And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.

Human Rights Rally and March, Utah State Capitol, February 8, 2025, Steve Brown

And this I believe:  that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.  And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.  And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.  This is what I am and what I am about.

John Steinbeck, East of Eden 1952

Although now is the focus of this book, I am completely ill-equipped to understand today.  The United States has changed so drastically in the short time since Trump took office again through acts that are blatantly antidemocratic, blatantly anti-Christian, and blatantly inhumane, and also appear to be incredibly stupid, causing harm to not only his country but perhaps also to Trump himself, as resistance builds, including the following:

• Trying to remove birthright citizenship.
• Deporting illegal immigrants to Guantanamo Bay, which is not an official U.S. territory, where occupants can be denied the basic rights the U.S. constitution provides to everyone within its borders, citizens or not.
• Threatening to incorporate Canada, Gaza, Greenland, Mexico and Panama into the U.S.
• Bizarrely claiming Ukraine, not Russia, was the aggressor, and that President Zelenskyy rather than Putin is a dictator.
• Cutting off USAID money to those who most need it.
• Trying to shut down all media who factcheck Trump.
• Gutting the Department of Justice of any independence from the president.  

As much as I attempt to understand the many good Christian people who support Trump, I cannot possibly wrap my brain around how any of the above proposed or literal actions fit into the basic principles of Christianity based on who Christ is as depicted in the New Testament.

More broadly, I can't wrap my mind around how America First itself is a Christian principle.  Since when did Christ teach that the way to freedom is through putting yourself first?  We are going through an era of extreme collective egoism that pits us as a country against the world, and I don't see how that can bring collective happiness any more than personal pride and avarice does.  Christ teaches that the personal path to freedom and happiness is by forgetting yourself in the service of humanity.  The more you seek personal gratification, the less you find happiness.  The more you forget about yourself and serve those around you, the more peace and joy you find, which is exactly what Mother Theresa understood.  Happiness comes from demolishing the ego and entering now in the service of others--not what you obtain materially or through honors.  It's totally illogical that the means to collective good would be any different than the means to individual worth.  The only America I can believe in is the America that is in the service of mankind, an America that gives aid to Ukraine not to get something in return but out of love and empathy and dedication to the principles of democracy and respect for the borders of sovereign nations.

However, I know absolutely no argument I make here will convince all those good, Christian Trump supporters of the errors of their thinking.  If anything, it will just cause them to dig into their position.  Who likes to be wrong?  I know I don't. 

Rather, feeble as it may be, this is an attempt to understand our times, which I've got to admit, I find completely baffling.

Which is okay.  It has to be okay.  Because it is.  Reality exists whether I like it or not.  If you live in an era of legalized slavery, you have to on some level accept slavery as the reality, whether as the slave or the slave owner, whether you like it or not, or believe in it or support it in any way.  Because for the time, at least, it is.  The slave has no real tangible means of not-being the slave in such times, and though in hindsight, it seems like it would be easy for the moral slave-owner to simply free his slaves, at the time that would have seemed almost impossible because of the extreme social pressure not to do so.  Afterall, if you let your slaves go, what ideas are you planting in the minds of your neighbor's slaves?  It is easy to make moral judgement on people outside your time period while it can be incredibly difficult to be moral now in your current reality.  Slavery is perceived as moral in a slave society.  Lynching is perceived as moral in a society where it's accepted.  Segregation is perceived as moral in a segregated society.  This is as it is meant to be:  societies are designed to make it easy to continue as things are.  You are meant to feel comfortable and at ease when you join in with the status-quo.  You are meant to feel uneasy and radical when you decide you believe in something superior to what is.

Because we live in an ego-driven world, Christianity, which calls on us to abandon our egos, is never a comfortable religion to live unless you develop two minds that don't talk to each other, which is exactly what happens.  The slave owner is a moral person.  He goes to church, he raises a family, he gives generously to local clubs and organizations.  But because slavery is inherently evil, he must beat and vilify the enslaved to justify his continued practice.  And if, by chance, his two brains do accidently talk to each other, society is there to put on the social pressure to keep him living the status-quo.  The great minds of the times develop theories about how blacks are cursed by God and genetically inferior to whites.  They reinforce the idea that the slave owner is in fact a good man, reminding him of his generous offerings to the community and how much economic good his plantation does.  But, if he doesn't listen, he himself is vilified and rooted out, so that slavery can continue.

But none of that changes the fact that slavery cannot possibly be a Christian institution.  Good people can and did participate in it, but slavery itself could never be Christian because Christ was incredibly concise and articulate about what He knew was the path to personal and collective freedom.  You can create whatever ideology you want to justify slavery as an institution, but the minute you open the New Testament and read the words attributed to Christ, slavery is abolished immediately in principle if not in practice because the Word is perfect.  It is above argumentation.  We instinctively know the principles of Christianity are true.  We are designed to love.  We are designed to care.  We are meant to lose ourselves in the service of mankind.  Nothing can make those beliefs untrue because they are who we are at our core.  

Hate has to be fueled constantly by drumming up fear, separateness, distain for others--driven by the ego in a society of competition.  Love is automatic.  It is our survival instinct.  Two people alone on an island will not kill each other.  In fact, I'm almost positive they will fall in love.  We need that human connection.  Take a free man and a slave place them together alone on an island and you will have ended slavery--at least until a third person is added.  Slavery needs society.  Wickedness needs society.  Wickedness is just another name for fear.  Jealousy is just another name for fear.  We do bad when we fear.  Intelligent, insecure men use our fear to motivate us to do things we would not otherwise do.  The slave owner enslaves another because he fears resources are limited, that if he doesn't participate in the economic system he is given, he will lose his position and the respect of his peers, and so he retains his slaves and continues to go to church and worship Christ, and because part of his brain registers the disconnect, he grows to hate his slaves.  They seem vile to him, almost inhuman.  He wants to beat them to death even though that makes no economic sense.  A healthy, happy slave is bound to produce more than one that's been whipped almost to the point of death.  But at this point the slave owner is no longer rational.  He just has to find a way to justify his enslavement of another.  Hate blots out his natural love and connection to his slave.  But if you removed all other pathways for his love--took away his family and his society--he would soon love his slave.  It is impossible not to.  We are built to love.  

