Stumbling Into Awe

laughingsquid:

It Gets Better: Apple Employees

Can I be of two minds when posting this?

I suspect many will push back if I am, believing and feeling that there is no room for ambivalence because the life and well-being of someone may be at stake. They may be right.

I see these extraordinarily privileged people, and I am happy for them. I also recognize they are offering hope worded as certainty. Few people in human history have enjoyed the leisure afforded these persons because of their cooperation in a system of economic extraction, their choice to facilitate globalization and their dumb luck to be in a position to so do. Good for them. And now I want to hear from those who are not yuppies.

It could be that the ability to believe in a better future is the key to choosing to go on in spite of hardship. And for some there will be a better future, and this is almost only true for those who do maintain hope. I nod to William James. And for some there will not be a better future. Is denial and magical thinking the best and only advice we will proffer?

There are times when the juices swirling in my brain allow me to “know” that life is worth living, even a life of desperate misery. I achieve Buddha nature, able to embrace playfully the opportunities. Yes, I playfully accept the suffering of self from the spiritual distance of Buddha consciousness.

“Life is the journey, not the destination.” Sometimes I “know” this perspective. Sometimes I prefer to submit to Western Judeo magical thinking. I cannot know whether you have this freedom, or whether you exercise this freedom, or whether you would even choose such freedom if you can.

I do know that things change.

 

The only constant I am sure of
Is this accelerating rate of change
    “Downside Up” - Ovo - Peter Gabriel  

I do maintain hope.

Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult - once we truly understand and accept it - then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.
    The Road Less Traveled - M. Scott Peck, M.D.