Please, if you don’t already, start seasoning your condiments. I’ve said this so many times and every time I’m shocked that another person never thought of or heard of it. I didn’t make it up, but I do say it a lot. Yes the food is the important part, but you’ve eaten before and will eat again. Don’t forget the other half of every, single, bite is the other half of the entire meal. Let that sink in. The thing is, for most of my life, I’ve had this ‘deeper meaning’ behind stuff. Some people get it and see it instantly, but the majority of the time it’s just for me. This is one of those big ones for me. Ever since high school when I would say it at lunch and knew it wasn’t about the condiments. I wonder if people know it’s not about actual condiments and don’t care or just miss it entirely, but after the last couple of months I think the answer is clear. They think it’s about ketchup.
Life doesn’t have a cool second part where I get to start over with all my armor and ammo and whatever power-ups I get this round. One and done. So learning from day to day is absolutely key. Knowing that there is nothing to know except that I don’t know anything is a tremendous perspective that has ruined lives and ended marriages. When the real knowing of nothing is accepted and the ego is smashed we are left with a hollow void. I can only speak for my experience and my void didn’t have a definition. I mean that it wasn’t an ‘emotion’ and still isn’t at times. It’s a calm chaos that contains the totality of what Rob has the capacity to feel and understand at this point.
I know I’m Rob. I don’t have another way to talk about the “me” that is just the organic sum of 47 years lived as a human body. A vehicle that has miles and stories. Without emotional weight on everything that has ever happened to him, Rob can be unencumbered by the stories and goals and ideals that he doesn’t agree with or believe in. And it was always ‘the next check’ when he was going to ‘catch-up’. It’s a lot of air quotes but it was a lot of bullshit too. Why was he paying for 3 gigantic televisions? When I sit and think about it I do not want a television. I don’t want one and sure as hell do not want 3 giant ones. So where the hell did that idea come from that I wanted them and needed them and had to buy them and hang them and get another one?
The answer to that isn’t something I think I’ll ever know and I’m fine with that. What I do remember is so vague it’s like a trail of smoke that doesn’t leave, but then it’s gone. I remember a hint of possibility that I knew this once. When I was younger I am almost certain that I knew this feeling or this idea or memory. It’s a glowing direction, right below my ribs, in the front of my chest. It excites and it connects. It helps strangers find a quick port to refuel and get updated weather reports before heading back into the storm. This energy doesn’t have a name or a backstory or a book that everyone can fight over. This energy is common and shared and felt as a community. This energy has been inside of me since before I was Rob and it’ll be around long after he’s gone.
That brings such love and comfort to me. If you don’t agree then that might be tough to believe, but being alive is the only thing any of us will ever get. We don’t get a kid or a dog or a job or house. We live and accept things as they are under the conditions they are in when we are alive. Like the man being the head of the house. Some native tribes were matriarchal and if the woman was done she left his stuff outside the tent and when he got back he grabbed his stuff and left. She got the house and kids and land and horses. So why do we do it like we do? Why did they do it their way? Again the answer isn’t as important as realizing and accepting the answer can be anything you want. And we can change the answer just as easily.
If the man is the head of the house or the woman is the head is not as important as you think. It’s important if you play the game or don’t know there is a game that you are playing. But once you can see things more zoomed out you can understand how unimportant it is to even have the question or an answer or ask why as a question. People will follow and believe they are choosing and deciding, but only the good die young. That’s referencing a song that was about young people giving their lives over to religion and making that decision is where their life stops. They ‘die’ young because they don’t realize they have tainted every decision they will ever make going forward. Everything they do will be influenced by their religious dogmas and manmade rules and an independently thinking person is no longer an option for that vehicle. It’ll get miles, but the exact same miles that countless others have had before. There’s nothing wrong with that and Jung stressed that some people require a tether or they’ll psychologically drift away. They must believe something exists and that thing loves them and they are special and seen. This type requires a tether or their reality would break from their consciousness leaving them in between and unable to participate. Some people have not developed the capacity to listen to any of this or continue their own journeys and that is heartbreaking.
But, if you’re following, then you know it’s also equally as heartbreaking my way. Neither path has a positive or negative and that must make everything I’ve just said amazingly contradictory. And you are right. But letting the way guide you doesn’t have a set form for when things are understood by what people and how and… it just is. Staying available for guidance is the key. I remember I was chairing this meeting once and somehow prayer came up. I’m not religious and only use the word prayer so other people know what I mean. Prayer is thinking or talking out loud to yourself. Some folks conjure images and names and stories and history when they talk out loud. They direct it at their chosen version of a tether. What I learned is that everyone asked for things. The conversation was really about what they ask their gods for and it hit me. I don’t even think. I don’t think and I sure don’t ask for anything. If anything I’m aiming to be open and available for whatever is coming. Do you ask your god for stuff? What stuff and why? Did you choose your god because it’s a god that gives stuff?
Those are not questions people who ask their god for stuff like to be asked. They feel attacked and get mad and become everything their god says not to be. All because they’re asked why they chose their god? See how silly it all gets? And that entire time the goal, I think and still believe, is for that calm. That moment when a connection with another person is made and actual, intentional conversations are had. The talks that you have to take a nap after. The talks that you tell other people about. The passion and life and fire it takes to create those connections exists all the time. In all of us. And everyone is dying to get it out. We all want that connection and that nap. But fear of something nobody can name stops us all. It’s the same fear and we’re all terrified of being found out. If you find out I have fear it’ll destroy me, but your fear is the same. We can’t discuss that. Or just chose not to, but either way I love knowing that wherever I want I can have one of those conversations and, surprise, so can you.