There are exceptions, of course.  There are sociopaths.  There are tyrants who are sociopaths.  But there are not societies of sociopaths.  There have been societies of good people who support slavery though.  Many societies and many good people who called themselves Christian have supported incredible evil throughout history.  The same in Nazi Germany.  All those millions of Jews were killed by the support of good people.  It could not have happened without them.  However, it also could have been stopped by them.

I believe Trump is a sociopath, that everything he does is the opposite of what Christ would do, and I am making a choice to do everything peaceful in my power (which admittedly is next to nil) to change the trajectory of this nation, which I still love, despite what is now going on.  I will be at every rally I can attend against him.  I will be boycotting any company that doesn't support diversity, equity and inclusion policies, because I believe in those things, and I will give as much support as possible to fund opposition to Trump, mainly through the Democratic party, because that's where the most resources exist to fight him.  

However, those are my beliefs, and although I personally cannot fathom how Trump supports Christian values in any shape, way, or form, I do not need others to believe the same as I believe to be okay with them.  I personally know many loving people who support Trump.  They are good.  They are intelligent.  Many of them are even well-informed.  I wish I could somehow convince them that we are at the same point in history that Germany was when Hitler came to power because that is what I know to be true.  I can't even begin to understand how they can support a man who claimed Ukraine was the aggressor against Russia when we saw Russia attack Ukraine in real time.  But I don't need to understand all things, and I don't need to agree with someone to love them, to see them as equally human, as equally intelligent, or as equally divine sons and daughters of God.

I hope my Trump-supporting friends, family and acquaintances feel the same way and can accept my choice to stand up to what I see as tyranny.  But I'm good if they don't.  At some point the man who wants to be free from a society that believes in slavery has to be willing to let go of all that binds him--whether he be the slave or the slave holder.

At some point I have to be willing to let go of an America that believes all its problems are caused by diversity, equity, and inclusion--because I love diversity, equity and inclusion.  I hear DEI and I don't feel fear--I feel love, protection, and the possibility of a better world.

Therefore, I will be marching in love for the right of everyone to celebrate their diverse heritages, cultures, religions, and beliefs.  I'll be marching in love for the right of everyone to have equal treatment under the law.  I will be marching in love in hopes of an America that is includes everyone--gays, lesbians, minorities, immigrants (legal or not).  I will be marching because I've already done it once, and it felt great.  And I will be marching because my soul knows that's what Christ would also do.  And no matter how flawed I may be as a person, I know that doing right feels damn good, and that when I hate, it is my fear and ego talking.  So, I'm telling my ego to take a hike and gladly holding up the banner Snowflake no matter what the consequences are.  At some point someone has to step out of a society gone-wrong and say, "I still love you, but I cannot in good conscience go along with this".  Otherwise, Nazi Germany is bound to repeat itself under other names and in different places.  I will not be a part of hate. 

Illegal immigrants are not animals.  They are simply people, like you and I, doing the best they can to get by in a difficult world.  Their status as citizens means nothing to me.  Their status as humans means everything.  The Christ I believe is Christ of creation, and I believe His love knows no boundaries.  I don't believe any other Christ is worth worshiping.  I only believe in Him because I know the words attributed to Him in the New Testament are perfect.  I believe in that perfection, no matter how far I may currently fall from it.

Trumps America does not represent those words, that love, any more than Slavery-America or Segregation-America did.  But the America promised in the Declaration of Independence and established in the Constitution at least in word do.

That is the America I pledge allegiance to.  And I will support no other version of America ever--no matter what America those around me choose to give their allegiance to instead.  

My goal in life is to be happy and happiness cannot be built on lies.  Trump is one great big lie.  The lie is that happiness is found by placing yourself first in the world and making those around you kneel in subjugation.   America First is a one-way collective ego-trip towards misery.  I'm not going to ride that train.  Instead, I'm hitchhiking across DEI America as long as I possibly can, the hippy I was born to be, a vagabond snowflake, a rallying rolling stone, out for good music, good vibrations, God-intentions and love.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--44. Cannery Row

The Empty Lot in Steinbeck's Cannery Row as Depicted in a Model
at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, Steve Brown 2022

1.  Steinbeck's Cannery Row

Steinbeck's Cannery Row is a revolutionary book.  Most works of fiction are built on a formula, one every college creative writing and literature major is taught deeply, and one every high school student is at least exposed to:  the plot of a narrative is driven by the writer creating a protagonist with a goal and something that keeps them from immediately reaching it.  Then, the hero either overcomes the obstacles or is transformed in some way through the struggle, or both.  It is quite possible to see Cannery Row this way. Doc can be viewed as the main character.  If that is the case, his goal is to be left alone to work.  That suffices.  If one looks into the tide pool using the exact same paradigm as everyone always has, one is likely to see what has always been seen.

However, from the very beginning of the book, Steinbeck provides us the lens through which he wants us to view Cannery Row:

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.  Cannery row is the gathered and the scattered, tin and iron, rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and Labatories and flophouses.  Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gamblers and sons of bitches, by which he meant Everybody.  Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men," and he would have meant the same thing.

In that paragraph Steinbeck defines the paradigm he would like us to use when reading Cannery Row.  This is not a book about a single character.  Rather, it is a book where the place is the protagonist.  The characters are not to be studied individually but rather how they function together in the tidepool that was Ocean View Avenue at the time.  

The book is not a study of Ed Rickets, the inspiration for Doc, but rather a study of Ed Ricket's role in the greater stink, grating noise, quality of light, tone, habit, nostalgia, and dream that is Cannery Row.  Doc is an essential cell in that organism, the type of person Malcolm Gladwell would much later label a "connector" in The Tipping Point.  Doc is the cell that if removed would cause the character Cannery Row to wither and die, but the protagonist is not Doc, but rather community as a whole.  That was and is still revolutionary for a novel.  

Just as Monterey Bay Aquarium would later be among the first aquariums in the world to try to share communities of sea life working together as they do in the real world rather than simply spotlighting individual species floating around in isolation from their community, Cannery Row makes the whole cast of Cannery Row the exhibit rather than one dominating character.    

In Steinbeck's hand and mind everyone is equally human ("whores, pimps, gamblers and sons of bitches") and equally godly ("saints and angels and martyrs and holy men") because Cannery Row is not only about the individuals, but it also about the sublime whole.  The book is a study of human ecology, and Cannery Row is the tidepool into which we are looking at humanity.  It is a case-study in human condition--the general known through the particular.

