My life is a story about growing. It is about freedom and pain, the universe versus the individual, and the unquenchable thirst to visit strange lands and meet new people. It is about experience; about living your dreams. It is about curiosity, and recognition of belonging to a truly global world. Adrenaline never ceases to pump through my veins, and in the pit of my stomach I itch. I can feel how desperate my mind is trying to convince my heart that what I am about to do could be life altering, but my heart always wins. While the mind quickly learns its mistakes, the heart never flinches in the face of uncertainty. That is why I tend to follow it most of the time, rather than the reasoning of my rational brain.

How do you know if you’re on the path of your true destiny, or have strayed from its path? What means do humans have available to them, telling them that they are indeed living the life they are supposed to be living, and not making a terrible, horrible mistake? Some would call this a sense of intuition; however, I disagree. The sense we use to distinguish our fate is clearly seen as a distinct path of random choices: One or the other. Choices are the ingredients to life. If you have the right ingredients, it makes for one hell of a meal, but if you use the wrong ingredients, you are doomed to be unsatisfied despite your efforts. Making the right choices is important, but no one really discusses how or why these choices are made, how they are formed in the heart and mind.

Our entire lives are simply a series of decisions and consequences: Some good, some bad. From the moment we are born and begin to test our environments, to the seemingly complicated relationships we encounter throughout adolescence and adulthood, our lives are determined by the simple dichotomy of yes and no. Through action and inaction, we choose our own fate.

We decide and account for our own actions by saying yes or no to millions of different circumstances in our lives. Some of the decisions are great, and we can foresee their greatness in advance because the consequences seem obvious, while others are more illusive.

If we must trust anything in life, we must trust ourselves first. That little voice inside will guide us happily through life as long as we’re prepared to listen and take action.

All Things Are One

Taste the sweet revenge of cosmic proportions.
Will you waste it all away?
Into the forgotten pathways of your mind
You are absent, you are not awake.
You see the future, realize what’s at stake.
The past is only subjective interpretation;
Can you sense it, or do you lie to yourself?
Treat everything with suspicion.
Trust in yourself to fail, and fail you will.
Believe in a holy destiny and become it.
Watch the insects and birds fly and go with them.
There are no limits, you only limit yourself.
Escape if you wish to try but you will always be hunted;
There is no escaping your conscience.
Yes or no or right or wrong,
Where do you belong?
It’s up to you to write the song.
No one is going to hold your hand for you.
You are all alone now;
Born alone, die alone.
Go make something of yourself.
Love is the only way to grow.
It’s not hard to feel but some people don’t know.
Oh come on and smile it isn’t that bad.
Don’t stress yourself we all float in the same boat.
You are the captain and a passenger.
Everything happens at once.
All things are one.

Echoes Through Time

Distant lands and happy people are calling my name
I’m trying my best, but his life just isn’t the same
My days just go by and I’m trying to make due
The sea keeps on calling me with its ten shades of blue

I keep going and going and the wheels don’t stop turning
It’s bigger than an itch it’s more like a burning
Why does the bee make the sweetest of honey?
It doesn’t question its purpose or worry about money

Unhindered by smoke, people dance in the street
Along lonely paths you’ll find people you’re destined to meet
You play music together that echoes through time
A song sang together, to deny it is a crime

I’ll follow my gut and think like a beggar
Won’t iron my shirts or sign a waiver
I’ve got places to go; I know why I’m going
It’s not that I’m changing but I consider it growing

Honesty and goodness are the virtues I follow
I walk in the light, without it I’m hollow
It’s hard to watch our innocence fly away so quickly
We age and we ripen, time passes by so briskly

The infinite potential amongst the misery and madness
It’s the choices we make that determine our happiness
Our only option is to embrace the truths of humanity
We’re beautiful and mortal, on the brink of insanity

I’m not afraid to bear witness or communicate in silence
I’ve discovered cures for disease and the reasons for violence
It helps to step back, breathe and reach out
There’s no room for uncertainty, no reason to doubt

A new star is born yet another explodes
Another life is given yet another gun reloads
I live each day with the dichotomy of love and hate
I feel gentle hands caress me, the gentle hands of fate

Every moment is an opportunity to make things better.

Our minds are complex biological machines that must be exercised to perform accurately and efficiently. Creativity and imagination are the essence of life on earth, and are at stake in each individual human being. Cellular machines fueled by the selfish genes.

We are all unique. Our synapses fire and our senses are reborn with each random stimulus. We can often be overcome by emotion. Emotion is responsible for so much pleasure, and yet is capable of so much grief. If ever we are to feel harmony and balance in its true form, we must begin to understand the subtleties of our complex emotions.

It is one thing to say that you are happy watching the sun set down over the horizon, but saying and meaning are two very different things altogether. In order for us to truly mean what we say, we have to believe it; we can not find happiness in second guessing ourselves in each fleeting moment. To accomplish this, decisions must be made in the absence of bias. It is silly to dwell on the past, since it is possible that unhappy experiences could ruin present and future joy.

The reality of life presents us with only one option: The present. The past has come and gone and the future is yet to be experienced. Ultimately, how sure are we that anything actually occurred the way we personally experienced it, when the very nature of experience is subjective and most certainly skewed in our own personal biases? What actually happens is never a concrete fact since the actual truth in the action or occurrence is subject to sensory perception, and thus is susceptible to error. Nothing is as it seems…

The only truth is that nothing is actually real; it is merely a distillation of individual and collective sensory perceptions taken from a multitude of stimuli, which are filtered through the most mysterious of all godly creations: Consciousness.

MEMORY

The first summer we discovered the creek running under the railroad tracks, I was probably around eight years old. My friends and I would ride our bikes through the suburban sprawl, do bike jumps off curbs, stay out late, and worry our parent’s sick. We would pack lunches and wear rubber boots, park our bikes in the tall green grass next to some large boulders, and make our way downstream to whatever adventures awaited. Before we headed on our missions downstream, we would laugh from the side of the tracks as trains would flatten our pennies; always weary of their awesome power. Most times the sun would shine brightly through the trees, although, it often rained. It didn’t stop us. The creeks would rise and turn brown with silt, clearing well over the paths along the banks. We would stand in awe of the vicious power of the usually trickling stream as it pulled trees and rocks into the water. We always tested its power, but were also weary of it, always conscious of how fast we would get rushed away should we fall in.

These memories are clear to me now, but they sometimes disappear. Then suddenly, for no reason at all, they’ll come rushing back bringing forth a huge rush of nostalgia. Memory: A definitive survival mechanism, and one of the greatest achievements of human evolution.

Just a thought....

There is no telling how far humanity will go. How much further can our technology progress? We have already achieved more in the last 100 years than the rest of human history altogether. We have created an infinite, electronic storage network called the internet, which alone has fundamentally changed the evolution of man forever. We are no longer human, but cybernetic organisms, dependent on electronic devices for comfort and survival. How much further will this actually go? When do we consider ourselves slaves? Many smart people inform us that this is the beginning of the end. We can see the instruments of destruction: Atomics, the clashing of faiths, excessive energy consumption, the wealth imbalance… There is no way to anticipate the reality of our destruction, but the seeds are germinating as we speak and we can either tend to them and destroy them early or they will spread like weeds. We must embrace this planet and all of humanity, sharing and giving as much as we can spare. There are such simple rules for humanity to follow and yet many have strayed from these universally accepted truths. Yet, there is still time…