Tag Archives: enlightenment

“Now” (What wants to be written and what applauds that choice.)

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Lamp by Bob Brown and judy Dykstra-Brown

For the past year or so, only the top 1/3 of the string light that illuminates the spiral lamp in this picturd has been lit. I have put off changing it because to do so I would have to remove each of the tiny squares of my handmade paper that I had to apply to the frame one-by-one to create the covering for the lamp.  But suddenly, just now it came fully on. And guess what had just happened? After months of struggling to finish a book about events 50 years ago that I dreaded reliving to reveal the sad ending to, I had an insight and began writing the piece below that may or may not be the beginning of a new book about the present for a change. I wrote for a half hour or so before noticing that this lamp had come fully alive again! Classier than a light bulb in a thought bubble coming out of my head. Do you think something is trying to send me a message? Two weeks later, it is still fully lit whenever I turn it on. Below is the short piece I had written, purely on impulse, in lieu of returning to the dreaded task at hand:

Now

Who am I when I am with only me? Certainly, never one person, but rather that person inside of me along with the outside me. I am not often, if ever, aware of any struggle or debate between the two of them.  It is rather that they fulfill certain roles for each other as well as for me. It is like we are all teaching each other, and the results come out in art or a poem and/or some changed behavior on my part. Don’t ask me to explain because I am teaching myself as I write this and so I don’t know the ending, either, or even the other steps to the ending. I am just here writing this instead of something else. In making this decision, I am making other decisions concerning other projects. Some will, perhaps, be cancelled. Others delayed, because a part of me wants to tell the rest of me some truth about all of us, and it can’t easily be told or revealed through all that other busyness. I need to choose what I am writing now, that wants to be written so badly that it has taken over my consciousness, at least for the amount of time it will take for whatever it wants to be said to be said.

Where is the best place to start? I guess just wherever that pilot steering the ship of me for the moment decides to take us. I am home alone, with the exception of three dogs in their beds in the doggie domain I added on to the house a number of years ago or on cushioned chairs on the terrace under the overhangs where Xmas lights from two Xmases ago blink in strings in the Virginia Creeper that forms a two to three foot curtain over the edge of the terrace roof. . . .

 (It is at this point, as I looked out through the window at the Xmas lights, that I noticed the reflection in the glass of the spiral light behind me that had become fully lit, as though applauding my new inspiration. Has living in the painful past for so long as I struggle to complete the book kept me from living in the present? I guess whatever I choose to believe will determine my present as well as my future.)

When is Enough, Enough?

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  When Is Enough Enough?

To want all or to want nothing are both dangerous. Those who want all are the conquerors and exploiters and power lords who have brought the world to the state it is in today. They will exploit the poor and the weak but get their feelings of the most power from exploiting those equal to them in power. The world is a game to these people and we are all pawns.

But to want nothing may lead to despair. True, in a few holy men, it has been the path to enlightenment; but for those living within the world and not to the side of it, to want nothing can lead to apathy and powerlessness.

I think the true enlightenment lies in wanting enough and then wanting enough for others as well. This doesn’t have to be done by charity. It can be done by the way we vote, the way we treat our neighbors, the way we invest our money and the way we conduct our own businesses. It can be done by the way we bargain for a trinket on the beach or handle wrong change.

Sylvia Plath was probably correct in her statement, “Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.” When the richest woman in the world commits suicide or the richest men in the world exploit those living hand-to-mouth, one has to wonder what great lack they are trying to fill and whether in fact they have ever discovered the secret of what the world is really about.

 

This is a rewrite of an essay written three years ago. The prompt today was enlighten.