A Ship with One Anchor

A ship should not ride on one anchor,

    nor life on a single hope.

                  Epictetus

The sea twists and turns and churns below you - 

as controlled by you as the rising of the moon 

or the direction of the wind that guides you.

The sea has little mercy and no fear of love.

 

There is little hope for the rising of the sun - 

forever eclipsed by the darkness of your heart, 

it's fallen beyond the horizon for its last time.

No longer lighting your way - its time is done.

 

With the loss of your only hope, the loss of love,

you lower the sail and drift alone on the dark sea.

Then the wind dies, as does your heart, and the sun,

forever hidden from you, cries alone and without hope.

Modern Life's Loss

 In between the empty spaces is where life lives.

Hope

 The hole in your soul is only hallow because it is surrounded by you.

Good Fear

Fear is good for the species - without it, we would never have evolved to where we are now (well, ok, maybe it's a bad thing), or if we had, we would all have lopped our tongues off in a fan, and this would make kissing much less enjoyable.

 

When I was a teen, I spent more than a few minutes from time to time staring into my own eyes in a hair-spray-blurred bathroom mirror, with the door closed, and the shrieking sound of my siblings only barely dulled by the cheap hollow door, trying to burrow into my mind, looking for my “true self”.

 

From time to time, I would shed a tear.

 

I do not know now if they were mostly tears of pain and sorrow, or love and joy, but I know they made me feel…something...they made me feel something when my greatest fear was that I was not able to feel anything at all.

 

On those occasional trips down me-lane, there was a clawed hand of fear on the back of my neck...but you know, as often as I looked inside back then, I don't think that it mattered much.

 

I can control a lot inside my mind, but very little outside of it, and even though I like to dream of myself as the free God of my own universe, the truth is I am at the whim of chance and chaos every moment of the day. And when the shit hits the fan I wanted so desperately to stop with my tongue, I learn that I really don’t control much inside my mind after all.

 

The real answers I want are unattainable...either inside my personal universe or outside in the perceivable one.

 

Plea to Youth

Young people...

I know you might be disappointed and disillusioned, disheartened, doubtful, overwhelmed, and disconnected - and maybe sometimes (or even often) dejected and defeated and deeply discouraged.

I know it must be hard...I think the older don't always see the despair and the doubt your generation burdens.

But please, for all of us, even those that don't know they need it yet, I'm begging you...please...connect and seek to understand the world you are living in. Engage and drive your destinies.

It's your future - not to be handed to you...it will be yours no matter what, so don't be disempowered and disarmed by false realities presented to you in every corner of your life by those that want to deny you the destiny you desire.

You are our greatest hope.

And we need you.