Question Those Whose Livelihoods Are Built Upon Anger

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a note of caution.

We live in an age of media figures, and many of those figures have developed as their stock in trade a certain manufactured outrage. Their harangues are visible nightly on the television and audible at all hours on talk radio, and while I personally perceive them to be tilted heavily to one side of the political spectrum, there are certainly examples on both the left and the right.

It's no wonder that they deal in anger. It's a potent fare, and one that can be cultivated with relatively little expense or effort. And because it naturally disengages our ability to reason clearly, its inclusion in any messaging product makes the quality of that product much less critical. If I can succeed in making you angry about a topic, I can sway your opinion more easily than if you remain dispassionate. An unmoved listener requires more evidence to be convinced than an enflamed one does.

I bring this up not to dissuade you from one political position or another, but merely to point out that a state of anger, while potentially very motivating, ultimately undermines the impulse toward peace, the impulse toward love. The merchants of anger therefore cannot move our world in a more peaceful direction, and do not have the interests of a more loving universe in their hearts. They may actually be well intentioned, in a misled way. But they cannot inspire us to greatness -- only to rash action or impotent frustration.

The next time something on television or radio angers you, ask yourself whether you are angry at the information itself, or if the person delivering the information is purposefully phrasing it with the intention of making you angry. If the information is what rouses your ire, take that emotion and find a way to act constructively on it. On the other hand, if it is the messenger who is goading you to fury, consider whether he or she has your best interests at heart.

In any event, remember that anger is most suitable when it is a response to injustice, and that justice requires both reason and compassion. Then cool your thoughts and contemplate what can be done in a way that will better and brighten the world for those around you.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the ability to temper one's temper.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Make a Habit of Living

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with advice that I have long known yet somehow dropped of late from my routine.

The state of joy is only very rarely one that is delivered to us. More often by far, it is fought for, won, and earned through effort. When we long for joy, when we languish wearily awaiting a state of delight, we should not be surprised at its failure to appear.

There are times when the doing of things does not seem worthwhile. We all experience that feeling, the lassitude that says, "What is the point?" But the sensation of ennui, of purposelessness, is an illusion. It is a mask that creeps across the world because we have allowed ourselves to disconnect from that which fundamentally drives us.

The more we act, the more we work toward dreams, toward desires -- the more we do -- then in return, the more we are alive.

Weekly, daily, hourly, we should make effort.

We should undertake.

We should habituate ourselves to action.

Because when the doing of things is reflexive, the accomplishing of things is guaranteed -- even if not every accomplishment goes as expected.

Thank you, goddess of love, for good habits.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Where We Are

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with this:

There.

A point in space, surrounded by infinity.

That's important: surrounded by infinity.

Too easily, we think of what is missing, what we lack.

But infinity allows for no true void. Everything is there. Everyone.

She. He. You.

We long for that touch.

Where is it?

There.

In the sea of all that enfolds us.

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Thank you, goddess of love, for everything.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Birthdays

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with wishes of happiness and joy.

Although we should not need any special occasion to celebrate our love for those in our lives who are particularly special to us, it is nonetheless a gift that tradition tells us to commemorate birthdays. We get busy, we get neglectful, and we sometimes forget, in the course of days or weeks, to speak of and show our affection with the frequency we ought to. Birthdays give us a nice prod, which is something that we as human beings often need.

Today is my most exceptionally excellent friend Strumpet's birthday, and I hope that it is the absolute best that it can be, because she is a blessing upon my life.

Thank you, goddess of love, for friends and birthdays, and the chance to share with others the warmth that they both make us feel.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

A Brief Time in a Garden

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a scene.

I am on a bench in an enormous garden. A stream moves and speaks through the greenery behind me, speaks of the blue overhead, streaked with fragile white clouds. It speaks of beauty hurrying past me, from so far away to yet farther still. Its voice hangs there, constant and quick -- a small cousin to the mighty river a few miles distant, somehow louder in tone for all its lesser size. The air is cool. The only noise is the stream, although murmurs of birds and distant park-goers can also be heard.

Noisy, rushing, alive, vibrant -- how is a stream so peaceful when it is also all these things?

