pull those threads through

Looking back on past writings, it's really fascinating to see what part of your thought processes seem systemic. Some ideologies keep turning like a machine, some evolve, and some seem so foreign I wonder who that person was that wrote it.

I have a feeling that one day myspace (where my blog used to be-- that's how long it's been) is no longer going to exist. But there are some threads from there I'd like to pull through into my present life. If only to remind myself what I thought and how I thought. So here's one.

Originally dated May 29, 2007.

I've noticed that, often, the advice and wisdom I enjoy the most, is the advice which serves to validate and affirm positive life choices that I'm already making. That's GREAT advice! I think to myself, and feel smug that my shit is so together.

Which is probably why I think back to the parts of What The Bleep Do We Know that totally back up my Buddhist practice, while I shy away, or at least, seem unable to really explain well, one of the most fasciating points of the whole thing: that we are totally and chemically addicted to our emotions.

Even the good ones. Even positive experiences create an addictive synapse in your brain, and cause a chemical withdrawl when you try to change your behavior.

It's a tumultuous life to lead, being addicted to emotions.

Which is maybe why so many people choose to swap out that addiction for an addiciton to something else.

It's easier to be addicted to alcohol or nicotine or drugs. At the very least, more predictable. At this stage in the game, we are inundated with the outline of what will happen to you if you drink, smoke, or do drugs too much. We know the course it will run.

And in a way, the safety in that course is what you buy when you trade in that other unwieldy addiction.

Numbed out or strung out cancels out the kind of "messed up" you can be off your emotions. And I've never had a hangover half as bad as the chemical withdrawl of a particular emotion.

Maybe that's the reason for my seemingly endless karmic nearness to substance abuse. The continued presence of my mother in the lives of everyone I meet.

Maybe, in a way, I'm envious of what seems to be/tricks us into believing is a simple straight forward addiction like nicotine or booze....you crave it, you find it, you get it.

But me...I'm addicted to things that are much harder to nail down. I'm addicted to the past, to what might have been. I'm addicted to the future, to what might be. I'm addicted to lost causes.

All of which have no cure and no real fix...besides maybe art, or daydreaming.

Luckily for me, though, I am also addicted to changing everything I possibly can for the better; addicted to a real and true inner Human Revolution for myself and for those I care about.

And again, luckily for me, for maybe the first time in my whole life, I am also addicted to the present. The current moment, more and more, these past few months, finally feels like a real and actual now-- instead of the previews I have to sit through until I get to do what I really want. The really real moments.

I am and always have been addicted to the rigorous and specific plans I laid out for myself. This has been the hardest lesson to get through my stubborn skull.

I have-- begrudgingly-- allowed myself to loosen the GRIP I had on most of these plans over the last few years. But as much as I still whole heartedly work to shape my life and my future, more and more, I see now how ARBITRARY most of these plans are. Ideas I had as an almost kid that I refused to change.

The plans themselves weren't even so great, but Oh, how their familiarity was! This intense, chemical soothing. That's what made returning to them over and over as fulfilling as I can wrap my brain around any drug being.

More and more, I'm realizing how over-rated hopes are.

Not HOPE.... not hope in general.... I am ever hopeful and I don't think I could be jaded if I tried (I think I did try once and failed miserably at it.).

But particular hopes. Plans.

Because while you're wrapped up in the plans you made 5 or 10 years ago, you're missing what's real and all around you.

Hopes are intangible and move nothing until they are backed by something else. Until something makes them, instead, a determination.Which always leads to a reality.

And then, when it really happens, and it is no longer theorhetical but concrete, it will never pull away from you.

It's there, in the history of your life. You'll have pictures to remind you. And stories.

And you realize, hopefully not too late (not that I'm even sure I believe in 'too late') that what DOES happen will always be better than what could have happened.