Tag: philosophy

Tumultuous Vibrance

Nothing grand was ever so achieved by waiting patiently, nor ever found its fulness in life completed alone.

Tumultuous vibrance is not the easiest way to live, but unruffled waters will never carry one to any destination.  This is what I’ve learned of sailing, of life, of love.

The flood of my emotions has caught up with me, bringing one upon another man to me: men I have loved before, for whom my heart will never cease to beat, of whom my memories never fade; and this, as yet another silent shism slices through me, brought again by my own actions, by the need to show in actions what lies silently beneath.

Because words can only reach so far, n’est pas?  Words sate only so much need.  And, in truth, the pursuit of happiness is a noble endeavor reachable only by daily effort, assessment and reassessment, by the integrity of words and deeds… not by waiting for something to someday slip upon your shores.

Nothing grand was ever achieved by waiting patiently, nor ever found its fulness in life completed alone.

Taking Responsibility for 21st Century Politics

(Originally published on Medium.com)

It is said that we are given the world we live in and we give this world to the next generations.

This is true.

We earn the right to be, to live however we wish by the very fact of our existence — regardless of the impacts on others, on our environment, on our future, on the futures of others.

We may follow in our predecessors’ footsteps and do as they did, making the same mistakes along the way.

We may observe our predecessors’ actions and choose to do nothing; or we may choose merely to complain, to live enmeshed in apathy.

We may fight our predecessors openly, demanding that they correct all that we see and believe is wrong in what they did and continue to do.

Or…

We may learn. Learn from our predecessors. Learn from our contemporaries. Learn from our own lives, from our own mistakes, from our own ideas and intuitions and feelings.

We may choose the lives we wish.

We may take responsibility wherever we wish and shirk it whenever we wish.

But consequences exist, and we cannot easily shirk consequences.

So I ask, in this day and age of politics, when we dislike our government, when we dislike the media, when we disapprove of so many parts of those directing and affecting our lives:

Will we sit back and do nothing but complain?

Will we sit back and do nothing but observe?

Will we sit back and wait for someone else to do something?

Will we sit back and demand that someone correct themselves?

Or will we listen actively?

Observe openly, with an aim to find an answer, a solution — and to act upon that answer, share that answer, share that solution and act on that solution?

For: What is an answer if kept to oneself? What is a solution never implemented? What is an action never made?

It is dead. It is death. It is continuation of the same.

It is sheer and utter irresponsibility, by the very definition of that word — for there is no response.

We who see must act. Not as our predecessors have acted, except for those whom we revere, whom we deem wise and who were effective in their aims.

We must act as our hearts and minds deem true — and in no lesser fashion.

There is no other way; and we cannot demand that someone else take responsibility for what we refuse.

So: Let us, who would take responsibility for the world as it exists, who despise the current modes of behavior of modern politicians, let us learn from them and act differently, according to our beliefs, according to our knowledge. Let us be the difference. Let us stand up and try and try and try to manage and find a better way.

Who all will take responsibility, and take accountability for the mistakes we make along the way? Who will let go of our pride and accept the burden of the past?

For it will not change unless we do.

Photo ©2017 MLM

Do What You Like

Or:  Self-Indulgence on a Summer Morn

(Originally published on Medium.com)

It is this bizarre trembling that I wake to, this sensation of needing to get up, to do something — and, instead, I sit; I write.

This is what you crave, what people crave to do, what they are tempted, lured to indulge in. This is the drug, the addiction; this is the overindulgence that we call “intelligent” — when it is really just indulgence, really just a cure for those who overindulge in something else more physical, just the drug for those who are addicted to reading, to sinking into someone else’s mind.

Here. Here is my mind; here are my thoughts, poured into my fingers pressing upon small buttons on a mechanical device to appear on a page and rest here, to be read by you, to be read by someone, to be read by no one and forgotten for who-knows-how-long (maybe forever?).

