Take this soul, stranded in some skin and bones. Take this soul, and make it sing…
-U2, Yahweh
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HE: Ha! So you went skydiving? All I have to say about that is you must not love your life very much.
ME: that’s where you’re wrong. I went skydiving because I DO love my life very much.
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Richard Dawkins once made the obvious statement that we are all going to die. But the thing is, he went on to say, is that’s the good news. To die, he said, means that we beat some mighty incredible odds and got to be here in the first place.
I like that.
I mean, faith is a wonderful thing but I like the “feel” that that logic has on my mind.
“Here in the first place.”
Yeah. I am here. Now.
And so it brings me to think of an observation made by the late Anthony DeMello: have you ever noticed that the people who are all hot and bothered about the next life are the exact same ones that aren’t living this one?
Heh, I can dig it.
I think that Mr. DeMello was on to something when he went on to say that the Enlightened Person doesn’t give a fig about eternal life –the fact is they just don’t care! Eternal life? It doesn’t matter, he said. The first thing is, you just gotta get down to business and live this one.
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You know, I've seen a lot of people walkin' 'round with tombstones in their eyes…
Steppenwolf said that in their song The Pusher and every time I hear it, I give pause to think: you know, I’ve seen a lot of people walking around with tombstones in their eyes too. They’re the living dead, you know? The real zombies of the real world. People who spend their whole lives locked in one form of cage or another –be it the cage of addiction or a prison cell or simply the non-acceptance of The Way Things Are.
And like Ted Nugent said about the senseless slaughter of the buffalo: It is soooo sad. But the thing is, there is nothing I can do to help them if they don’t want to help themselves.
…and it is soooo sad.
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Off on a tangent: child rearing. Because I think it’s important to bring up so as to not raise someone walking around with tombstones in their eyes and looking forward to the next life while missing out on this one.
Now I certainly don’t claim to be a child rearing expert, but I do have some experience. I have two main ideas on the subject:
- Talk to your kids. Yeah, little kids can be boring as hell sometimes but still! Talk to them. I think it gives them a sense of value and that they matter in the scheme of things. And God knows we all want to matter.
- Trust your kid. Heh, I know! That can be a tough one especially with a teenager! But the thing is, if you’ve implemented #1 above then your kid knows what you expect of him. Trust him. Tell him you trust him. And then when the temptation comes he’ll fall back on that trust because he won’t want to let you down. If you give a kid a short, strict curfew then I think the message you’re sending him is: I DON’T TRUST YOU. And if you’re kid’s like me, whenever I’ve gotten that message I try my damndest to prove you RIGHT. Hell’s bells, he’s already convicted anyway so why not? So trust your kid. But only if you’ve laid the ground work with #1.
That’s it. Or at least all that I can think of at the moment. Anyway, I believe in those two precepts as they’ve worked for me.
So far…