November 13, 2008

• Time and…. stuff

  It’s funny how time just runs away from us, sometimes.
  
  Perhaps John Lennon expressed it best: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” That famous quote doesn’t even include the word “time,” yet it encapsulates how things just “keep going,” no matter what we’re doing. And we can either be “bystanders,” or “participants.”
  
  I haven’t exactly given up on the idea of blogging. After all, I’ve been a member of the blogosphere since before there even was a blogosphere. I came to xanga five years ago (this month) because I got a very clear “message” from the Universe that I needed to be here, rather than “waste my time” on blogger, where there really was no sense of community and it was just the “wrong” place. Going into detail about what that cryptic sentence “means” would require a book, not a blog post, so I’ll leave it at that.
  
  The point being, that this blog has served its original purpose, and I’m sortof pondering what to do with it. What direction– if any– to take it. Don’t get me wrong, I still love writing. And I like to ponder the imponderables of the Universe, in writing. But where doing so was once something I pursued with almost religious fervor, now…. not so much.
  
  And I guess that’s partially what I mean when I feel like time has “run away.” And “other things” are more important, these days.
  
  It amuses (and saddens) me– about our society, in general– how we all live in the ostensible “Pursuit of Happiness,” while often keeping ourselves in a state of helplessness. People strive to be whole, better, functional, successful, content, at peace, and whatever. Yet the vast majority of communication and “societal chatter” is about what’s wrong, and who sucks, and UNhappiness, and strife, and anger, and arguments. On one hand, we aspire to be (and be like) Happy People, but the moment someone admits that their life actually is frakking brilliant and, yes, they are HAPPY, we start tearing them down and saying things like “You’re just delusional, living in a fantasy world, life IS NOT LIKE THAT!“

  The popular saying is “misery loves company.” Where’s the parallel quote about happiness?
  
  One of the things that always strikes me about happiness… and perhaps also hints at why people more readily “tear down,” than “build up,” is that happiness requires a sort of personal accountability. Happiness is something you have to dream up, define, create and then “own.” It’s internal. YOU create it. It comes from YOU. Nobody “gives it” to you. And– in some ways– that makes happiness “scarier” than unhappiness because it demands that we be willing to expose ourselves to the buffeting winds of naysayers and the vast majority who don’t want to be ultimately accountable for the outcomes of their lives.
  
  UN-happiness… well, it thrives on external blame, fear, mistrust and merely pointing out what is “wrong” with other people, ideas, actions, laws, beliefs, societies. “Everyone else” gets to own your problems. You choose to blame “ridiculous qualification requirements” for getting passed over for that job, rather than accept that you partied your way through college and never completed your degree, as a result of which you simply need to be “more” than the degreed folks, to get what you want. You attribute your sad relationship history and your disillusionment with love to such “facts” as “all men (or women) are pigs,” rather than accept that you’re always stressed to the gills and have anger management issues… and so it IS “about YOU” and not “about THEM.”
  
  I sensed a subtle shift in the background energy of the world, late in the evening of Tuesday, November 4th, 2008. Generalizations are, of course, dangerous– which is why I chose the word “subtle.”
  
  When we set aside all the “historic factors” of the election, and all the obviously visible paradigm shifts, beneath it was this subtle shift towards “hope and idealism,” and away from “mistrust and control.” I’m not sure it had anything to do with government, and who is going to be the President of the United States. I believe it had to do with choosing the possibility of happiness– as a global community, rather than resigning ourselves to the status quo of “everything is always going to be fucked up.”
  
  Perhaps my perspective is skewed by the large number of commentaries, articles and blogs I have heard/read over this past week– written by African Americans (and other minorities, as well)– around the essence that “one of OURS is President of the most powerful nation on earth, and it just became a LOT harder to assign external blame to our discontent– WE must be the example, and be more accountable for our lives and happiness, now.”
  
  But…
  
  Whereas this sentiment may run strongest within the African-American community… isn’t the underlying message really to all of us? We create our realities– nobody comes and serves it up to us, on a silver platter… or if they DO, don’t we have the choice to say “No, I don’t think that’s mine. I’d rather have something else?“

  I believe we do.
  

  • 1:37 pm
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