Of course, John also wrote the book as a tribute to Ed Rickets, so there is nothing wrong with reading it as a traditional protagonist-centered story with a traditional goal-driven plot.  It definitely can be read on that level.  However, in writing about The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck said, "There are five layers in this book, a reader will find as many as he can and he won't find more than he has in himself." 

Steinbeck wrote in layers, and one layer he always wanted us to see is that we are all connected.  Everything we do impacts those around us, and in Cannery Row everyone equally fills their role as a human--from vagrant, to prostitute, to unfocused artist, to Chinese shopkeeper, to marine biologist and social connector.  All are equally important to the tidepool that is Cannery Row.  Steinbeck is a classless writer.  He writes about how destructive classes can be, especially in The Grapes of Wrath, but he doesn't see people in levels.  He doesn't ignore the social class.  He sees things as they are.  However, the quality of the person has nothing to do with their rank or occupation.  In fact, in Cannery Row, he doesn't even rank people according to goodness or badness of character.  They just are.  The saint and the sinner are one; it just depends how and when you are looking.  Steinbeck views the world with love even as he is angry about the social injustice all around him.

2.

Cannery Row today no longer resembles the one captured in the book.  When I first visited in 1997, I was deeply disappointed by that even though I knew that would be the case.  Although I loved the aquarium, Cannery Row itself did little for me.  It could be the West End of Dallas or any other restored warehouse district in any city in America.  They are all the same.  Somehow, even with that foreknowledge, I was still sorely disappointed to find a neighborhood that doesn't resemble what's in the novel at all.

However, this time, although we didn't spend much time there, I felt completely different about the place.  For one thing, I love old, refurbished warehouses and factories.  Sure, they are no longer what they used to be, but would we really want them to be that?  Those areas never were generally kind to either the environment or the people that lived and worked there.  They were exploitation zones--lively, nasty places teaming with humanity.  That's partially what drew Steinbeck there in the first place: it was a microcosm of humanity.  In the case of Cannery Row, if it was still the same, it would still be pillaging sea life from the Monterey Bay at an unsustainable rate, which of course is impossible, which is why all of the canneries shut down in the first place.

The Cannery Row that Steinbeck knew was unsustainable, which he knew.  The novel captures a place right before ecological collapse and local extinction of a place he loved dearly.  The tidepool would be forever changed by outside forces greater than the lives within it.  Similar characters of Steinbeck's Cannery Row can still be found, but in different places.  That Ocean View Avenue would evolve into something else was inevitable.

However, if it was not for Steinbeck and his wonderful little book, most of the canneries probably would have been torn down.  Walmart's and strip malls would most likely now occupy their place.  

So, although one can't get a living picture into Steinbeck's world by visiting Cannery Row, one can visit a monument to a man, a book, and most importantly an idea: we are all interconnected, and the story of one protagonist, no matter how unique and special that man or woman may be, can't be accurately told without also telling the story of everyone else in the community.  Everything we do impacts each other for better or worse.

Likewise, no matter how unique mankind is as a species, we are part of the tidepool that is earth.  In order to survive we need to understand those connections.

Ultimately, empathy is understanding your connection to the whole.  Our world needs that more now than ever.

Cannery Row in Monterey California is a monument to two great men who aimed to see the whole, the beauty and elegance of everything woven together.  And for that, even with all its commercialization, it is worth visiting a place dedicated to the idea we are all one.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--43. Being Here Now Noticing the Light

Red Skies - Pahvant Butte, Steve Brown 2025

It has occurred to me that we may be so confused about the present that we avoid it because it is not clear to us.  But why should that be a deterrent?  If this is a time of confusion, then it should be the subject of a good writer if he is to set down his time.

--John Steinbeck to Elizabeth Otis, 1954

Two years, seven months, and eleven days ago, I started this book with above quotation.  I had been diagnosed with kidney disease, and although at the time of writing the first chapter, I had received the good news that my particular kidney disease is treatable and sometimes even curable, I was still making frequent trips to the lab to get blood drawn, and because our deductible was so high, wondering how we would pay for it all.  And of course, there was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  Not only did the injustice of that impact me, but I thought I might well be writing this book into World War III.

But then I wrote, and as I wrote, my confusion seemed to dissipate.  The world didn’t get any less confusing.  For us, here, in the United States, the devastation in Ukraine grew more and more distant as the news covered it less and less as it became clear that at least for the time being the world would not explode into war.  But that’s not what created the shift.  As I wrote, I began to perceive I could be steady and stable, even happy, regardless of what was happening outside me.  I had started writing the book as a means to bear witness to our times, to sort through the confusion and try to make some semblance out of it.  I wanted to write something akin to The Grapes of Wrath.  It seemed history was repeating itself, that we hadn’t learned the lessons Steinbeck worked so hard to teach us, and that we were headed down the same old shitty path of inhumanity and war.  None of that changed in the course of almost three years of writing.  But my focus did.  

Writing the book became less and less a record of our times and more and more a record of my quest to find happiness.  If we are alive, we should feel good about it.  Not that I felt bad.  I didn’t.  I’ve basically been a happy man ever since I met Marci back 1997.  But, on a daily basis, happiness seemed so fleeting, at the whims of my ego and whatever trend of thoughts I had running through my head.

Then, while writing at my desk, facing out a sliding glass door onto the garden on September 14, 2023, I had a realization that has changed me.  Here it is again:    

I sit at my drafting table and look out my open sliding glass door into my garden.  It's late afternoon. Up front, the rose bush and peach tree are heavy with shadow.  There is an old wooden chair with chipped red paint.  Yellow black-eyed Susans and violet cosmos beyond sway gently.  All of this is muted softly by the shade.  Then, just as the garden beds meet the gravel pathway, a cluster of sunflowers catches the evening light, isolated again by heavy shadow thrown behind.  Distant dogs bark.  Outside, the fountain gurgles.  Inside, the fridge hums.  Two worlds mingle.

I have lived my entire life in moments like this.   I've existed during a lot of other times as well.  But I have only truly lived in these jeweled vignettes.  When I look back on my life, these are the images and sounds I remember.  From the time I was five, I have known light and shadow is all I really needed.  This is my purpose.  Of that, I had no doubt.  I couldn't have expressed it.  But I knew it.  Being is its own reason to exist.  Moments are everything.  

