“There are love dogs no one knows the names of. Give your life to be one of them.” --Rumi
"Everybody at the speed of light tends to become a nobody."
--Marshall McLuhan
What if the key to suffering is being a somebody. What if you planted a hundred trees, little trees or even seedlings or even just tree seeds, in the night while no one was watching? In a hundred years, the leaf canopy would spread and you would be…
Imagine yourself gone and the results of your deeds outlasting you.
The deed is the thing. The deed remains in the stream of things.
It is the same with people. Your impact on them outlasts your own small sacred shot at life. Or scared shot. Or scarred shot. You know how deep an impact difficult, demanding, dramatic people have on you. Their contractions lodge inside you. We suffer in order to realize that that contraction does not adequately describe reality. Does not do her justice. Cannot cover the beautiful, frightening, amazing bases.
And so we must open and perish.
Transparency is all the rage right now. Transparency means see through. Transparency, according to Wikipedia, “implies openness, communication, and accountability.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we lived transparent lives? Woke up and went through each day openly responding to situations, speaking clearly, and taking the blame? Gave away all the credit. Waited without claiming results. That is traveling light.
We are traveling light. Light bent interestingly backwards to show the world itself. Neitzsche says, “We have art so that we are not destroyed by the truth.” I wonder if art leads us to that destruction with a tender hand? “Let go of the earth, white hand,” the poet Richard Schramm writes. “With nothing below, we are rooted in silence, waiting.”
That is our work. To let go. To wait and see. To travel light, with some singing and head scratching along the way. Light travels. Is it so terrifying, knowing actions outlive forms?
That is our work. To let go. To wait and see. To travel light, with some singing and head scratching along the way. Light travels. Is it so terrifying, knowing actions outlive forms?
