Giving Up Sometimes Works
Do you feel it too? This incessant, taught, taut, driving force propelling you to achieve?
I’ve always been focused on achieving. I will admit it, it is my own measuring stick but still, I admit it, my ego is big. I need to do more, be more, reach the top, be a big drop in a small bowl. There is this deep, deep feeling that I’m always behind, I’ll never catch up, a nervousness, a fear - that propels me to do more, be more, reach the top … You get what I’m saying, I’m sure. It’s the refrain, the chorus of the cultural record we all play, the music we grow up with and dance to.
Well, I’m slowly trying to move away from that. What is, is. Stop struggling against this phantom, this “it” that really can’t be defined except as a shadow thrown by a man or woman named “Jones”.
I’ve been selling EVERYTHING. I’ll only have my notebooks and books. Stored in all parts of the world. Maybe one day, someone will find them and it will help them, they (my writings) will in some way, push back against the damage done by our insidious, cultural drive with and towards death.
"Man is born free, and he is everywhere in chains." - Henry David Thoreau
I’m gonna kick back. Tell people I love them more. Hug more. Look at the world more honestly and with repose. I’m going to get out there and enjoy the big wide world, poor but richer for it.
A poem tapped out this morning while singing along to Neil Y.
Do You “Get It”?
”I do not seek. I find.”
Tired.
Tired of trying to get it
trying to make it
trying to be it
trying to have it.
Tuckered. Puckered out
from wanting it
needing it, chasing it,
from being measured by it
from being possessed by it.
I give up.
Now 60 and
each day learning
again
how to tie my shoes,
fuck IT
and all IT asks me
to do.
Let it come to me
through the sweet
blades of grass
tickling my toes.
Let it find me
or not.
I’ve run out of time.
Now - I’m only
interested in
what has always
been mine.
June 29th, 2022, Matagalpa, Nicaragua. Cold and rainy.