I had the sudden realization that for small slices of time I had always been happy, even during a time in my life when I was overall extremely dissatisfied with myself, my life, and my God—who I claimed to not believe in even as I cursed him, occasionally fervently.  Furthermore, these small slices of happiness all had something in common:  they were all moments when I was fully in the now.  In short, my unhappiness was all in my head.  Not that there weren’t real things to be unhappy about.  There are.  Always.  Life is brutal.  Unjust.  Bullies exist.  Invasions.  War.  Rape.  Starvation.  Petty arguments.  Pipes that break.  Sewers that back up.  Car batteries that die.  These are real.  But, at least for me, that is not my personal source of dissatisfaction that keeps joy away.  Thinking is.  A particular type of thinking.  Ego-driven thinking.  The type of thoughts that try to figure out my place in the world, how things at any given moment will turn out for me, and will I be safe or not.

But whenever I was just there, in a moment, noticing light, all seemed to be well.  I seemed not to be me.  I seemed to be one thing and everything at once.  So, I started testing my thesis, to see if, at least for me, happiness is always contained in the moment, whatever that is, and that the ego is always trying to keep us from that natural bliss by constantly throwing us into hypotheticals that either aggrandize us or place us in doomsday scenarios where we will either be scorned and ridiculed, obliterated, or at least doomed in some significant way.  One moment we've got the idea that's going to change the word, and the next we're going to lose our job because we spoke our mind a bit too forcibly at the last meeting--and all of that occurs nowhere outside the sinews of the brain.

I have found my premise to basically be true.  If my head is running wild on the way home from work, and I can focus on the electrical poles running towards the horizon, and how majestic the shoe-shaped island cinder cone of Pahvant Butte looks against the marmalade sky, the riots in my head quickly subside and I realize that along with everything else, I am, and what's outside my window seems sufficient enough reason to be glad to be alive.  Nothing more is required.  Whatever happened at work doesn't disappear; it simply becomes insignificant before creation.   

However, I have to admit we as humans are certainly making the restoring-power of nature murkier all of the time.  There are quite a few ugly days now, even in this remote valley, because of smog and smoky skies.  We are literally setting our collective home on fire through our addictions to fossil fuel.  

However, light, even when bent and blurred and brutalized by industrial pollutants, is still light, and as long as we don't blot out the sun completely, I do believe one can still get to that bliss anywhere.  Light is God's visual language the way love is his spiritual communication.  So, one can tap into that anywhere, but of course it's going to be easier doing that holding hands with your loved one looking out at sunlit Half Dome than looking at your dead uncle on the cratered streets of Gaza with your home a heap of concrete and rebar in the background.  

Somehow, even though I haven't experienced anything remotely like that and assume that I most likely will never achieve such a state of pure knowledge and assurance that mortality works, I absolutely know it is possible to arrive at that place of peace in places like Gaza even if I struggle to keep my cool while in the midst of losing a game of Uno.

Part of me thinks there are times that justify righteous anger, that there are times when happiness is actually not the moral course.  Afterall, even Jesus Christ lost his cool when he saw the money changers violating the temple.  Surely such times as ours, when democracy seems to be being shredded right before our eyes and our president is making all the same moves as Adolf Hitler, a little doom and gloom might just be the moral emotion.  

However, part of me knows it's not.  Darkness is never light.  Evil is never good.  The air may be dense with razor-sharp shards of hate floating everywhere, but whatever light we can omit through the dense dusty chemical-filled fog is better than no light at all.  The man who can see beauty in the obliterated humanity littering the streets of Gaza is the same man who can hold his eye steady and fearless before the perpetrator and begin to melt the enemy's resolve to hate.

And so, as lousy as I am at it, my only goal in life is to enter now so totally present my joy isn't dependent on what is happening around me.  To me, it seems to be the key to real love--the type that comes with no expectations because one is so sure of the human experience as a whole one can absorb the present ugliness into the grandness of the entirety with loving compassion.  

We all have access to that surrender and sureness when we silent the mind and just be.

Confusion is a product of ego-driven thinking.  Knowing is a product of witnessing what is silently, objectively.  Now is that portal to the infinite, where light and love merge into the divine answer always.  Everything else, no matter how solid and real it may appear in the mind, is nothing more than dust in the wind.

… Ah, people asking questions
Lost in confusion
Well, I tell them there's no problem
Only solutions
Well, they shake their heads and they look at me, as if I've lost my mind
I tell them there's no hurry, I'm just sitting here doing time

--John Lennon, "Watching the Wheels" 1980

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--42. To Be in the Monterey Bay Aquarium

Observing, Monterey Bay Aquarium, Steve Brown 2022

When Marci and I made our honeymoon trip to Cannery Row twenty-five years earlier, seven hundred dollars was all we had to our names combined.  Looking back, I wonder why, given our financial situation, we would have opted to include going to the Monterey Bay Aquarium in our itinerary as it was quite expensive even then.  Twenty-five years later, I still found it difficult to hand over that entrance fee even though it was a much smaller percentage of our wealth than before.  

It is mind-boggling how much trust we have in life and love when we are young.  You find the person you want to be with, and you just do it, having almost nothing financially.  And in our case, Marci already had two children to her name, and yet we still took that leap of faith.  We not only chose to get married, but we also chose to spend everything we had on our honeymoon and trust that the pay checks we'd receive after working a couple weeks when we returned home, along with the welfare and W.I.C. Marci was thankfully receiving, would sustain us until the next pay period came.  There were no extra funds if the car broke down.  We just hit the road and didn't worry about it.  Well, at least not until the drive home.  And even then, only I worried about it.  Marci hadn't a care in the world which led to our first fight.  

There is something glorious in that trust in life.  And I'm glad we were foolish enough to include a day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in our first real journey together.  It is an amazing place, and our honeymoon would not have been the same without it.  And the money did come, as did the degrees, and some semblance of security.  But a little bit of wisdom could have kept that trip to the aquarium forever out of our memories.  I'm glad we didn't let prudence cheat us out of that experience.  It is indeed a glorious one.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium is different from most aquariums in that it is not just a collection of fish.  Although it includes aquatic life from all over, its main purpose is to share the biological diversity of Monterey Bay itself.  It is a lens on the life under the sea right out its windows.  Julie Packard, daughter of David Packard, who with his children founded and funded the project, puts it this way in Monterey Bay Aquarium:  The First 35 Years:

From the start, the idea to create an aquarium all about Monterey Bay met with a good deal of skepticism from those outside of our planning group. To outsiders it sounded limiting. To us it sounded boundless. We wanted to go deep, and for the first time show people what the ocean is really like. Monterey Bay was our inspiration. We were singularly focused on telling its story. And what a story it was—a diverse and abundant ecosystem thriving with life, enriched by the seasonal upwelling of nutrient-rich water along the Pacific Coast. Best of all, unlike nearly every other aquarium, we had the real thing right outside our doors. 