The answer must be that peace is not stillness. Peace is not quiet.

Peace is the calm that comes of doing what is your nature while the world moves on around you.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the subtly spoken words of a brook on its way to the sea.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Brightness and Air

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with an allegory.

Along a mountain pathway, I came to a place where the trail split. I had been climbing some time already, across rocky ground, sharp and ugly. Away in the distance, when I paused to look up, the sky and horizon showed me unreachable beauty. But close at hand, the terrain had only scrapes and exhaustion to give me.

At the split in the trail, I faced a choice. To one side the way became even steeper, but led up past boulders and jagged outcrops toward a sunlit summit, where I knew from the guidebook that green trees and a bubbling spring could be found, along with a quaint little hiker's refuge that had been built there long ago. The other path led down, straighter and easier -- into the mouth of a cave. The shadows inside had an unhealthy cast, as though even light found the air of the cave stale ... debilitating.

Who makes the choice to descend into darkness, to be shut off from any offer of comfort, just because the pull of gravity makes that direction less an investment in effort? Who picks cold, blanketing blackness over a strenuous push toward achievement, toward the splendor of all the world?

The proper choice seems so obvious, does it not?

Climb the mountain. It is gorgeous up there. You will be able to see so far.

Climb the mountain.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the path that should so plainly be taken.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Selfish or Selfless?

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a need to help.

It's some years now since I started this blog, and while I did so mainly in an attempt at self-administered therapy, I've also always had a hope that my thoughts here would make themselves useful to others as well. This may be selflessness or it may be egotism -- most likely a combination of both.

Whatever it is, the desire has gotten stronger of late. As I ask myself why, the answer I come up with is that I yearn to know that my thoughts are important to others.

This is different than knowing that I am important to others. I have friends and family to whom, clearly, I am indispensable. But I also have this interior world, which is constantly churning and only occasionally given voice to those around me.

And this place within that I think of as my self wishes to be useful -- wishes to matter.

I have something inside me that finds less expression than it wants, that receives less recognition than it hungers for.

Is this impulse in some way the exact opposite of what it wants to be? It desires to help, yet that desire seems to be quite self-centered, does it not?

Recognition.

Importance.

Do we really give only so that we may in turn receive these things?

Or do we give because it feels good -- and because all too many things in this world do the reverse?

I don't have a ready answer.

If we do the best that we can, if we strive to be the best that we can, and if what we get in return does not make us sufficiently happy -- then how are we to retain any sense of worth?

And without that sense of worth, how do we go on?

Hope can sustain us, but what can sustain hope?

Perhaps a better question to ask, instead of these bleak and unanswerable ones, is, "Do others feel as I do?"

For if the answer is "yes" then the course becomes clear: find those others, and find a way to make them feel worthwhile.

Sooner or later, someone will do the same for you.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the ability to think things through.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

The Sigh of a Breeze Through Green Boughs, and

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with two sensations that began and ended my day.

A number of less pleasant things happened in between, but I had the good luck of at least two moments of beauty, each far more worthy of being focused upon than the annoyances and aggravations that separated them.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the veil of clouds that parts just long enough to reveal our crescent moon, backlit with Earthshine and hanging just under one achingly bright planet.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

My goal of the moment

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a kernel of purpose: to try to make things better.

This is what I do, and all I can do.

Try to make things better.

Try to encourage people to be nicer.

Try to have a sense of humor.

Look for smiles.

Defuse anger.

Plead the case of hope.

Remember the deepness and the breadth of love.

This is what I do, and all I can do.

Thank you, goddess of love, for meaning.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Request

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a request for hope.

If you can spare a moment to pray to whatever deity you hold dear, I'd appreciate your asking, "Please let there be good news for Devotee's friend who has cancer."

Longtime readers of this blog will recognize that I have no expectations that prayers will or won't be answered.

But I'm assuming they can't hurt.

Thank you, goddess of love, for friends -- however long we have them.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Valentine's Day 55

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a poem for you on Valentine's Day.

