What I'm thinking today

I do not have answers.

When I was younger, I thought I could see clear answers to a lot of it. Maybe I could. Maybe experience only muddies the clear waters. Maybe though wisdom is learning that what seems clear is not.

I don't know which maybe is true, if either. Perhaps clear answers are better for you; perhaps they are better structures for thinking, for feeling, for being. Perhaps not. Perhaps the pursuit of life is about becoming confused and trying to sort it out.

You are not loved if they love the act. You are only loved if they love you.

I hold this belief tenaciously. I know I would be loved more if I acted more. I know I could do that and I wonder whether the satisfaction of more but lesser would outweigh that of less but greater. Why do I want someone to peel back my skin and look inside? What do I think they would see? Why not give them what they actually want?

The Buddha teaches that suffering is the outcome of attachment. I understand that and I believe it is a deep truth. The greatest attachment is to ourselves.

I know all this. But knowing is not feeling. Intellectually, it all makes sense but there is something in me that clings on to wanting to be unravelled. Maybe it is the small boy I once was, some dream of his that I never fulfilled (one of the many to be sure). Maybe I should not be beholden to him.

Maybe I should give more. I would get more. But I concern myself with quality, not quantity. I am confused whether I really want the former. It is not fulfilling me. Pretending it does gets me nowhere.

I do not know how to live because I do not know how to die.

I am afraid to die. I am afraid that I will have achieved nothing. I know it is meaningless to achieve anything but we do a lot of things that are meaningless.

I am afraid to die because I love living. I love the sound of the wind in the trees. It is as simple as that. Who would not fear losing this? Put aside the diverse torments, the politics, relationships, fears, dreams, loves, hates and all that shit, and isn't it just fucking wonderful to have air, water, fire and earth to be in?

Sometimes I am listening to a record and I'm thinking, a time will come when this will be the last time.

But you cannot live like that. You cannot live if you are afraid. I realise it is a huge stumbling block to life. I suppose that's why it was invented.

If you fear failure, because you fear it will mean you did not achieve, you fear beginnings that can end in failure. You fear everything.

How did I ever have children? How did I ever manage to have something that I could so tremendously fuck up? Did I not fear that I would in the end be judged as a bad father?

I suppose I was confident that I wouldn't be, although I don't know why. Or I was convinced that it was too important to let fear hold me back. Now, if that was true, why isn't anything else important enough?

I am not frightening.

I can telephone strangers. They will not snigger at my voice or refuse to help me. I do not scare children and dogs when I approach.

No, really, I don't.

posted by Dr Zen @ 3:06 pm