Version 2.0
© 2011 Howard McQueen
Many of us
are seeming blessed with:
intelligence
good looks
the gifts to gab and entertain
parents and/or elders who invested in their dream for us
a skin color and features well-suited to mark the check-box “white”
born to live in the plentitude of the US of A
Many of us
with a modicum of effort and struggle:
navigated into the safe harbor of a rewarding career path
rose to a level of financial comfort
enjoy the flow of excess money (or credit)
entertain ourselves with indulgences in the habits of:
eating out
traveling
surrounding ourselves with the ten-thousand things
constantly feeding our appetites for security,
that coddle us with creature-comforts.
Many of us
try so hard to belong to contrarian, counter, or gatherings to try to evolve the culture:
we sometimes earnestly work to clear roads to becoming authentic
and, much more often, we like to pretend we are in the company of
those few exploring the vanguard edges of human potential.
For a growing few of us
what was once just a distant, aching emptiness
has gained the critical mass of an urgent, ever-consuming immediacy,
which calls from within
to drop the charades
to stop the people-pleasing habits (like the over-used and falsified exuberant masks of humor)
AND
just settle up
with becoming
simple
flawed
and true to our authentic self.
In this inward exploration with Self,
we discover, amidst all the strewn pieces,
the grand interconnectedness.
We realize, be it through
music
painting
poetry
and in every simple, every-day expression of sharing life,
each life, fully-lived
is awe-inspiring.
This is when we discover we can drop all the “gaming the system” agendas
and simply be present.
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