May pure desire

stride through your door

tall and dark

or with flame-red hair

looking through eyes

that see only you

speaking with lips

that tell true

May you know

within a single glance

that Fate has spoke

and not mere chance

that Cupid's bow has sweetly sung

and your heart,

however old,

is young

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Thank you, goddess of love, for this day celebrating all your work.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

A bit of a lecture. Listen in if you care to.

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a brief and simple message.

If you wish to be cared for, you must first care.

If you wish to be loved, you must first love yourself, and then be willing to extend that love to others.

If you wish for a hero to ride in and save you, you must first be willing to become a hero yourself.

You and I -- we are the best this world has to offer. If we wait to be saved, instead of acting ourselves, then we deserve whatever disappointments that we get.

Thank you, goddess of love, for reflections -- they show us where the work must begin.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Rinse and Repeat

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a sense being on a too-familiar path.

I conceived of this religion from a point of desperation, a borderland where hope for humanity and the expectation of happiness seemed in danger of falling behind me, while ahead lay only desolation.

Have you been to this place? Have you seen too clearly the warts and wickedness that people choose to show the world, while joy and decency appear only as far-off heat shimmers in a desert? Having reached and been disappointed by too many mirages, do you now doubt that the desert itself has any end at all?

Well, if you are reading this, then you have proof that things are not so bad as you fear.

I am no mirage. I am real. I care about people -- I care about how the world turns out. If you feel the same way, then we have cause for jubilation. This life is not all carelessness and hurtfulness and callous disregard for others.

You are there, and I am here, and between us, I assure you there are a thousand like us, a legion caught by our own ability to imagine a world much better than this one.

What we must do, you and I, is to stop seeing that imagination as a curse that holds us in a place ever-inferior to our mind’s green landscapes, and see it instead as a gift and a tool.

For without those who can imagine a better world, how can the world ever improve itself?

Let us step off the path that leads into the desert -- because the desert, too, is just a figment of our imaginations.

Stand with me, clear-eyed, in the real world, and remember that all our imaginings have been spurred by true things, by things we have actually seen. Having seen good, we can create better. We must simply have the will to try.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the ability to recognize, to remember -- to rededicate.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Philosophy from a 1914 Pulp 55

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a not-so-literary reference to a book that I have not actually read. Nonetheless, it is a source of wonder to me.

Pellucidar:

The interior world

Vivid ever with its unsetting sun

a realm of eternal day

untameable

wild with life of every imagined sort

and with those too

that have yet to be dreamed

Vastness

gloried and mysterious

shrouded in stone

A sky inside - impossibilities made real

Fear not

Doubt not

Find your way ...

to Pellucidar

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Thank you, goddess of love, for Edgar Rice Burroughs, a man who walked a fascinating path between the real and the fantastic -- perhaps because he understood that what is real is also fantastic.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Lessons

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a bit of the spring taken out of my step.

A few days ago, in another forum, I let myself be egged into saying a mean thing. I knew as I said it that it was a mistake, and yet I somehow bought into the delusion that expressing my frustrations in a mean way would make me feel better. Other people had been saying plenty of mean things, and crazy things as well, and I let myself get dragged into it, trying to show them what was what.

Predictably, the whole thing ended up with me feeling even more frustrated, disgusted, and angry than ever, but with the added benefit of feeling guilty and entirely foolish as well.

I relearn this lesson every once in a while: that it is the particular talent of real evil to suck even well-intentioned people into a vortex of anger until they find themselves infuriated with one another even though there's no good reason for it. It's a stupid thing, once you're in that vortex, to swim deeper into it. But at least in that instance, you have the excuse of already having your judgment clouded.

Far stupider is to stand outside that vortex, see the raging blatherers within it, and then dive in to tell them how ridiculous they're being.

Thank you, goddess of love -- not for the first time and probably not for the last -- for humbling lessons.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

A Touch Across Miles 55

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with the following wish:

Be well, because the world needs you.

Be well

in body

in mind

in heart

in soul.

Be well, because the world deserves you

and you do not deserve its rough handling

its slings

its arrows.

They will strike at you.

But let them touch not

that shining brilliance

glowing

within you.

Be well,

always.