Here is the flow of my mind; the depths of my soul lurk somewhere underneath, deep within my mind in ways only I can feel, sitting in my lap like a child waiting for the time when I will indulge him, her in a game of hide-and-seek or some coloring, or a walk in that ridiculously-high heat of the Arizona summer.

Here is my life, or the culmination of my life, anyway; and you do not know (or do you care to know?) that I am surrounded by piles of books, a scattering of pencils to the right of me, and pens; a cup of lukewarm coffee made too sweet to drink, mixed with almond milk and raw sugar, molasses instead of cream-and-white-sugar, since I don’t really want the sinking feeling in my gut and instant-sugar-rush from traditional coffee condiments. My roommate and I are too lazy, too carefree, too care-less to bother with even bringing dirty dishes to the sink, washing them regularly, clearing the table of the stifling mess; he plays his games when he gets home from work, and I sit here all day, mulling, writing (when I feel the urge or give into the demand), playing writing games or reading to sink into another world away from the reality-of-me.

I’m heavier than I like to be; and I don’t give a damn that anyone thinks I’m sexy as I am. I put on at least 30 pounds that I’ve managed to keep, while traveling to England last year; and, though I lost some of it while working at the country club most recently (six months ago?! How time flies when you’re doing nothing but brooding!), I’ve put it all on again.

I could lose it, if I walked daily — especially in this Arizona heat. It was 115 degrees Fahrenheit at 4:30pm yesterday, when my roommate and I walked from the grocery store, laden with veggies, apples, pasta, things for me to make for us to eat. One-hundred-and-fifteen degrees, which I may have experienced once or twice as a youth in the suburbs of Atlanta, but it’s a dry heat here, and for a natural blonde like me, even one who tans, but who has not been acclimatized to this kind of heat, I found it stifling, draining the energy out of me until I felt dizzy.

He put away the groceries when we got home; I advised him as to what went where as I sucked down one, two litres of refrigerator-chilled water dosed with a raspberry-flavored electrolyte-powder so I might start to feel normal; then munched steadily on organic sea-salt-and-lime-flavored tortilla chips with peach salsa: sugars to increase my blood sugar; salt to replace what I had lost to my skin whilst sweating.

My roommate, a very-dark Hatian-American, was still dripping sweat; large drops formed on his forehead and streamed down his face, the dry comment that followed from the kitchen proving his own loss of salt: “Don’t you love it when you get sweat in your eyes??!”

We discussed the natures of black-people-versus-white-people in this heat with a leisureliness evident of our true friendship: he joked about and explained with such casual acceptance the biological whys of negro slaves kept by white slave-owners that I felt like the weaker side of the human race. I was dizzy for well over an hour while he kept moving, sweating; his more-efficient body cooling himself with the puddles streaming down his face, pouring off of his body proving that only he, of the two of us, could handle the heat that we both love.

I could burden myself with guilt about the condition of our shared living space, the fact that I haven’t done the laundry this week — though I keep telling myself, nearly every day, that I should get up, brave the embrace of that hot hallway outside the door of this well-cooled apartment, walk down those stairs and just put the laundry into one of those machines beyond the swimming pool. For that matter, why not dress in a bathing suit and cover-up, take a bottle or two of ice water, slather myself with coconut oil, and bake in the morning sun for a bit while the laundry washes and dries?

It’s 99 degrees, and it’s only five-to-ten in the morning. If I go now, I can get a suntan and have the laundry washed-and-dried before the temperature raises the additional twenty-one degrees that it’s anticipated to be by five-o’clock this evening.

It’s 99 degrees, and it’s only four-to-ten in the morning. The thought is mind-boggling.

I’m going to do it. Leave the clutter of this apartment, leave the unwashed dishes, and go do the impossible, the ridiculous: I’m going to slip into a bikini, gather the laundry and go downstairs, beyond the pool; and then lie there by the pool, soaking up the sun. How else will I acclimate to this heat? How else will I get the bronzed skin I love so much? How else will I have the clean clothes I want???

You think it’s simple, don’t you? Doing something that you want to do, but don’t want to do.

But you do the same, don’t you? All the time; every day, you avoid things you want to do:

You don’t love when you want to.

You don’t call when you want to.

You don’t write when you want to.

You don’t paint.

You don’t cry.

You don’t draw.

You don’t play.

You don’t listen.

You think my cluttered house is despicable, my lazy lifestyle is deplorable, offensive. And I tell you: it’s just the same. We’re just the same.

My life, like yours, is spent doing what I feel is most important. I sit inside my mind, listening, meditating to the sound of the air conditioner, awaiting the song of the mockingbird in the tree just outside, watching the leaves blow.

I’ve learned to know my feelings, to follow my heart’s and my mind’s flow. I know myself so well that I can put these words so clearly that you can taste them, feel them, know them as your own. That you can see my life. That you can sit here, almost, and deplore with me the empty Pizza Hut boxes, the empty Noosa yogurt container, the mostly-empty bag of granola, the scattered books and pens and receipts — all of which would take but a few minutes to clear up, to clean up, to usher away into the big, blue, metal garbage bin just down the hall, the other way, and down the other stairs.

Maybe I’ll clear that out, too, after all.

Maybe I’ll do all kinds of things.

But here’s the thing I know, that maybe you know, too, but that I have to learn day after day, and that my oh-so-black Hatian-American roommate whom I love dearly and who loves me dearly has me learn, day after day, week after week, while I live with him, on his penny, on his nickel, on his dime, on his quarter, on his dollar, on his life-blood:

I do what I like. There is nothing greater, nothing else, and nothing more important than respect of oneself, respect of one’s own life and love and time and values.

Indulge in all you love.

You’re indulging anyway.

To Thine Own Self, Be True

(Originally published on Medium.com)

Every single rule we set for ourselves in response to a negative situation is arbitrary. Every single rule we set for ourselves in response to a negative situation is suspect — due to the reactive nature of it, due to the circumstantial nature of it, due to the speculative nature of it.

Every single rule we set for ourselves without consideration for our heart’s path, our mind’s instincts, our gut’s reason, our whole nature is worthless and will lead us astray — and not into the life we want, need, love.

Every single rule we set for ourselves without full knowledge of our whole being, without our full set of values is going to hurt us, in the end.

And, since it is so very difficult to fully know ourselves, since it is a daily task of self-examination to know our thoughts, feelings, motives, ways, desires, needs —

Rules are, in the end, abominable.

This is not to say that there are no rules, that there is anarchy.

This is to say:

We hardly know the rules that govern ourselves, so setting rules for ourselves, when we do hardly know the truth of our self-governance, will necessarily lead us to self-destructive ends.

Find yourself.

And, as the Oracle at Delphi advised so long ago:

Know thyself, and to thine own self be true.

Photo ©2017 MLM

Responsible Progressivism

(Originally published on Medium.com)

I have lived the entirety of my life in the shadow of hate, and in the warm embrace of love.

As have most people — I daresay all people who are yet alive, for I don’t think there is a person alive who can live without at least some love, and who has not experienced at least some hate.

I have seen that hate attempt to overshadow love out of fear for a present situation, out of fear of the unknown, out of a desire to impart knowledge, out of sheer frustration at not knowing what to do or how to respond —

As we have likely all seen, and even done, at times.

And we all know the pain that such acts bring, whether we wish to agree or disagree on the far-reaching ramifications of such pain; and whether we wish to agree or disagree on the ultimate verdict in judging such actions.

But what seems undeniable to me is this:

We humans have been trying to manage our societies, communities and cultures with a heavy hand, with the sword, with hatred and violence for a very long time, with what quiet exceptions we barely know, as those quiet exceptions often fade away in the annuals of history and become as myths and legends, with very little left from which to learn.