There are two ends of the spectrum on how to live life--with arms wide-open to now or by putting off immediate impulses for a more secure tomorrow.   And of course, there is a balance, a middle way.  However, given the short time we are here on earth, I cannot help but wonder how much time is lost to being sensible.  For example, with the Monterey Bay Aquarium, although the founders proceeded sensibly, that initial impulse to center the aquarium's story about life under the sea so locally was a radical departure of what it meant to be an aquarium.  It certainly was not the safest route to success.  Again, Julie Packard puts it this way:

Our vision differed from most existing aquariums at the time. The typical aquarium displayed fish in mostly individual tanks and focused on exotic and colorful species from around the world. Our approach aimed to showcase the communities of fishes, plants, invertebrates and birds as you would find them in nature. The influence of our backgrounds cannot be underestimated—not one of us was a fish specialist. What got us excited were the small, squishy and slimy plants and animals, the bizarre and beautiful, the comical and complicated. 

In the beginning, we knew very little about how to pull off this focus on communities. No one had ever tackled the complex challenges of displaying a living kelp forest community before. We needed unfiltered seawater to bring in plankton to nourish the filter-feeding invertebrate animals, as well as larvae and spores of organisms to create a natural community of plants and animals on the rockwork. Unfortunately, this rich unfiltered water makes for poor visibility— like a typical day diving in Monterey Bay—and we needed to filter the water during opening hours so people could see into the exhibit. The kelp needed 6 hours of ample sunlight, requiring proper positioning in the building, and water motion.

 

Because the family was tackling things that had never been done before in an aquarium, it was very-much a let's try it and see if it works approach.  The architect remembers his first meeting with David Packard this way:

“Well, Chuck, the kids and everybody have this idea about doing an aquarium... I don’t know whether it’s worth a damn or not. So, my deal with you is I’m going to be there every Friday, I’m going to come and look at what you’ve done and if I like what you’ve done, we’ll go on for another week. If I don’t like it, I’ll pay you off and send you home. Is that a deal?” 

When we're in our twenties, most of us have this approach to most things in life.  We take a job, and our attitude is If I like this, I'll go another week and see how I feel.  If I don't, I'll put in my two weeks and make sure I leave on good terms and try something else.  As we get older, and the stakes get higher, we lose our trust in our ability to follow the music of life, and instead of dancing freely to its rhythms, we slavishly fall into mechanical steps, terrified we'll lose pace and won't be able to catch up if we step out of line.  All improvisation ends.  What started as an adventure slowly turns into enslavement to our material desires that we mistake as needs.

It would probably do most of us good, especially as we cling more closely to being secure with each advancing year, to occasionally do something joyous and good and erratic--something that requires us to trust in each other and in life.  Fear of the unknown can snuff out a lot of possibilities in life--from vacations that never seemed feasible to hobbies never acquired, or even things thought but never said.  And though isolated, those small subtractions from this experience we call mortality, add up over a lifetime.   I believe that they can greatly reduce our mortal experience.  I know I spend way too much time not creating.  I begin to believe it's pointless, that my book has grown beyond what I can control, that I'll never get it published, that others will never read it.

All that may be true, but...

When I write I know who I am and what my purpose is.  When I put writing on the back burner, I begin to listen to other voices, and those voices tell me to believe in things that I can never believe in, namely committing my life to work and a paycheck.  I don't mind those things.  I'm not anti-security.  I worry way too much to live life precariously.  I love stability.  But my reason to be here is to see and create.  If I'm focused on those two things I know who I am.  If I'm not, I feel disconnected and lost, and I soon begin to believe life is pointless--because to me, the job and the paycheck are pointless.  Rather, life happens around the edges of responsibility, in the stolen glances at magic light, and time getting that down somehow--through a quick snapshot on the phone or a hastily written paragraph.

Life for me is about seeing lime green.  Or orange, or purple.  Is there anything anymore magical?  Does there need to be another reason to live?  If I'm focused on color, or texture, or light, I never question why I exist.  If I focus on work and finances and accomplishing something, it soon all begins to feel pointless.  I have the sneaky suspicion that's because it is.  Not all of it.  Just the stuff we do to establish ourselves in the world.  Real life takes place in stolen glances at life abundant outside what we've established as our life.  And that's okay.  In fact, it probably makes it more meaningful to participate in a game one knows has no meaning other than to get you to experience everything outside the gameboard itself.  I have no idea how much impact I have as a teacher, but I do know my commute is glorious and that my students are marvelously entertaining--and that both those are made more meaningful by the fact that I'm supposed to teach something in the process.  It limits that drive.  I just can't drive on forever, which I would definitely try to do given total freedom.  I've got just forty-five minutes to take in everything I can on that drive each way.  And the fact that I have teaching objectives forces just enough conflict in the relationship I have with my students to make things interesting.  Each day their job is to learn as little as possible.  Each day my role is to get them to learn as much as possible.  We each have our roles, and because I know the rules, and most of all that it is a game, I usually enjoy teaching immensely.  And when I don't, it's because I'm no longer centered in the now as an observer.  I forget our roles and focus so much on the teaching that it feels pointless.  That's because it is.  

The meaning of life isn't in what we're doing.  It's not about adding up numbers, writing out sentences, packing cans and boxes of macaroni and cheese in plastic bags, or even getting on stage and singing your heart out to thousands and thousands of fans who love you even though they don't know you, and you can't even see their faces beyond the first couple of rows.  It's none of that.  The meaning is simply in being thrown out there in life somehow to take it all in and learn whatever you need to learn from all of it, which for most of us is just this: we are not the center, and true joy only comes in those moments when we finally take in being part of something we cannot even begin to comprehend that includes galaxies and grains of sand, grocery stores and mudslides, fungi and parakeets, clocks and sunlit waves, beaches and dumb people who believe Biden, not the global pandemic, is the reason that a can of Cambell's Tomato Soup costs 25% more than it used to.   

What was so magical to me on our first visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium was just that: Damn, it's beautiful under the sea, and here I am with the one I love, looking right in at it.  And on our return trip, all that remained exactly the same.

Here I am, it's beautiful looking under the sea at all that is clearly not me, and yet, here we are staring at each other through eyes and walls of glass.  And at this moment, that is all there is: us taking in each other the best we can--baffled by our differences, one in our extreme separateness, connected in ways I will never understand.

