Busy is as Busy Does

Well, I have been quite busy the past few weeks, and unfortunately for my few readers that are out there, it means no updates. For this, I am truly sorry, and I will try to make a better effort in both the frequency and the quality of my blogs.

Lets see, since I last blogged, I am a year older and I have passed the 38 year barrier of my life. I still am not married, don't have any children, and no prospects on the horizon, so that is not going so well in terms of goals. . .but I am much more myself in life, and I am coming to grips with who I have become as a person. I have been doing a lot of reading lately, and I took another trip out to Washington, which was more or less a present to myself for my birthday. It is nice having spare miles to use, because it allows me the freedom to do what I want when I want in life :) I am glad that Brigitte has become a part of my life again, and I do cherish her friendship. She is one of the people whom you come across in life, that gets "it", and she has opened my eyes up to a few different areas of thinking and self reflection.

For my birthday, she bought me a book called Buddhism Plain and Simple, it is basically a book on some of the tenants of Buddhism, and what it means to be awake, to see and to live. It is strange, because I have come to a lot of similar philosophies in life on my own, without ever reading about the different beliefs Buddhists have. I have come to find out my philosophies definitely overlap with theirs. For example, I am a strong proponent of living in the moment, and being part of life. I want to be a participant in life and not an observer. I want to see, touch, listen, taste, smell, and engulf all there is about life itself. It is what a Buddhist talks in terms of living in the present. To understand not only your place in life, but your surroundings, and what is going on around you is a great gift to find, that is for certain.

I also have had this theory for a while of people who see "it" in life. For one reason or another, they just see beyond all the BS life flings at you, and understand more about human nature, and life itself. A Buddhist calls this the "awakening" and it is the path they use to Nirvana. To see it, you must truly live in the moment, and understand all that is around you in life, I completely get that, and I completely understand where the foundation is coming from. I find it quite ironic, that 2500 years after the foundation of Buddhism was laid, I am coming to the same conclusions about life itself, and about what it means to live life.

I guess this is the part where I bear my soul for all to read, so here goes. . .I do not believe in an afterlife, and I don't think I could ever come to grips with the invisible man theory of everything. I don't understand a lot in life, but I do understand the motives, and the ability to manipulate human beings for personal gain in life. You see it in a daily basis in politics, world affairs, the work place, wall street, every where you look in life, you see this dark side of humanity. In my opinion, it is how the Catholic Church came to power in the 400's, and it can be seen through out history. Look at our latest jaunt into Iraq for a prime example of how people will heed to the rule of a leader, and can be manipulated to allow those in power to do what they want. There is so much greed, lust and envy in man, which allows people to be blinded, so the don't see what is in front of them, and they miss out on so much of life itself.

Being a master manipulator at one point in my life, I could see how to get people to illicit the response you so desire. In fact, I sometimes subconsciously will do something in order to get the response I am looking for. I don't think about taking the actions which I know will lead to a confrontation, I just do it, and I get the response I am looking for without consciously understanding what is going on. It is this that I am trying to eliminate from my life. I am trying to understand WHY I make the choices I do, and what causes me to make these choices in life.

Here is a good example, I have always had the ability to play the martyr role in anything in life. I could take something some one else did, completely turn it around, and make them see what pain they were causing me in life. Sometimes there was real pain there, sometimes there was not, and I just wanted the person to feel like shit, but either way, I was manipulating their emotions in order to show them the pain and turmoil I was going through at the time. When my account on facebook was hacked, I made the person who did it feel absolutely horrible about what they did. I made the person feel like they were the lowest form of human excrement, and that is not who I am or what I want to accomplish with my life. Part of me manipulated the conversation, and made the other person feel as low as you can feel as a person. Did they deserved it for their actions? No, not at all. Who is to say what is good in bad in life? Who is to say that their actions did not cause something good to come out of it for me. When I lost my lobstering business in the storm, I thought it was the end of the world, but it was the beginning of a new life for me. You see, the reality we live in, the one that surrounds all of us, has twists and turns, shades of gray everywhere. Reality is not a black and white or Manichean outlook, because there is no good or bad in life, there is only being and living in the moment. It is in the moment that you get to chose the decisions you make who shape you as a person.

I have been the recipient of the dark side of humanity more than one time, and I have been used as a stepping stone in my career, and my life for others to get ahead. My good nature was used against me, but instead of taking a cynical approach to life, I take one of more lofty goals. I look at life as a series of circumstances which put me in the current position I am in, through the choices I have made in my life, and I am proud of both who I am as a man, as well as my standing in society. Have I made mistakes in my life??? Absolutely, I have made many more than you can ever imagine. I have done things that not only am I embarrassed and ashamed about, but things which should have landed my sorry ass in jail, and if I came from a different place in life, most likely would have. It is through these mistakes that I have made though, which helped shape who I am as a person, and as a man. It is through all of the triumphs and tragedies in life that I learned the many lessons of life along the way. It is from looking back on these mistakes that I have made, and learning from them, that allows me to truly live in the moment, in the here and now.

Is there a chance that I will find religion? Nah, my brain is far to whacked, and I enjoy the indulgences in life far too much to ever take any religion seriously. I like to think that I can adhere to a philosophy, and a way of living a life, but it would be devoid of rituals, chants, mantras, and invisible men who would spite me for screaming their name when I cum :p

Hope my few readers are doing well, and I will post more soon.

Michael