Patience

Patience is something that I have truly had to practice in my life. I have heard it is a virtue and understood that it is something of serious value to a developing individual, but to truly understand it has taken me on a journey of deep insight and discomfort. At my age, about to turn 30, I still find myself so much in a hurry and wanting to shape everything in a manor that slows it all down. Even this has a certain hectic vibration to it, "wanting to shape everything in a manor that slows it all down."

Wanting is without a doubt one of the strangest and most dualistic experiences I have encountered throughout my life. To want something is not only a mental experience, that intention of wanting makes a physical pull as well. Whether it is conscious or unconscious, once I have decided that I want something I begin to shape every experience into how I can get that thing.

For example, I want sex. When I have that want, I begin looking for someone. So to begin looking for someone I begin going to places where someone might be. This might lead to bars, parties, somewhere to eat, etc. The elements that schedule my time are pushed and pulled towards where that potential connection might occur. Then once it is found, what next? I have just spent my energy and time seeking this person, convinced them to fuck me, and then what? The want has been satiated.

What's next is typically the emergence of yet another want. Our days begin to become filled with the quest to satisfy this little being inside of us that must be fed, lest it becomes irritated and starts to tug at our internal strings. So for most of us, the day is a long series of want/satiate with a little sprinkle of want/disappointment. I wake, i'm hungry. I eat, i'm thirsty. I'm full, I shit. My hair is a mess, I work it. My clothes are old, I buy more. I'm hungry, I eat. I'm tired, I drink coffee.I'm wired, I get stoned. I digest, I shit. I'm bored, I I I i iiiiiiiiiiii.............

It really becomes a story of self-indulgence, all of this wanting. But you might say that you have to eat and sleep and and and, well sure of course. But what happens if we really stop taking out the wants? Pick one. Any one want and see what happens when that want comes up. Do you need it for your survival or mental health? Are you justifying that you need it just so you can have it? Does the craving go away when you don't satisfy it?

For me, refined sugar has been a kryptonite for the majority of my life. My mother has a serious sweet tooth and I adopted that trait for sure. I think most children growing up in the world today have some relationship with sugar. When that desire comes up, though, I drink water and wait 30 minutes. If the craving for sugar comes up again, I will usually drink some more water and wait again. 98% of the time that craving goes away, but the 2% that remains I usually satisfy it in someway. Not by running to 7-11 and getting the mormon family sized candy bar, but I will eat something sweet.

My point being, this life is here for us to experiment with. If we let ourselves fall into the rut that is urge satisfaction, we may just fall into a funky pit that becomes harder and harder to climb out of the further we go. Remember, though, change on this planet happens very slowly and deliberately. Have you ever sat and watched a Ponderosa grow, or stayed to see the tides change? We are no different in our quest to grow.

Cars as Killers

Riding, eating, sleeping. Riding, eating, sleeping. Riding, eating, sleeping. These become the basic tenets of my day, interspersed by the not-so-random occurrences of serendipity. The days sort of meld together into this infinite oneness, names of places fading into the proverbial dust i'm leaving in my wake. The urge to move forward on my journey compels me to keep pushing in moments of hunger, exhaustion, and sometimes even ordinariness.

Yet there is one thing that will stop me in my tracks every time, "roadkill." If the once living creature has been repeatedly run over by vehicles and is well on its way of reconsumption by the cycle, I won't stop, but if it is fresh, I will usually hop off my bike. I find Owls, Hawks, Coyotes, Rabbits, you name it. All having been extinguished for thrusting themselves into the age-old existential query, prompting me to ask why it was they decided to cross the road just then.

In the past few days, I have found some of the most beautiful Owls on the side of the road. Freshly struck by some speeding automobile careening towards their destiny of misunderstanding and misinterpretation. This amazingly sacred animal lost its life purely for another being's want of rapidity and immediacy.

As I stopped to pick up the Owl and place them in the tall grass alongside the road, offering prayers of a swift and effortless return to bliss, I looked around me and saw nothing but remnants of this "need for speed." The obsession is pervasive and touches all of us. I am no different, only that I have ventured to step outside of my previous conditioning to heal a deep wound inflicted upon me by the culture that came before me.

So where does it come from? How did we arrive in this almost helpless state of collectively rushing towards the edge of an ecological cliff? The more I see, the more I hear, the more I feel...it comes to me that the marriage between money and oil has created some sort of dark alchemical  reaction, holding humans hostage to the lust of the curse. The thirst is insatiable. Many people look at me on a bicycle and remark how they could never do what I am doing. I always laugh with them and assure them they could, they need only start by stepping out.

But so many of the sleeping masses are unaware that they have yet to become hip. Hip to the reality that they are enslaved to an energy sucking machine, one that uses their labor and spiritual energy to hold the rest of the world hostage in a game of chicken. Wars rage on so their ease of travel to and fro can cost $2.19 a gallon, the lungs of the earth are slashed and burned so the grills can be piled high with cheap beef, mountaintops are cut and mined, radiation is pumped into the ground, rivers are dammed, and fracking becomes king...all for the images of modern day sunday slavery to be pumped mercilessly into their awaiting hypothalamus. (TV will rot your brain, Kids.)

Really, what I truly wish for is for everyone to slow the fuck down. We are not so important, people. Our journey is unfolding and all of the rushing around to do do do is really starting to bum out the rest of the soon-to-be extinct world. What do we think will happen when we reach the cliff? "G.O.D." is going to come down with his benevolent and calloused hands to build us a bridge to Zion? Maybe with our infinite wisdom and inherent awesomeness I see being touted so often, we could really collectively come up with some solutions that bring us back to earth.

Respect to all of you out there doing the work. Keep inspiring everyone you can to be their highest selves. We've all got miles to go before we sleep, miles to go...