Just a Citizen, Aka J.A.C.
HOWDY ...
Just sitting here staring out into the not unusual foggy blanket of a Central Coast day, minding my own business, when my grandson runs up, and in his 3 year old voice, says: Granpa ... What are doing?
And being the good Grandpa ... thinking long and deeply about my answer, I say: "Huhh"??
Before I can regain my focus, he's gone like the wind, invisibly darting around the corner to play with his cousin (the true Princess of the family), my equally beloved younger granddaughter.
As I think about his fleeting curiousness, and the innocent audacity of such a question ... so what am I doing?
On a lazy snugly bug Sunday afternoon here I sit, entranced with the sheer pleasure of the nothingness of my mind, except for the oft familiar, intentional walls and electrified mental fences erected momentarily to keep reality out.
His question, for no good reason blasting through this momentarily self induced Ozone protective mental sheath. I find it wickedly difficult to return to my previous luxurious pastime of nothing sitting.
Perhaps it isn't the question, but the messenger? After all I would stop all things to share a minute of life with he or the magnetic granddaughter.
But he was gone, and the question was left like the sweet perfume of Jasmine wafting through my mind like a drunken brass bell staggering persistently from side to side echoing between my ears.
What are I doing? Hmmm ... I guess just considering how a life of service to people matters? How it reverberates through my life and into that of my family, and now into my ever growing extended family.
Such purity, such innocence at his age. Such hope at my youngest granddaughter's age. A prayerful joy shared by all of us lucky enough to enjoy the love of our families, and wonder at the miracle of life. Our legacy lies with the cherished them.
I think, what a special life to have had, and then after all that to have been given them too. It gives one grand pause, and then you find yourself sitting on a quiet fogged soaked day companioned only by the random and wondrous ponderings of such questions. As opposed to the more rude questions and daily mindless turmoils of how to pay the bills, buy the food, and just get thru the day.
Allowing one's mind therefore to thread aimlessly in the pleasure of such questions is a gift in itself. A worthy escape one must give to oneself, as often as one can legitimately get away with it. Sundays are good for this type of thing.
Returning to thoughts of Service ... If that is accurate? Service To, For, and On Behalf of the people, who for no apparent reason seemingly come to you for help/assistance. Believing and trusting that you can and will provide such support for them as your objective primary motivation. The intention of helping, giving unconditionally.
After all that's what you told your mother you were doing? For no other reason, other than by giving so, you make their lives better.
But as is true with all paradoxical conundrums, there is the persistent influence of misdirection, as there can be no giving without getting. Ahh yes, there it is the inevitable Ying and Yang of it ... the Pushme -- Pullme ... that magical seesaw of moral balance.
What does one get for giving? The unintentional, but warmly received natural reciprocation of the reflective joy of their success. In their success comes the very light by which you might see your own, and thus guide yourself to your next step in the mysterious darkness of life's twist and turns. Seemingly this circle just keeps spiraling up into greater self investment and personal growth in happiness; healthfulness; fulfillment, and light.
Of course no one, sadly these days, seems to believe as much, in the long term benefits of this innate struggle. If we ever really did? So we are wantonly left with the sadder and more vacuous skepticism, social disbelief and societal disappointment. Eroding our cultural group self esteem.
What we have become more use to seeing plastered and clanging across our print, radio, T.V., and computer media is the seeming inevitable dizzying nauseating spiraling down of officious self-celebratory destruction, taking a bit of all of us, with each one of them, as they hit us -- left and right -- front and back. They and their media savvy agents remaining incorrigibly and blythefully unaware of their intemperate effects.
At times it seems as if our society doesn't believe in giving, virtue, and integrity. Then by contrast, daily we live for it and by it in our own families. Our interpersonal rule of life. Our lifegiving, life affirming glue holding our families together. It's here within me and it is what I protect. But where is it out there?
