you see them everywhere (and if you look really, really hard you’ll eventually get sucked into a labyrinth of signs and become a crazed conspiracy theorist or the like). But then I had to further consider that these signs only began to appear because I was looking for them, which seemed conceivable, since the mind is truly capable of anything.

So I stopped looking, but rather just kept an eye open for any small oddities that might occur. And I’ll be damned if they weren’t still there. Not as bright or as often as when I was specifically looking, but there nonetheless.  So okay, yes, life has signs. Whether we listen to them or not is what determines the paths we choose to take along the way.

Now…I can further indulge my whimsical thoughts here and tell you that in all probability it doesn’t really matter whether we listen or not – we end up where we end up. No matter the choices we make, our life will be guided on the course we set for it, and though the scenery and the characters might have altered depending on the path we chose, we will ultimately be where we were meant to be…

…for where we are meant to be is totally dependent on who we are…


Thursday, November 24, 2011

A Notion


It was effortless on her part to see life’s game as timeless. She was left breathless at how ageless her moves were on its board. Somehow it made her blameless for her part and gave her limitless possibilities for her future. She suddenly felt weightless in her body and painless in her mind.

Yes, she thought, sometimes less is more.   

Friday, November 18, 2011

That Thing


Happiness isn’t a place, or a time, or a thing. It’s a feeling. And the only thing in control of a feeling is the person who bears it. Do not blame your surroundings or your situation for how you feel. Blame yourself. Granted, there are people or situations etc. that can try to affect how you feel – but it is ultimately you who decides in the end. Don’t displace it – find it and solve it.
*****
Sometimes you have to roll your eyes back inside your head and focus on that thing inside – that place where pain is never the outcome, only pleasure. If you’re always looking out from within, you might miss it. Look inward and you will begin to let go of everything out there (something that is necessary if you ever really want to find that thing). After you focus your vision, all the other senses will fall into place. And once you find it, I promise you’ll know it, for everything else will melt away.


And that, my friends, feels nice.

Friday, November 4, 2011

Conversations with Rabbit



Rabbit – My fortune says “those grapes you cannot taste are always sour.” What does that mean? Is that like saying the grass isn’t greener on the other side? Why are they sour? And if I can’t taste them how do I know they are sour?

Me – Maybe the logic is twofold. If the grapes you can’t taste were, in fact, bad then one must conclude that they are sour. If the grapes you didn’t taste were sweet, then they were sour for you didn’t taste them. But maybe that only works if they grapes you didn’t taste are always sour, not the grapes you can’t taste… Or we can assume no one is really talking about grapes here and all non-tasted grapes (experiences) are sour (bad). Since the only opposing force to bad is good, it is a battle between good and bad. And if you missed the good, that’s bad, and well, bad is bad – unless of course you missed the bad, then that would be good. Or not. Sometimes bad is good – we need bad for good.

Rabbit – I’m not real sure your interpretations have brought me any closer to wisdom contained in my fortune, but it did make me laugh.

Me – Ok, this proverb comes from one of Aesop’s Fables (The Fox and the Grapes). The fox was hungry and saw grapes high on the vine and tried to get them but couldn’t reach, so he walks away, snorting with derision, saying they were sour anyhow. So on that note, we can say the moral of the story lies in our own disparaging feelings towards those things we want but cannot have, and our way of making the fact we cannot have them somehow okay.

Rabbit – So I guess you were right and I was right in a roundabout right/wrong kind of way.

Me – Well of course we were right. When you obscure the argument with enough rhetoric, what is “wrong” is hard to diagnose and what is “right” is very easy to see.