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Bukowski says, “We’re all going to die. All of us. What a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities. We are eaten up by NOTHING.” I love this quote. The truth of it is so simple and so stark but it is just that: TRUTH. We are all given on precious, beautiful life. Think about the things we waste our time on in a given day. The fights, the emails, the gossip. We let the need to consume and obtain and possess devour us and rob us of what life is really about: living.
To live is to be open to the possibilities and to create. It is to dance with the song of our days and get in touch with the inner desires. It is to kindle the flame of the inner voice that says “Go, do THAT!” We live every day—a single lifetime with a million possibilities strung out in a series of days. Knowing there is a finite number of those days should be enough to make us question why we would spend a second doing anything we don’t love.
The other aspect of living is something we really struggle with: connection. It is plain to see that humans are social creatures. But we are taught that we need to conform to the social norm in order to be accepted so we spend more time comparing and criticizing than we do relishing the flavors of people that cross our paths. The lessons we need to learn are more than just acceptance. Acceptance is absolutely the first step. We need to know that it is perfectly ok and totally normal to be different from one another. Then we need to celebrate those differences. I’m not talking about the kind of hype where everyone gets a trophy. I’m talking about truly developing that which makes each of us unique.
Ironically it is in celebrating the uniqueness of every individual that we understand what connection is. Rather than teaching how differences divide us, it is important to focus on how differences can bring us together. There is an inherent need between people to fulfill what each of us lacks. We rely on each other. I spoke in an earlier piece about the primal brain and it comes up here again. There was a time when someone who didn’t fit the mold was a liability and would cause someone else to get killed. It caused us to panic and to learn to conform. We no longer need to function from that state of mind.
What are the things that keep you up? What are the things that hold you back? What trivialities eat you up? Those are the aspects that you need to heal. Those are the fears you need to release. In the end we all end up in the same place so we have a choice to make: spend your life living someone else’s expectations or open up to the joy and take the chance to live your live exactly as you want to.