Our very cultural life's blood? When we don't get this same sense of judicious selfless giving, in our elected and corporate institutions we are left with the tarnished reality of what we can only conclude to be the more egregious sin of perceived selfishness. We feel that uncomfortable, yet familiar sick sense of societal and personal betrayal.
We worry, see and think it will infect our friends, our families, and our children corrupting and erode our interpersonal relationships. We start questioning what does matter? What do we live for and by? Are there no rules? What happened to the Ten Commandments?
Are there no rules for the elected? Lately even the process of selection seems contaminated. Another big bite of trust. Like all resources you can't keep eating, taking and consuming trust without losing it too, altogether. Fortunately it can be a renewable resource for some. Hopefully for us, our envisioned democratic selves.
Perhaps there is a sadder new rule for our modern millennium? "What's good for me Shall forcibly be good for thee." Not a very warm fuzzy.
This may explain why we all feel so let down by our politicians... and perhaps others as well, who appear as a whole, to have determined that it is better to have the light shine on them, rather than to shine it ahead of them for others.
Sadly their naive destructive gift to us is darkness, often enveloping all of us like a heavy wet rag. Suffocating the very air out of our struggling hearts.
So here I are on a rainy Sunday, and that is what I am doing. Waxing poetically on such things? Such that perhaps by envisioning understanding it, I might then help hold a light with my neighbors, friends, and family. So that together we can all find our way to the benefits of service to and for the Bigger Good of helping each other.
Rather than the road we seem to be going down, if we are to believe what we see out there? There must be a road we can go up. Where what is best for Thee, is best for Me.
We ride the same track in the same boxcar, only denial keeps us from seeing ourselves in our neighbors, friends, and family. We rise and fall on the same tide.
Never-the-less, thru our children and with our Grandchildren, there is always hope! Our legacies of hope and promise to future generations.
That is the intention and promise of service ... To give back ... not to monopolize the light, but rather, to help light our way together to a better tomorrow.
That is: what I are doing
Con Carinos ...
Just sitting here staring out into the not unusual foggy blanket of a Central Coast day, minding my own business, when my grandson runs up, and in his 3 year old voice, says: Granpa ... What are doing?
And being the good Grandpa ... thinking long and deeply about my answer, I say: "Huhh"??
Before I can regain my focus, he's gone like the wind, invisibly darting around the corner to play with his cousin (the true Princess of the family), my equally beloved younger granddaughter.
As I think about his fleeting curiousness, and the innocent audacity of such a question ... so what am I doing?
On a lazy snugly bug Sunday afternoon here I sit, entranced with the sheer pleasure of the nothingness of my mind, except for the oft familiar, intentional walls and electrified mental fences erected momentarily to keep reality out.
His question, for no good reason blasting through this momentarily self induced Ozone protective mental sheath. I find it wickedly difficult to return to my previous luxurious pastime of nothing sitting.
Perhaps it isn't the question, but the messenger? After all I would stop all things to share a minute of life with he or the magnetic granddaughter.
But he was gone, and the question was left like the sweet perfume of Jasmine wafting through my mind like a drunken brass bell staggering persistently from side to side echoing between my ears.
What are I doing? Hmmm ... I guess just considering how a life of service to people matters? How it reverberates through my life and into that of my family, and now into my ever growing extended family.
Such purity, such innocence at his age. Such hope at my youngest granddaughter's age. A prayerful joy shared by all of us lucky enough to enjoy the love of our families, and wonder at the miracle of life. Our legacy lies with the cherished them.
I think, what a special life to have had, and then after all that to have been given them too. It gives one grand pause, and then you find yourself sitting on a quiet fogged soaked day companioned only by the random and wondrous ponderings of such questions. As opposed to the more rude questions and daily mindless turmoils of how to pay the bills, buy the food, and just get thru the day.
Allowing one's mind therefore to thread aimlessly in the pleasure of such questions is a gift in itself. A worthy escape one must give to oneself, as often as one can legitimately get away with it. Sundays are good for this type of thing.
