clarity in living

if you can strip away all of the feelings of stress, of frustration, of bewilderment, of anger, resentment and wishful thinking.... if you can strip away all of the distractions of how we feel while engaged in life. if we simply watch..observe...experience...participate without writing those damn story lines in our heads about the how, or the why or the personal shit to muddy up the waters..living is interesting and challenging and it can be fulfilling..if we look at it and see it clearly.

life is an onion.

peel the onion, layer upon layer and strangely each layer becomes something else that is no longer an onion, maybe an enigma?

not sure what it really is except mostly not what i have been telling myself for all these years.

i had the basics right...the love of animals and people, a sense of responsibility...a duty to stand by the side of the vulnerable. i figured out about the smoke and mirrors, the politics, the ego shit...the dishonesty, the nastiness. i learned about the doubt, the fear, and i learned to swallow my incompetence while being a stumbling moron trying to achieve an idyllic world.
yeah right...time to pull my head out of the sand.

the biggest and most frequent mistake i have made was thinking that life could and should be right and fair. that you could insist that life act with honor, with kindness, with respect, either by force or example or even tantrums and tears.

and then donald trump was elected and suddenly everything changed...all of my preconceived ideas of how the world was supposed to be, swirled away from me. and i started thinking, and thinking and thinking. i began to dream again in my sleep, and i honesty have not dreamed very much in years. and i looked back thru history comparing it to today..century upon century...so much horror, so much cruelty and pain, so many lies, so much ignorance..devastating both human and animal lives. yet alternately so much goodness, kindness, knowledge and understanding...sometimes the light and purity of the human soul was blinding in its beauty.

i figured it out...we have always been a conflicted species and we haven't changed.

and you would think that with the frightening catalyst of trump in the White House that i would have become depressed, saddened beyond belief. and i was..disappointed and stunned... for a time at least. now i feel kind of free. i don't know how long it will last before i start writing stories in my head again that frighten or hurt me or make me yearn for fantasy. but for now i am done with all of that...it may only be temporary but maybe it's not.

so here it is...
life can be good, or it can be bad, it can be filled with kindness or cruelty. it can be filled with hope or despair..it can be, and many times is... grossly unfair. it can be all of these things at various times as all of us live...humans, animals, forests, the creatures of the deep blue sea. none of us get the chance to put in our preferred special perfect life order... we just have to deal with whatever it is.

i want to live as a good person. i want to work towards dignity and comfort for all living beings. i have a brain, a heart, and a soul to use the best way i can. i can't stop life from breaking bodies, spirits and hearts..i can't stop mankind from wallowing in hate and anger and violence, i can't make global warming go away and when it is raining, i can't make the freaking sun shine either.
all i can do...all any of us can do is..get up each morning, put one foot in front of the other and deal with whatever it is that life sends.
decisions, actions..free will to choose, to act...those are life's tools that i firmly hold in my hands.

it is enough to wake up and breathe, to feel my heart beat, to step forward, engage and greet.... life, whatever it means, the best that i can.

one day trump too shall pass.
and mankind will go 2 steps forward and one step back.

life is complicated but living is simple, just be and do the best that i can.