continuity.

There's a funny thing about misdirection, or what we assume to be a diversion from the main road of our lives. It doesn't really reveal itself until you're fifty feet deep into it, until you're in the middle of the woods of it all by the same tree you saw an hour before, while the evening light (of LIFE) is starting to fade, while you wander around in the same circles, drive past the same landmarks, see nothing new and then realize,


Ta-da! I think we're lost.


Or, I think I'm lost. Though, if you were to take a moment to look about you, I'm sure that you'd see you're not alone in this unforgiving wilderness, as ironic as that turns out to be.


Not knowing where you are, or how you got there for that matter, poses two opportunities. Fear, which may lead to curling up, protesting reality, refusing to go on, indignation, etc. Or, more positively, exploration, or the need to find your own way out of this mess, preferably into something new rather than something tried, which you may do with determination, arrogance, anger, or aimlessness. (All options tend to become categorized if you think about them long enough, as I always seem to do.)


No matter which way you go, however, I believe a lot of what stops us from taking one option or the other is not knowing where we are going to end up. Either way, we assume, could end in disaster.


For wanting things to change as badly as we claim, we tend to not recognize the opportunity for it when it's staring us directly in the face. As far as I can tell, change is always no further than a few feet in front of us, but we either aren't looking, aren't listening, or aren't willing to take the steps towards the change itself. If we're not willing to meet life in the middle, we could find ourselves standing in the same state for a long time, stamping our feet and waving our fists at the sky, wondering why it all won't come together.


A long time has passed now where I have told myself, told everyone, world included, that I was ready for something different. More than ready. Had BEEN ready for days and axiomatic decades now, was ready to be hit by a tidal wave of newness, was prepared to go forward, into the empty space, into the unknown, into anything else so long as divergence was promised, sought out, and secured.


Well, clearly the universe is finding me funny, as it seems to believe I am telling a nonsensical, two-year-long joke. OR. Yes, or. Justtt maybe, my talk, my words, my something, isn't completely matching up with what I'm actually doing. Maybe the house of my wants are honest and real, while they sit on a hollow, useless foundation. Could that be? Could someone else, anyone else, really know things about me that I don't yet recognize?


Maybe. If anything's possible, then I guess that includes this particular phenomenon. All this time I've been sitting around blaming the world for not being ready for me, when perhaps part of this process is (who knew?) patience, one step I was more than willing to skip right over, bypass completely, pretend to have mastered, collect completion and continue on again.


We're being readied for something. And things are happening because of our choices, sure, but the ways we've been led to them are intentional. If I'm supposed to be learning something, and we all are, then I better listen up. And you had better believe I've so far been listening impatiently and imperfectly, because I'm ready to get this show on the road. Still, there is something to be received from silence, from true stillness, from waiting on the moral to the story, even if the story itself sucks from beginning to end.


I don't know. It seems I've been starting most of my days, knuckles bared, ready for a fight. When, really, I'm not sure the whole system has ever really dared oppose me. Rather, I think it might be backing me, setting me in place for Phase 2, or 10, for the next level or tier or ... valley. For what, I couldn't tell you at all. But, it's a odd mix of humble frustration to know you must not be ready for something yet, despite how strongly you feel that you are. Still, if we can meditate on the fact that all things happen for a reason, or there being a time and a place for all things, or that doors will open for us in time, or that forward is the only way to go, etc. Well. You get the point.


Call me certifiably insane (and most of my closest friends would), but I think to hope is better than to have complete certainty. If we have outlined our lives down to the minute we die and the way it happens, we leave no room for, sheesh, error, happy accidents, our brightest moments, small joys, being taken aback, real revelation. 


Of course I have ideas of what comes next. But it sure as hell isn't written in stone, to which we all can knowingly attest. EXIBIT A: THE APRON IS GREEN. I've been wrong before, and I've been surprised continuously. We're so antsy to get moving, and while most people would take one look at our circumstances and not blame us one bit for our urge to run, perhaps there's something more to be said for the now, instead of our constant focus on what tomorrow brings. Everything being so smocked in symbolism like it always is, so over-ridden with huge purpose and what does it all MEAN ten years from now and for ETERNITY, which, by the way, we have no fucking way of knowing or controlling. The best-laid plans get turned upside-down and over again in a moment, in the single blink of one eye, any eye, every second a new thing stands up and bares its teeth and refuses to cooperate with what we had in mind. 


So? Fine. And it's a totally different perspective than one normally encouraged to take in this scenario, in this particular country and society anyway, where everything is measured in visible success, by the thickness of your hair, how smooth your manipulative skills, how punctual you are, how educated. Everything is seen as a stepping stone toward your life, rather than your actual life itself, a moment only to ask, "When will you do better?" or "When will you make more?" No one will think you have arrived until you no longer sweat the price of things, of all things, because you HAVE all things. This is happiness? 


I'm not sure of it. Rather, I would imagine it all turns out to be a shame. And frankly, a huge fucking waste. Because your life will never manage to live up to everything you expect out of it. That fact doesn't deny us our right to dream, but I think it can ground us in the present, which I have to (HAVE TO) believe is more important than what might or might not happen to us someday, or never at all. Knowing that, really knowing it, can in many ways be so much more valuable to us, can be our real sense of freedom, can make us see that what we have before us is so much better than anything we may have previously thought up. 


Again, the crazy-calling is something I can take. I'm learning this even as I now write it, and even when I'm through I will have miles to go. It's something that will require a sense of diligence I have admittedly yet to master, but if I have made it out so far, there is no sense to refusing now to continue to grow, to be the flowering in the sandy sidewalk cracks, to make the most of the least of it all.