I think I must like writing, even though I have spent far too much complaining about its challenges. It’s a Saturday afternoon. I don’t have anything that needs to happen until I get up tomorrow morning to ride with the Sons of Kauai, praying the weather makes me feel like getting out of bed.
I wake up every Sunday, with the changing light in the sky gently tapping my shuttered lids. The first thing I do is open the side door and look out for the sun, giving birth to itself as it edges slowly above the horizon.
I’ve got a really good idea that you likely won’t give a shit about, but this is all about me, after all. Honestly, I don’t ever want to feel comfortable, taking this deeply personal process for granted. Even though you have gotten here by choice, it is still an intrusion, taking you places you weren’t necessarily planning to visit at the time. I consider it a privilege to be speaking with you at this moment.
My good idea is that I am going to write some of my story today and some of it after my ride tomorrow. I know, I know, who cares?
Wait just one second! I am suddenly hearing Leonard Cohen. I didn’t become a believer until after he died. I quickly punched his station into my Pandora, because I thought I should. Ever since that moment, my mind clears out to make room for his poetry every time he visits me. I think I am a fairly well focused human, but the vast amount of music I love, easily takes me prisoner, something I haven’t outgrown since i was a little kid
Looking for God is probably why I decided to share anything at all in my writing. I think the Buddha started on his journey as young, wealthy prince, looking for a God to make sense of all the suffering he saw, after leaving the palace. The end of my own journey has become increasingly palpable as I have greyed, but I am feeling closer to the well spring of life’s infinite mysteries.
By the way, I don’t think there are any answers and I didn’t mean to imply there is actually a well spring, I just liked the way it sounded. I am not expecting to meet God along the way. I look at myself over the course of my life and quietly begin to get more comfortable in embracing who I’ve been. With the passage of time, I have learned to be more compassionate, to embrace and comfort myself. The idea of right and wrong as a way to filter my behavior feels far too simplistic and smells of judgement.
Luciano Pavarotti always makes me cry when my handle bar speakers trumpet his presence, as I glide on my bike under the Sunday morning, Kauai sun. I told you I was going to knock this little ditty out in two sittings. I figure dropping Pavarotti on to the page out of nowhere, is one way to stop the action. I kind of liked where I left off with the above paragraph, before I got in too much trouble.
Of course, I read what I had written yesterday, several times before I left for my ride this morning. I was surprised, because I didn’t think it was going to make any sense and it wasn’t half bad.
I think differently now than ever before, although you could easily say that about any chronological perch you find yourself teetering on. I think at its best, our lives ought to be an evolution of mindfulness, every single experience, every single thought, every single feeling, captured and meticulously stored in our library of life, with unlimited capacity. It’s all there and their accumulation is who we are at any moment, until we are no longer. God would want it that way.