In such moments, meaning never comes into question.  Experience is all there is.   Joy is all-encompassing.

I survive everything else, knowing the ridiculous routines and absurd situations are just divine games to get us to moments of surrendering our egos and glimpsing the fecundity of life we cannot begin to understand.  For me, that oddly feels the same as understanding everything.

To surrender is to be.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--41. Every Good Thought Has as Its Potential Reality.

The Canyon Mountains the Day after the Election, Steve Brown 2024

Trump has been elected a second time.  I believe hard times are soon to follow.  Our constitution may be shredded and democracy left dangling by a thin string.   His presidency will most assuredly spell heartache and terror for illegal immigrants here seeking refuge from the brutal realities they were born into and have had to raise their own families amidst.  Many will be sent back to worlds of poverty, rape and violence.  Christians here will watch it on their television screens either believing it is a righteous act implemented by a righteous man, or who will more likely think it's awful, but will ultimately not have the courage to believe in a God of miracles or a nation strong enough to support opening our home to so many people.  They will believe in an overcrowded inn that must close its doors.  These Christians will continue to go to church, to be friendly, to be generous with their donations, to be kind to neighbors, to spend a few weeks in foreign countries building houses for the poor.  They are, after all, good people, and will continue to be.  

However, there is some small, dense part of these good people that puts limits on God and places more faith in the material world than in their redeemer.  They think things like, we simply can't take in the whole world.  And they have two minds--their Sunday mind that believes in Christ and wants to do good, and their weekday mind who believes everyone is out to get their jobs, that there can only be so many winners, and that it's a dog-eat-dog world where only the strong survive and you better get yours now before it's taken.  These scream loudest that they are Christian because in their hearts they doubt the power of divine goodness, and they scream I am a Christian until their faces are red to silence the terror in their hearts that they are powerless in a brutal, unfair world.

And along has come a Savior to give all that fear a face and a name--Other--and to declare their desires: you are great, you are good.  All your problems are because of them--the other--and I am here to redeem you.

He is a false savior, an antichrist, who preaches fear and hate, the exact opposite of faith and love.  And they follow.  They follow a warped vision of the world that separates an "us" and demonizes "others," a world that believes in scarcity and limitations over abundance and infinite glory, that believes in fear and submission over faith and deliverance, and they ultimately believe in the susceptibility of the flesh over the power of the spirit.

The soul of a Trump-voter, like most of us, is a good person who doesn't have the faith to live in a world without fear and limitations, who gets aggressive towards science and facts and Darwinism because those reinforce what they fear (but will not recognize) at their core--that this is a world of scarcity and if they want to survive, someone else has got to be deprived, and they need a warrior to protect them.

I do not believe in such a world.  I believe in science and facts and evolution and take climate change seriously, but I also know those are small windows on an infinite reality that is ever-expanding with abundance, and that our knowledge and understanding of reality is miniscule but growing, that what we know today will pale in comparison to what we know in a decade.  I believe in an existence of free choice and agency, but one where God is good and grand enough to make every righteous desire come true eventually: a world where if enough people believe in equality and prosperity for everyone, there will be equality and prosperity for everyone; a world where if enough people believe in clear skies and clean water and carbon-neutral energy such a world will surely exist; a world where if enough people believe in love and understanding, such a world will evolve; a world where if enough people believe in education and facts and science and empowerment, it will be.

This world we are now collectively creating is the shadow world--the negative of our potential, and that man about to take the White House represents the darkness of our fears and faithlessness, and I cannot hate him because I know he is symbolic of the dark shadow of all of us, the antichrist in each of our own souls--the us that doubts the power of goodness and charity.  But I also know there is a light, and a God, and a connection with all living things that is observable and accessible right now, and it is unstoppable if we choose to believe every good thought has as its potential reality. 

And that is what I lean into now--belief in a nation open to all who seek its safety; belief in a nation courageous enough to tackle climate change; belief in a nation generous to assist each other through the tempests and droughts that happen in the meantime; belief in a nation that will ultimately choose democracy over dictators, and only serves one King--that gentle ruler of love, acceptance and charity, who cares more about what is in your heart than what you are burning down in his name.

Burning down love, burning down love.

What more?  In the name of.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--40. California Coastal Cold, Part 2

Cold Near Cambria, April 11, 2022, Steve Brown

April 12, 2022

1.

Outside the tent, the world is cold and damp and the sky to the east is a light lemon blue.  To the south are some big, tall very leafy trees.  They are species common to California, one that I, being from the Intermountain West, do not know.  I know the Great Basin so well it almost is me, and I it.  Utah juniper, pinion, gamble oak, aspen, blue spruce.  Home is a place I can define well with words.  Here is not home, and yet it feels so oddly familiar, like I belong here perhaps even more than home.  The air is cold, but moist and sweet, and for once I can breathe because my sinuses aren't dried and caked with thin snot layered up thick like layers of old paint.  It feels good to take in air so freely.  

Yet, it is cold, and very damp; the grasses below my feet are bent over with dew.  I decide to walk west, towards the sound of the sea.  That too sounds like home, the constant pounding of the waves.  It is the most beautiful sound in all the world, even from a distance, and it sounds much different here on the West Coast than along the Gulf Coast.  In California waves thunder.  In Texas they pshhh, or something like that.  Even in a storm, waves in Texas are softer, more drawn out.  In California, they thunder almost always, one after another.  And to hear them and feel that air always seeking to congeal into deep fog is for me to feel at home like nowhere else even if I don't have the name for those incredibly tall, leafy trees south of me, now glazed with the first rays of light.

I walk towards a rail fence where the end of the continent meets the sky, hoping for a glimpse of those glorious waves crashing below.  I am cold, but I don't mind.  I know it's not true, but in the moment, I feel like I'd be happy to shiver deeply here forever just to hear that sound and breath this air.  To breath and to be.  That is the California coast to me.

Behind the rail fence there are scruffs of wet, ochre grasses, berry bushes, and then a drop down to the sea.  Here, the trail turns right and follows the fence-line up a steep hill.  I follow it, hoping for a better view--and direct sunlight.