Returning to thoughts of Service ... If that is accurate? Service To, For, and On Behalf of the people, who for no apparent reason seemingly come to you for help/assistance. Believing and trusting that you can and will provide such support for them as your objective primary motivation. The intention of helping, giving unconditionally.
After all that's what you told your mother you were doing? For no other reason, other than by giving so, you make their lives better.
But as is true with all paradoxical conundrums, there is the persistent influence of misdirection, as there can be no giving without getting. Ahh yes, there it is the inevitable Ying and Yang of it ... the Pushme -- Pullme ... that magical seesaw of moral balance.
What does one get for giving? The unintentional, but warmly received natural reciprocation of the reflective joy of their success. In their success comes the very light by which you might see your own, and thus guide yourself to your next step in the mysterious darkness of life's twist and turns. Seemingly this circle just keeps spiraling up into greater self investment and personal growth in happiness; healthfulness; fulfillment, and light.
Of course no one, sadly these days, seems to believe as much, in the long term benefits of this innate struggle. If we ever really did? So we are wantonly left with the sadder and more vacuous skepticism, social disbelief and societal disappointment. Eroding our cultural group self esteem.
What we have become more use to seeing plastered and clanging across our print, radio, T.V., and computer media is the seeming inevitable dizzying nauseating spiraling down of officious self-celebratory destruction, taking a bit of all of us, with each one of them, as they hit us -- left and right -- front and back. They and their media savvy agents remaining incorrigibly and blythefully unaware of their intemperate effects.
At times it seems as if our society doesn't believe in giving, virtue, and integrity. Then by contrast, daily we live for it and by it in our own families. Our interpersonal rule of life. Our lifegiving, life affirming glue holding our families together. It's here within me and it is what I protect. But where is it out there?
Our very cultural life's blood? When we don't get this same sense of judicious selfless giving, in our elected and corporate institutions we are left with the tarnished reality of what we can only conclude to be the more egregious sin of perceived selfishness. We feel that uncomfortable, yet familiar sick sense of societal and personal betrayal.
We worry, see and think it will infect our friends, our families, and our children corrupting and erode our interpersonal relationships. We start questioning what does matter? What do we live for and by? Are there no rules? What happened to the Ten Commandments?
Are there no rules for the elected? Lately even the process of selection seems contaminated. Another big bite of trust. Like all resources you can't keep eating, taking and consuming trust without losing it too, altogether. Fortunately it can be a renewable resource for some. Hopefully for us, our envisioned democratic selves.
Perhaps there is a sadder new rule for our modern millennium? "What's good for me Shall forcibly be good for thee." Not a very warm fuzzy.
This may explain why we all feel so let down by our politicians... and perhaps others as well, who appear as a whole, to have determined that it is better to have the light shine on them, rather than to shine it ahead of them for others.
Sadly their naive destructive gift to us is darkness, often enveloping all of us like a heavy wet rag. Suffocating the very air out of our struggling hearts.
So here I are on a rainy Sunday, and that is what I am doing. Waxing poetically on such things? Such that perhaps by envisioning understanding it, I might then help hold a light with my neighbors, friends, and family. So that together we can all find our way to the benefits of service to and for the Bigger Good of helping each other.
Rather than the road we seem to be going down, if we are to believe what we see out there? There must be a road we can go up. Where what is best for Thee, is best for Me.
We ride the same track in the same boxcar, only denial keeps us from seeing ourselves in our neighbors, friends, and family. We rise and fall on the same tide.
Never-the-less, thru our children and with our Grandchildren, there is always hope! Our legacies of hope and promise to future generations.
That is the intention and promise of service ... To give back ... not to monopolize the light, but rather, to help light our way together to a better tomorrow.
That is: what I are doing
Con Carinos ...
posted by don regan at 10:22 AM
1 Comments:
You need some love dude!
I am sad for you.
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