Letters to the Editor

• No, Again...

  [Read the article: Eric Schaeffer wants to marry you]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  All ya'all don't understand Eric Schaeffer or the journey he is on.

  "Enlightened" is nothing more than choosing to turn your headlights on on darkened, lonely country road. That's it.

  Eric doesn't think he's the "buddha," and neither do I.

  Would you expect, say, Jackie Kennedy to watch her husband's brains blown clear out of his skull sitting next to her in a car and then thinking that she could just go on with her life as it always had been?

  No paradigm shifts, no deep thoughts and introspection, no digging deeper in a desperate search for the meaning of it all.

  OF COURSE the trauma of what people sometimes do to one another is going to FORCE the other person off the normal playing field of win and lose.

  And that is our pain. Mine, Eric's, and people like us. Once the line is crossed and reality gets punctured, there's no turning back, Neo. It's the red pill or the blue pill, but not both. Things are never the same after that choice has been made.

  I think they used to call these types of experiences, "nervous breakdowns." But nerves don't break down. People become terrified and lapse into whatever state of mind they have learned to go into to stay free from harm while the world does its thing to us. My mom used to lapse into psychosis. Kind of a strong reaction to improperly cooked pork, but I learned to hang with it.

  For a good long time I was pissed as hell about having these choices pre-ordained for my life before I reached anything like an age of consent. But it's okay now. I'm better for it. I think I can live my life and enjoy the experience more than I ever could before.

  But then I run into someone who just trips a trigger I didn't realize existed. Someone who reminds me of just how far blown off course I was, and how long and arduous the journey towards something like, "home," has been. And, yeah, I get really pissed really quickly. Ignorance does that to people. You are ignorant of me and my journey and I am somewhat jealous and envious of the insulated nature of your's. I remember what it used to be like to fumble through life without much concern or care about the choices I made on a moment to moment basis. I remember what it was like to have a whole host of "angels" I never saw or became aware of guarding my path for me, keeping me on course without my having to be aware of it.

  Not anymore. When I screw up now there is NO ONE left to assign responsibility to. I gotta own it and that can be very scary for anyone. Sometimes I'd like to just take a "fukitol" and run back to someplace I thought existed in my past. Then I get there and I realize it never really was the way I thought it was in the first place, not the way I remember it at all. I've been changed by my experiences in life and the people I've bumped into in it. This moment, right here and right now, is all that I will ever have. There is no second chance.

  The whole "free will" versus "determinism" issue has been decided and it is pure determinism with an egg-white frosting of "free will." None of us has much choice about our lives...we all want to be happy and want to enjoy ourselves. That is pre-determined just as the fact that our time here is all-too-short and there is much work to be done. The details in between the black parts of the Book of Life are entirely up to us because none of it is actually about reality. It's just like our own individual dream. Going to sleep is a fact just as waking up is.

  Getting angry is like a bad dream. Most of ya'all get to stay asleep through it. I have to wake up and shake off the nightmare. I have to or it could kill me. It could kill Eric, too. We don't get to have resentments that go on for years like we used to. We don't get to have unhealthy relationships with really sick, really wonderful people anymore, just like we can't shoot heroin or drink ourselves to sleep at night. That ticket has been punched for us. Your ticket may never get punched in those departments so you get to have more of the illusion of free will than we get to have. Enjoy it. More power to you. It can be really alot of fun.

  So, yeah, I can see where you think, "I'm lost," and should be pitied in some sense. But really you are lost and it is you who is feeling pity for yourself. Why? Well, how about the mortality thingy? How about the sad fact that everything you've ever been taught to value and enjoy is going to be taken from you and probably in a way that's going to be painful to bear? Little things like that you get to keep hidden from your conscious mind while you carom through your life experiences. Not me and not Eric. This shit is in our face every second of every day. We can't afford to get really angry about it, but, still, we do. It can be frustrating. So you HAVE TO find something grander and more suitable to believe in...or you get to die. Game over.

  So what's it gonna be, people? Are we all winners or are we all, like, the biggest, most pathetic heap of losers ever to walk the face of this Earth?

  "...hey there mister brontosaurus/do you have a lesson for us?....they say the meek, shall inherit the Earth...."

  Define, "meek," in six legs or less. Maybe eight, I dunno.... It's looking more and more like two legs won't be enough....

  Permalink Thursday, February 15, 2007 07:29 AM