Waking Up

"In the words of the ancients, one should make his decision within the space of seven breaths. It is a matter of being determined and having the spirit to break through to the other side."

-Yamamoto Tsunetomo , Hagakure

There are only three steadfast things in life. Change, paradox, and humor. My life begins anew every moment, with every breath. We have lots of decisions to make and should be swift in our deliberation. The less you try to figure out life's mysteries and just go with it, you can laugh easily and more often. The harder you fight change and trying to solve life's riddles, you essentially try to halt the metaphorical river that is life. This will make you sour and unhappy. I'll tell you from 24 years of my life that the minute I stopped calculating my life, that is when I began to truly live.

"It is a good viewpoint to see the world as a dream. When you have something like a nightmare, you will wake up and tell yourself that it was only a dream. It is said that the world we live in is not a bit different from this."

- Hagakure

I am an undying optimist. I truly believe that it is possible for every person to awake from the trance they are in. By trance I mean the illusions that convince a person they are not capable of this or that. Often times these are merely excuses and not genuine obstacles. It is perfectly fine to be frightened of what we might see when we finally wake up and encounter our existence. But the sensation of truly being alive is infinitely better than the stale emotional cycles we often trap ourselves into. I'm talking about inner freedom.

The most common case of these harmful cycles I see are unhealthy relationships. To me a relationship should be about two independent beings playfully enjoying and benefitting from each other's company. If one were to leave the relationship, both would be thankful for the time they spent together. But I see romantic couples bickering over stupid shit that subtly says to me one mate is only waiting for the other to save them. That love is the missing puzzle piece in their life. They believe the emotional cycle of fighting, breaking up, and rejoining is healthy, when in reality it is just comfortable and predictable. They create an artificial "drama" to simulate true change and development in their relationship.

We all have excuses for not fulfilling our potential. Deep down we know that we are trapped and are just too lazy to find the bars of our cage. Perhaps this generation has been wrongfully taught that efficiency and quickness is a virtue and have little capacity for dealing with frustration. Patience is inversely related to efficiency. The less time it takes for us to microwave our dinner, the more impatient we become. Yes, I'm guilty of this too.

Make the decision to live. It's not written anywhere that we must choose to live our lives. We can sit back and let other forces govern it for us. That is a legitimate and very common occurence. You fall in line with what people expect of you while ignoring your true expectations of yourself. And you suffer for this from the anxiety. You have seven breaths to choose to wake up and go out there and live. Live with every nerve exposed.

There is overwhelming beauty in our daily lives. The mundane tasks we often hurry through contain a lot of wisdom and can tell us much about ourselves. But I'm not here to tell you what I do in my boring life. This blog is a place where I simply offer the fruits that grow from my tree of knowledge. It is for people to take advantage of just as I do whenever I have a good conversation. I learn and then learn some more. I am a motherfucking learning machine. I crave frustration deep down because it is a chance for me to become better. I try to do something new everyday and interpret the same things in a different way. It keeps my perspective fresh. As the saying goes, "you never step in the same river twice."