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Thank you, goddess of love, for friends faraway and any chance that I have to help them.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Let Us Raise a Glass

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you from those strange borderlands that lie between happiness and discontent.

It is human and natural to yearn for an improvement in our lot -- to want more of what we have that is good, and less of what troubles us. I've experienced some exceptionally good things this week, and yet I find myself chafing at the fact that these have been irregularities and exceptions, not dependable parts of my everyday existence. I wish for a life that consists more of such high points. I wish for a way to keep them near at hand, accessible upon demand -- comfortable and familiar instead of surprising and rare.

My everyday existence is perfectly fine. It mixes a considerable amount of physical, emotional and financial comfort with only a modest dash of stress and aggravation.

Why, then, does the exceptional moment so make me pine for a more exceptional life?

In part, I suppose, it is because I desire the fulfillment of dreams. I write my novels and dream of publishing them and earning a living at it. I listen to music and watch movies and dream of existing in a constant state of aesthetic satisfaction. A great deal of my life is lived inside my head, and because there are so few limits in there, I find myself constricted whenever I return to the confines of the real world.

But in part, it is also simple greed: a failure to be satisfied with the riches within my grasp.

And what does it really take to overturn that greed? I think that it can be done with just six words, if they are taken and held to and believed.

"Look at all that I have."

It's not merely a question of whether the glass is half-empty or half-full. If you think about it, all glasses are always full. It just happens that sometimes they're partly full of air. And no, you can't drink air -- but you need it to live, and it's all around us.

Do I have a full glass of sweet and blissful nectar? No. But the portion of my glass that holds no nectar is not empty. It overflows with the stuff of the world. It is filled by an atmosphere that I need to live.

Even if people occasionally pollute that air with their smoke.

"Look at all that I have."

Thank you, goddess, for a world and a life that are always full -- and for drinks that may not hold all the volume I would like, but sustain me and bless my tongue with flavor nonetheless.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Strangers in Need

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a story.

Earlier today, I passed a woman crying on a bench in the Denver airport. She had her head in her hands, and for a moment I assumed this was simply another stranded passenger among many, waiting exhaustedly for a delayed flight. Then I heard her sobbing, and I knew better.

An instinct struck me, to ask if she was all right. And then, just as quickly, that instinct capsized beneath a wave of doubt. Would she be angry at the intrusion? Embarrassed? Would I do more harm than good?

I walked on. I checked in at my gate. I pondered my noble impulse and the cowardice that had tripped it up.

I walked partway back.

She still sat there, wiping her eyes now. Had she recovered from her moment of grief? I looked out the windows at planes on the taxiway.

I looked back down the hallway again. Other passengers walked by the woman. One glanced at her with a look that suggested she must still be crying.

I made up my mind to do what I knew I ought to do. I walked over and asked if she was okay. She didn't quite hear, and asked, "What?"

I repeated myself. "Are you okay?"

She nodded and said something quickly, "Yeah" or "Uh-huh," just enough to shield herself from an admission of her pain. Her eyes met mine with an uncertain mixture of confusion and gratitude, as though she couldn't quite understand why a stranger would be expressing concern.

"Good luck, then," I said, "with whatever it is that's bothering you."

She said, "Thank you."

And she meant it -- I knew she really meant it, even though she didn't say anything else.

Sometimes you can tell these things.

I hope she's okay.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the opportunity to help -- even if only in the smallest of ways.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

The World 55

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a quick poem.

You cannot change the world.
It is too big. Its ugliness is too ingrained.
There are over six billion people upon its ancient surface,
each of them flawed, many of them badly so,
especially some of the ones in charge.

You're too small
and too weary.

You cannot change the world ...

alone.

But we can.

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Thank you, goddess of love, for help.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

The Masonry of Thought 55

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with 55 words that I hope may come in handy.

You can make yourself believe a great many things, simply by repeating them over and over and over again.

Good things.

Bad things.

Wonderful things.

Terrible things.

Lovely things.

Hateful things.

Keep that in mind the next time you start to tell yourself something.

Is it really the kind of thing you want to stick?

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Thank you, goddess of love, for positive focus of mind.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee