Trying To Get Lost

"It is not until we are lost that we truly begin to understand ourselves."
Henry David Thoreau

So then the question becomes how exactly am I to become lost to myself?  Think about that one a moment!  Take your car keys and try to loose them.  Try your hardest to loose them.  Concentrate upon this task with all your might.  The harder that you try to loose the keys the more tightly imprinted into your brain is their location, and you fail in trying to loose the keys.

Such is the case in trying to loose oneself I think.  The more that we focus on ourselves the harder it is to loose ourselves and in the process of finding the way back out of the wilderness discover our true identity.  The more that we focus on getting ourselves lost, the more that we are focusing on who and what and where we are at the moment.  The now keeping us completely distracted from the time and place where we have the opportunity to learn what it is that we can be.

For me, I know just fine what I am right now.  It's what I could be that intrigues me.

The Great Paradox Of The Heart

Hearts are like ships.

The ship that is built but remains tied to the dock does not sink, but it also doesn't go anywhere.  That is not the purpose of a ship.

The heart that does not risk does not love and that is not the purpose of the heart.

The analogy holds true.  But there is more to it than that.  If we leave a ship tied to a dock, it does not sink.  But it also falls into disrepair from failure to use it for it's intended purpose.  The ship slowly dies.  Our efforts to protect the ship from harm are in vain.

And so it is with our hearts.  We isolate to protect our hearts from injury.  In the process we are blocked from love, both giving and receiving.  The heart demands to love and to be loved or it dies.  And so we have the great paradox that the only way to insure our hearts remain safe is to actively risk them to the safe keeping of another.

In the end, love wins.  It has to, because the concept of a world in which it is not so is far too horrible to contemplate.

They Don't Understand Life

A kid goes to school and is asked on an assignment what he wants to be when he grows up.  The kid responds "Happy."

The teacher flags the assignment commenting that the kid didn't understand the assignment.

The truth is that the teacher doesn't understand life.

Urabamba Province, Peru, Fall 2009

Along the bank of the Urabamba River, in south eastern Peru is a small town called Aguas Calientes.  It is the town that is at the base of the mountain upon which you find Machu Picchu.  It is a place accessible only by a five hour train ride or a five day walk.  It is where I met these two little girls, playing in the tourist's market.

The tourist market is packed with every kind of trinket that you can imagine that bears the name and image of the ancient Inca city of Machu Picchu.  In the Quechua language, Machupicchu means "The Old Mountain"  The city carved there by the ancient ones is truly one of the great marvels of the world.  It is a place that should be on everyone's bucket list.

Working in booth after booth are the descendants of those ancient ones, the local Indios who are now a mostly modern people, but who descend from the great Incan people who ruled that part of the world for hundreds of years prior to the Spaniards conquering everything in the name of the church and destroying cultures and people in the process.

Sorry, this never started out to be an anti-western European polemic...  I will write one of those later.

In the market are all of these booths with all of these women working.  They almost all have children, and the children play in the market.  These two girls were playing and laughing as they splashed dirty water around from that soap pail.  It really struck me, how little it takes to make a person happy.  These girls had clothes on their backs, a loving parent right near by, and they were as happy as could possibly be just splashing dirty water around in a plastic pail. 

I plan to remember this at Christmas this year and try to be just a little less commercial.  Just a little, hoping that in the process I can steer my children towards what brings them real, lasting happiness instead of a short time of pleasure.

People Don't Want To Know What You Think...

Many times people will ask, "What do you think about Blah Blah Blah?"  Blah Blah Blah meaning anything that they happen to be talking about at the moment.  I find myself often tempted to share with them what I actually do think about Blah Blah Blah.

I often have to remind myself that people, for the most part, when they ask what I think, are not really asking what I think, but rather they are asking for me to validate an opinion that they already hold.  So when I offer an opinion of my own, and it is in contradiction with the opinion that they hold we are automatically in contention with each other.  There is no possible benefit for either of us.

So now what I try to do is ask the question "What do YOU think?"  Because they really don't want to know what I think.  They just want validation for what they already think.

The Dog Days of Summer

Kita loves to be on the water.  This year as July has progressed into August and the temperature has hit the century mark and stayed there, Kita has been taking to the water with increasing frequency.

I was told by a pastor once that there are no dogs in heaven.  I told him that without dogs there could be no heaven...  All good dogs go to heaven.