And yet, we are — every day — faced with the choice to hate or to love; to respond with hatred or with love; to disregard and dismiss or to pause and understand.

Doubtless, it is a difficult path to tread: to love and to understand; for it may take an extreme amount of effort, patience, information, trust to continue loving, and to reach even the slightest understanding; and consequences may be hoped for, but not guaranteed.

Yet it is just as difficult a path to walk in hatred, and to let violence take our hand, our heart, our mind firstly and rashly — for the consequences of this path are not seen and may not be understood for moments, days, years, centuries, millennia, eons — if ever.

So, with two equally-difficult paths in which consequences cannot be known or guaranteed before-the-fact, how does one choose which path to take?

We have discovered at least some things, in our paths as humans:

We have organized our societies, predominantly and increasingly, towards non-violence — presumably because we have learned that this keeps our species alive.

We have increasingly removed and restricted violent acts from the realm of permissible behavior, even to the point of disapproving of and attempting to disallow psychological and emotional trauma towards each other (although we admit proving such trauma is both simple and complex).

So, why do we permit our political organizations, affiliations and interactions to remain predominantly violent — physically, psychologically and emotionally — and to rely upon violent ends — physically, psychologically and emotionally — in so many ways within the realm of politics?

Why is it that we cannot have a truly rational conversation regarding political organizations, political perspectives, political actions, political machinations?

Is it the nature of politics; or is it merely the habit we have adopted, unthinkingly, from such violent ancestors as those who would violently take power over other humans, who would use violent psychological and emotional means and methods to take and hold such power over other humans, to captivate people in fearful ways in order to assert a dominant will through violent methods — instead of guiding a people towards a rational predilection through intelligent persuasion?

It seems clear to me that we are upholding a violent tradition — without realizing what we are doing.

And actions are always stronger than mere words, unless those words are our predominant action.

Photo ©2017 MLM

Tempted to the Realm of Woodland Sprites

I finally went for that walk I wanted to take around the back side of the stream. It felt good being in my flip-flops and tank top, even with the nettle plants and thick overgrowth. I needed it more than I realized, far more than I gave it credit – even if I coughed raucously as I walked, death rattles of this persistent sinus infection.

It was beautiful. The tufts of flowers sprayed poofs of pollen on my black top and pants as my feet stepped on dark earth, stepped over and around tall, green stalks of small purple and pink flowers that bees fancied so much, I talking to my flying friends in warning so as not to startle them into stinging me. I felt like Alice, wandering through giant gardens….

It was curious, too: here and there were large patches of growth that something – some animal or erratic person – had smashed down to the ground and trampled more in some places, less in others. I kept wondering if it was a deer or a fox… But it couldn’t have been a deer, for the patches would have been deeper; and I would think that foxes would be more spindly than to make such messes of the flowers. It hardly makes sense, too, for any human to have knocked down the growth along the sides of the path, as opposed to on the path. As a matter of fact, nothing showed that anyone human had been on that part of the footpath in a while, the overgrowth was so tall and thick throughout.

And the stream rushed by, no further than ten feet to my left, the only live body of water in my regular vicinity since I left Greece and the Aegean Sea a few months ago….

…I still miss the sea, the ancient beaches of stones smoothed by millennia of gentle waves caressing the rough edges away, beaches where it was easy to bask in a warm sun’s rays and cool my tanned skin in cold, crystal-clear salt water, where the luxury of nature made it so easy to understand how volumes of art, wisdom, beauty once came of the inhabitants there.

But I had left the sea to return here to England, where my heart had left loves, where I was not nearly finished exploring my own country’s motherland….

Of course I was mad – not because I wasn’t at the sea, but because… well, because I didn’t feel free. And my mind kept going back to all of the reasons I was mad; but the tall, flowering greens kept my attention, and I needed my wits to avoid the nettles and other spiny plants growing on the path. Even so, my bare ankle brushed one nettle plant and my forearm brushed another – I was only caught the two times, and the red welts are now already tiny marks on my skin that sting but a little, reminding me in an oddly-pleasant way of both the anger and the beauty of my forage along this infrequently-trodden path.

