Low and High II

After receiving varied feedback it became evident that a more thorough exploration of the topic was required. My aim, beyond the obvious self-satisfying benefits of keeping a blog, is to be thought provoking, perhaps even somewhat insightful. I suppose the topic has been on my mind quite a bit of late. So I have decided to take the thread and forge forward into the dark woods. The thread really begins with my very good friend Tank and his comment to my previous post that I think is worth noting. He spoke of the necessity to live in the here and now, to let the adventures come when they come. Sage advice, albeit somewhat difficult to always follow.

Life is a shifting shape. It's like a water tube (I believe they may also be known as "slippery snakes"), those somewhat slimy plastic cylinders that are impossible to grasp. The trick, it seems, is in not grasping at all. Each time you try to squeeze it, the tube pops out of your hand. One might be able to grab it for a second before it squirts away again but that second is all one will ever be able to hold on to.

And so it is with life. We flail around in space, grabbing onto things and people, hoping they can provide the contentment we seek. We grasp onto fleeting glimpses of a happiness thinking it might last. It isn't until we are placid that the impossible toy is caught. Never through grasping are we to find our contentment but only with the open hands of calm patience.

Somewhere along the way I learned to accept life's gifts as they come--to give love, to accept love, and to live honestly--with others but especially with myself. My own potential for these things is not always met but I strive. Given the statements in the previous paragraph, striving might seem counterintuitive to patience. In my mind, striving for oneself, or attempting to reach a certain goal is definable and takes true patience. It is happiness that is mercurial. How do you strive after an elusive and incorporeal idea?

Perhaps it is too expansive and/or trite to summarize happiness in this way but it is as thus that I find myself. I still seek to experience the world on its own terms, I still dream dreams, I still breathe the oxygen of potentialities. The world of possibility, however, is something separate. The greatest of possibilities spring from true happiness and are not born of discomfiture.