That line of golden warmth has moved lower downslope somewhat, and I am able to rise up out of the shadow quickly.  The only issue is that with the increased elevation comes also the increased wind.  I immediately seek shelter in some windswept evergreens.  The only problem is that brings the shade again--but it is definitely warmer than that wind.  Hugging a tree, I glimpse west to sunlit whitecaps rolling in.  This is it.  When I just see and be, I am free.  I've always known that.  And yet, I let my days fill up with everything but that.

2. 

I follow the path back down again, away from the windswept slope.  The sun now blankets the wet, grassy expanse in gold, and away from the wind, I can feel the warmth of the sun through my coat.  The path curves inland away from the wooden fence and towards those big, tall leafy trees.  They are golden and glorious.  The bugs and butterflies are out.  And the birds, that have been up the entire time, have increased their chatter and activity.  In a way, each day has a spring, and a summer, and a fall, and a winter.  Four seasons in one day is actually the norm--we are just not in-tune enough to notice it and make the connection with that annual day we break into seasons.

I follow the path around almost to the parking lot where we unloaded our car for camp and find a trail to the sea.  It is actually a small road that cuts down through the hillside.   The banks are steep and covered with grasses and bushes and trees, and all at once I am again in damp shadow looking up at a glowing world of warmth just out of reach.  That constant folding roar increases as I get my first glimpse of the ocean again--this time nearly at eyelevel.  I pick up my pace.

And then the world opens up to the sand and the sea.  There is not another person here, and it feels primal, original.  I stand steady and amazed as again that wind hits me with a smell and force of life not to be taken lightly.

Faced with the unknowns of my kidney disease, I wonder if this will be the last time I will ever see this view.  

It is a quiet wonder, but a deep one.  Life has taken on a depth it never had before.  Each experience seems sacred as it might not have a repeat.

Ironically, facing what could be turn out to be a terminal illness, makes me feel alive at a level I've never felt before.  Fear is definitely there.  But that voice cannot even begin to compete with the quiet, thundering awareness that life is just so damn beautiful.

3.

We have found a picnic area on a low bluff above a beach by the sea, and we have stopped to have breakfast.  The wind is cold and horrendously harsh, and we have pulled out the bare minimum of what we need to get some hot oatmeal and hot chocolate into us.  The one-burner propane stove is hissing its blue flames, the sound going in waves, as the wind does its best to wipe that fire out.  I stand to the side and look out past the metal-pipe railing, down to the beach below and the onslaught of waves, which in this wind, break into fans of fine water-droplets, almost mist, catching the mid-morning sun.

As cold as it is--and it is oh so cold--there are a few scattered groups of people walking along the beach.  A family of three--way out there to the south--is unsuccessfully trying to get a red, orange and yellow kite up.  It swirls and crashes again and again.  Too much wind, which I'm sure they know, of course.  It would be impossible not to.  I wonder what drives them.  Fun?  Or just stupid inflexible determination?  I'm positive that if they succeed, they will lose that kite altogether.  

My reflection doesn't last long.  It is cold, oh so cold.  The water has finally boiled, and we begin our own war with the wind, trying to get the oatmeal out of the paper packet into the bowl and keep as many of the flakes in there as possible before quickly grabbing and pouring in the hot water to hold everything down in a thick glue.  And then it's the same process with the hot chocolate, a thin dust of dark powder carried off in the wind.

I eat the quickly-cooling paste and drink the hot beverage thinking "This is the coldest I've ever been."  The view is absolutely stunning but not glorious enough to keep us here.  We eat at a pace we've never eaten before, pack up any old way, and sigh with relief to be back in that car.

Yet, strangely, we are oh so alive.

That is what it is to experience that California coastal cold that I love so very much.  I'd gladly do it again and again. I'm not so much different than that crazy family trying to fly a kite in cold hurricane-force winds.  Some rituals are just more meaningful if they involve some brutal futility.  There is some part of us that feels alive fighting against all odds to accomplish something--even if that something is just getting oatmeal to stay in the bowl long enough for water to weigh it down or getting a kite up long enough for one to count to thirty before it crashes to pieces.  

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--39. Icarus at Play Above All That Routine Thought

Icarus at Play Above All That Routine Thought, Steve Brown 2024

It's a hard thing to leave any deeply routined life, even if you hate it.

--John Steinbeck, East of Eden, 1952

Your only obligation in life is to die.  Everything else is a choice.

 --Dr. Daniel Sanderson

1.  Abstract

Each thought is a living road, like a river, with a current, and a choice between two opposing directions.  Some use the currents of the mind to get them where they want to go; some just follow the river wherever it goes; most spin in circles, lost in confusion because they don't understand the depths and undercurrents of their own mind.  It is very easy to believe one thing on the surface and accomplish the complete opposite because of what the mind truly believes below.  Now is always a moment to dip that ore into the water and feel around and play with the turbulence of the mind.  Some use their thoughts to get them where they want to go.  Most get played by their thoughts instead.  For most of my life, I have been in that latter group.  I often still am.  But sometimes I am now willing to stop mid-thought and get to know the river, and in those rare moments, I can work with the movements of my mind to get me where I want to be at that specific moment.  As a result, the argument that would have occurred in the past with a loved one doesn't because I am able to step away from my routine emotions, those automatic responses to the same old triggers defined by labels I unconsciously accepted long ago. 

Most people think that their thoughts are who they are.  This probably partly comes from As a Man Thinketh.  Thoughts definitely influence your choices and thus your behaviors.  That is vital to recognize.  However, it is absurd to think that you are your thoughts.  If you are your thoughts, then who is thinking them?  Believing you are what you think gives all of the free will you currently possess away to your routine thoughts.  You live up to your labels:  I am impulsive.  I am lazy.  I have a bad temper.  I am an alcoholic.  I am an addict.  I am shy.  I am a shallow social butterfly.  I am a loner. 

We are not our mind.  Our thoughts influence us, but they are not us.  Our thoughts are the stories we believe and the stories we want to believe, but they are not us.  They are the endless, swirling currents of the mind, but there is a very real me paddling that turbulence, and there is also a very real reality below those currents that is the bedrock of the channel that God intends me to get to know.  

When I understand these things, not only the mind, but all of life, moves from being a force to battle or simply endure, to a rich world teaming with possibilities to swim around in and explore--full of danger, yes.  But also full of beauty and wonder!  Once we know that we are not our thoughts, we no longer have to become them.  We can discard the ones that pull us under and latch onto the ones that make us soar.  Our thoughts only control us because we falsely believe they are us.  