…And then it started to rain in light, sparse sprinkles (though no one here calls it “sprinkling,” and I’ve infused the term into my Englishman’s language as something lovely and akin to colored sugar sprinkles falling from the sky). The rain cooled my skin, warmed from the heavy walk; and I wanted to sit somewhere in the falling water to watch the greater, speeding waters flow past, burbling to no one in particular about its journey and days….

And then the path cleared, went on, over an unexpected concrete bridge where the stream was wider and flowing quite fast and deep. Perhaps I’d take off my beach shoes, damp with dew and yesterday’s rains, and sit for a bit….

It was a fleeting thought, though; the movement of my feet and body through so much green was closer to what I needed, and so much the stronger urge.

The path followed closer to farmlands, edged with old trees and tall grasses that showed this part wasn’t used very often, either.  I couldn’t tell if I would wind up walking all the way into town or to the gates I had seen before, on the other side of the stream….

I didn’t really want to go ‘home’, and my mind raced with reasons why I should:  what if the door was locked when I returned? What if I got caught in a heavier rain? The legs of my cotton pants were already swinging heavily with the dampness they had picked up in the thick, and I was still recovering from this illness….

It didn’t work so well as I would have wanted to erase the pain of the evening’s madness, and my mind rang with the article about wisdom of that Greek ancient, Hippocrates, of walking until one’s mood has improved — and if, by the time one has ended one’s walk, it has not improved, to walk some more.

I could have walked all day before my heart found peace, I think.

And, even as I reached the long, granite-graveled lane, even as I stepped into the hot shower, I knew my heart needed me to walk some more.

For, as terrifying as it was to risk being stung by plants and insects, as cold as I am sure I would have become had I been caught in a storm, it was safe, too, to be amidst other natural things that grow strong and tenderly, that brushed my body in gentle-if-sometimes-painful caresses as I wandered down an unknown path in a foreign land that feels yet not unknown; and some part of me wanted, with each patch of pressed-down foliage, to sit and stay and watch the bees and dragonflies and butterflies and wasps and other flying things, to see snails carrying curling shells up spindly stems, to wonder at the huge, black slugs and other crawling things beneath my feet… to lose myself deep in the green, as quiet and unbroken as a woodland faerie, lost from any who would not be as natural and free with themselves, who would query and misunderstand my eager return to my own nature and freedom… who won’t let themselves be, and cannot, therefore, truly let anyone be.

The hardest battle you are ever going to have to fight is the battle to be just you.

Leo Buscaglia
(via wordsnquotes)

Have respect for yourself, and patience and compassion. With these, you can handle anything.

Jack Kornfield   (via wordsnquotes)

I’m going to tell you something: thoughts are never honest. Emotions are. Do not go around asking for honesty in what people think; much of what they perceive as thinking is empty anyway because it’s thought out again and again and comes out refined and muddy. The ones who know how to feel might have to say to you a couple of interesting things or not and when they do that, you ought to know how to listen. So learn how to listen. You can’t make someone open up about their feelings in case they don’t want to. But you can remain open yourself through listening deeply and completely; they might want to talk about the weather and keep it simple – allow them to feel the simplicity. They might wish to throw a tragic metaphor to you and whisper ‘f—ing hell,’ then shut off again. Still, the feeling is there because the moment is. Emotion pours out directly or indirectly each time people engage themselves in the process of genuine interaction. Keep it genuine. Keep it simple.

Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959  (via wordsnquotes)

Easy Girls

“Men will always return to a woman who’s easy.”

– Disgruntled Ex-Girlfriend-of-an-Ex-Boyfriend to me, via Twitter

“She’s right though. Why would you want to be with someone who makes life difficult?”

-True friend to me, via text message