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Unpacking the Misery

At some point on the journey toward truth, there comes a tipping point. At this critical moment, you will ultimately discover that everything you’ve been seeking the answers to is moot. The exercise of seeking is simply a means to an uncomfortable, yet liberating end: everything is a story, and nothing is real.

Our logical mind, coupled with our earthbound, impatient and stubborn ego, is desperate to quantify and qualify, never to capitulate, yet forever to recapitulate. Nothing ever just happens. Nothing ever just happens unless you did something first. Nothing ever just happens without intent, conviction, meaning, purpose… and the law of attraction.

Or, maybe it’s simply this: nothing that happens is truly just.

Is it a free-for-all? Sort of. The more we aim to encapsulate or control or manipulate the world, the more feeble and arrogant we tend to become. We can employ bravado, or braggadocio, pretending to own the day, as if the coercion of our will could ever intimidate or impress indelibly upon the universe. It’s a ridiculous notion, drawn in conclusion to a seemingly evident series of events. But the world today is increasingly about control, and it’s driving us speedily toward the inevitable madness.

There’s a system at play here, and presuming to be in any capacity of real influence is simply at odds with the math of the game! Escaping it is not the point either, because exploring, as we can and do here, only happens here. That’s the mystery, the misery, and the magical note.

The best of the best of the gamers have an intuition about events, situations and outcomes, but nobody knows with certainty what’s going to happen. Predictions are based on precedence, on calculations, on what has passed, on what may be gleaned cleverly from intense scrutiny and observation of the present. But, with every breath, every thought, linearity and the cause-and-effect goes out the window.

Try not to try, just for a moment. After the uncomfortable urges die down, who are you?

. . .

I watched the sunset at the beach tonight. I feel silly for not having been here most every night this summer to experience it. There were maybe sixty or so people scattered both on land and on the calm sea. The large golden disk perched on the distant mountains for only a few minutes, and then dropped rather effortlessly out of sight.

Such symmetry is one aspect of this life that really impresses me. The glowing embers of clouds hovering there now tease the promise of what may yet come again, for the patient, or the persistent.

Artificial lights soon flicker on over the road. We’re curiously afraid of the dark… and silence.

Will tomorrow happen? I suppose it can’t. Then let it be another day to do, to be, to see past the misery. There’s nothing that needs doing, yet it seems awfully wasteful not to do absolutely everything.

Solvitur ambulando