Believing you are a failure may make you behave like a failure, but it does not make you permanently one.  Believing you are a winner may make you behave like a winner, but it does not guarantee you will always be one.  Believing you are a sinner may make you behave like a sinner, but it doesn't make you irredeemably one.   Believing you are a saint may make you behave like a saint, but it doesn't solidify you forever as one.  If the saint can turn towards becoming a sinner, and the sinner can turn towards becoming a saint, clearly those things aren't fixed.  If the winner can have a life experience that causes them to doubt that success and throw away all they've gained, and if the loser can somehow pick themselves up by their bootstraps and become a winner, clearly those labels are not who those individuals really are.  They are simply descriptions of behaviors based on current beliefs.  But someone is behind those thoughts doing the believing and acting according to those beliefs.  Getting to know that someone is key.   Knowing who I am is a very different type of knowledge than knowing who others believe I am.  We get those two lenses mixed up all the time.  We accept the labels others put on us as if the labels are us.  We see us through other people's eyes not realizing there is a very real me behind my thoughts that actually knows who I am.  

Those who understand this can begin to explore the river that is their mind and use its currents to take them where they ultimately want to go, knowing that the mind is not simply a tool to be used, but that it ultimately can become an extension of who they really are.   When this happens, the battle turns to play, and enduring turns to adventure, which is a lot less odious than simply surviving to the end.

2.  Concrete

The other morning, while feeding the chickens, and thinking about what I'd written above, which was still fresh, I realized that the only thing I really desire at this point in my life is to be as comfortable around others as I am around myself.  I also realized that as much as I want that, I am actually terrified of letting my shyness go because I've let that label define my existence for so long that I can't conceive of my life without the quiet, screaming terror I feel in the company of others.  

Then, I realized that if I let that shyness go, I will be unstoppable because I will be a man without desire and will be totally free to just experience life on its own terms and help others the best I can.  Unlike many others, I don't need things, power, or prestige to be happy.   And I am now so comfortable with myself alone that I'm never lonely when alone.  In solitude, I almost cease to exist in the most wonderful way.  If I'm out there in the valley, I get so caught up in the light and taking pictures, I become that transparent eyeball Emerson talks about.  And if I'm out in the garden, I get so busy watching the bees, I forget there is a me holding the hose.  I have no ambition, no fear.  I have no desire for anything beyond now.

Out there, feeding the chickens that morning, it hit me:  if I can feel that free by myself, why surely it is just as possible to feel that free in a room of full of people or while saying "Hi" to someone while walking down the hall.

What has divided my life into two different realities has been one simple belief:  I am shy.  Shy people are comfortable in their own company and are terrified in the company of others.  That's just how it is.  Who says I am shy?    I have.  My parents have.  Anybody who has met me has.  But does the bedrock me, the I below those stupid, silly thoughts really believe that?  I don't think so.  In my dreams, I am always a rock star and always have been since I was a little kid, not because I want to be famous, but rather because there is a me who knows exactly what it feels like to be free from social anxiety--that I who desires me to drop all that shyness horseshit.  At night, free from doubt, I become who I'm meant to be.

Long, long ago, over twenty-eight years now, I drank way too much on a regular basis, but it was easy for me to stop both because I was lucky enough not to become chemically addicted and because I never believed I was an alcoholic.  I was man angry at God for making me shy.  I was trying to slowly kill myself because I didn't like my existence.  Once I got rid of the anger and started to enjoy life, I had no more desire to drink.  

Long ago, over twelve years now, I was addicted to pornography.  Because I was addicted that habit was a little harder to overcome than drinking, but with sincere prayer and the help of God, it was still a relatively easy behavior to stop because although I knew I was addicted to pornography, I never accepted the label of being a pervert.  I knew at my core that I was morally clean and had the same, normal, healthy sexual desires as everyone, and that I had just been foolish enough to let a thought-fungus use my brain as its host.  I became aware of this one night when the sexual thoughts running through my dreams were absolutely disgusting and not something I'd ever be interested in experiencing even as a pornography addict.  I knew then that some negative energy was trying to take over and force me into becoming who I am not.  However, because I never believed I actually was a pervert, I was able to get over that addiction fairly quickly once I was serious about extinguishing the behavior.  With the help of God, I was free within a few months.

But shyness, has been different.  I've been battling it since about the time I was twelve.  For short periods of my life, it became excruciatingly crippling.  There were a couple of years in college I basically talked to nobody other than a few friends.  The terror I felt around others was extremely painful.  I'd move to intentionally give me a fresh start, and for a while that would work, but then shyness would creep in again.  Things got a little better when I just accepted it and quit fighting it.

That goes back to what I said in the first paragraph.   It is very easy to believe one thing on the surface and accomplish the complete opposite because of what the mind truly believes below.  Because I had so identified myself with being shy, I was terrified of losing that part of myself, if I actually changed.  It had brought me a few good things.  I'm very comfortable in my own company, and although I don't have a lot of friends, the few I do have are very close to me.  My shyness gave me myself, my friends, my wife and my family.  Accepting that shyness as a force in my life was better than constantly battling it because I no longer hated God and myself for the anxiety I was feeling.   

But now I have the thought, Why even be shy?  Why not let it go and be as free all the time as I am right now in my own company?  Why live two different lives--the exhilaration of being alone and the terror of being in company?  Why not just be free?

I'm pretty sure in a short period of time that one thought will change everything.  Even if it doesn't, it's a very important thought to have.  Why be shy?  Why be anything you don't want to be?

Thoughts are to be used.  They are not who we are.  You can cling to them or let them go as needed.  The key is knowing what is it that you really want.

When you know your true direction, you will get there eventually.  It has to be.

I think the story of Icarus is an unfinished story.  It is a story told by those living in those houses below to justify being stuck in lives of simply enduring the routine to the end.  It is a story based on fear of change, a story based on a strict belief in limitations.  There probably is some fact to it.  Icarus probably flew too close to the sun.  He probably did something stupid and tried to soar midday to show off his skills to others.  Instead of drawing a crowd of enthusiasts for flight, for soaring beyond current known limits, he drew a crowd of doubters, of disdainers of glory, those who gleefully watched him crash to the earth and said, "I told you so; I knew that would happen; if God had wanted us to fly, he would have given us wings."  And then they went inside and shut their door, because that is exactly what a person driven by fear always does.  It is routine behavior.

So, the story they miss is that Icarus is up there flying now.    

3.  Now

Each moment provides the opportunity to name a fear, let it have its say.   Then instead of doing its bidding, choose to play.