11th
Smoke
If this is all I take away… make it feel worthwhile. If every day fades to smoke…. I will still reach down to touch it….
Spending every day in the most rewarding possible manner has changed tone drastically for me in the last years. When a person looks at their own life and feels good or bad about decisions, there is all too often a spark that drives them to “achieve” which can be identified as the design and cause of broadly acknowledged accomplishments, or the notion of “achievements” at any rate. Only recently in my life have I started questioning the notion of “achieving”. Are my sweetest moments, seen by others or not, any more or less of an achievement than any other? Does a person who works daily towards a goal of financial success, towards a goal of recognition, or even a goal of passion and expressivity, have any more inherent worth than a person who lives walled up in a tiny apartment staring at cracks in the drywall, agoraphobic but gloriously so, living every second in tune with a clock, earth turning, no care for what any other person might think of their existence?
So many of my wonderful friends fight daily for such lofty goals… in vans, at educational institutions… working for large corporations, struggling to be heard… I felt like I was at the front lines for most of my life, now it seems my passion lives in the nebulous vista of my own mind, content to validate itself, needing no audience or conflict to drive it forward…
Of course there’s the argument of building the general consciousness, of enriching the lives of others being worth more than having ones own life be rich, etc… but as time passes for me, it becomes increasingly difficult to see “goals” as anything but blinders, or to want to reach out to others as part of the act of being. Life has to exist, thrive, and grow within the confines of your own mind first… and last. Increasingly, social activities become merely actions, as opposed to the wellspring of life which builds experiences, and moments. Moments and memories are becoming far-flung, disparate snapshots of a past I scarcely concern myself about. Beauty is becoming a holy grail, but conversely misery is becoming a distant memory as well. Giving and taking seems unrelatable. Life is motion… give and take as you will. Experience is blurred. Immediate feelings and mental state retain no value, and never will; yet in essence, they are all that truly exist.
