RE: A great article about JOY that I couldn't help but share with you today.
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Well, I had a look at the article - flattered you sought to speak specifically to me - and I have to note I am reminded of Klaus Schwab's announcement - or prophecy - that we will own nothing and we will be happy. Shades of Aldous Huxley swirled and loomed at the edges of my awareness, but then the Soma kicked in and my consciousness settled and partook of the deep contentment we higher beings enjoy when being poked with sticks through the bars of our cages.
When I speak of my unbounded optimism, I am not describing my personal fate and experience. I have confidence in the human spirit, the quest innumerable people will undertake to escape the bars of our cages and overcome impositions of slavery. I do not claim to be competent to myself defeat our enemies, the miasma of versetzung, disenfranchisement, debanking, and medical malpractice that eventually oozes through the cracks of my defenses. I am assured I will die. I will die defeated, because I will be trying to live when I do.
But, I am not going to hang my head when I am flung onto the executioner's block and the crowd roars with excitement at the promise of my blood. I will not here detail the present circumstances I am in, which, despite my constant affirmations of the blessings of civilization, of ordinary goodness, of the banality of good and the salt of the Earth, that I depend on through investing in goodwill, have failed me. Not all investments in any mechanism, whether financial, scientific inquiry, love, or vengeance, bear fruit. Sometimes we lose our shirts, our minds, or our hearts to whores. It is the human condition, and, as I have ever affirmed, I will die one day, and that day could be today.
On this day I could be finally defeated and my journey to becoming worm poop end. I will not despair of it. This joy Commiela touts, this nirvanic composure, is not caused by benevolent overlords, but is despite those malevolent. It is not derived of great success, but despite catastrophic failure. I tell you truly that from a <$17 bill my entire life is in disarray, and not because it isn't payable, but because it is paid. My dedication to doing good for my neighbors, the salt of the Earth, has salted my Earth, and laid waste to my fortunes. Vast engines of hatred are roused, scenting my blood, my financial and economic weakness, in the water, and stir my way, coming to consume me utterly. I reach out in desperation to friends and acquaintances, to lawyers and lawmakers, to no avail. All trails lead to obdurate walls, to prepared defenses I am not going to breach. I am defeated.
I will laugh at the millions that were spent to destroy me, who spent but pennies to live, when they take me down. When the blades rake and rip at my nerves, wielded by experts at torment, I will be glad it is I under the knives, and not my sons, or my neighbors, but me - because I have become obdurate under torture by long practice of endurance in a lifetime past it's expected expiry featuring incessant defeat.
My failure is not the failure of humanity. My fate is not the end of days for anyone but me. My humiliation is what I have practiced in my own mind, seeking criticism to set my soul's feet upon solid confidence, knowing what I cannot do and knowing then what I can. I cannot prevail against my foe. I will succumb, am succumbing as I write here. Certain defeat and death stalks me from behind, hot breath predatory on my neck, but my fate is not the fate of humanity. While my fields have been sown with salt, the salt of the Earth is it's savor, and I know - with prophetic certainty - that the heavens are the infinite fields where our posterity will sow and reap abundance incalculable.
No Pollyanna takes the jibes here, but mere flesh and corruption, known to be fated to decay in the circle of life that is indomitable. I am not dismayed at being infinitesimal, indefensible, incompetent to take the victor's crown from the heads of my enemies bowed before me, but lay that wreath on the brows where it belongs: those of my betters, who succeed me.
This day may be my last, and hereafter you may no longer read my words, but they will echo in your heart and bestir your mind yet when I am gone. You, my friend, are my better, and will survive me to struggle and scramble across the bemined battlefields to come. It is your victory, and the victory of humanity, alone the wreath I wear upon my brow. It is your success in which I exult as I perish, today, tomorrow, someday, and not yours alone, but of the good people of the Earth.
There is my joy.
Thanks!
You just wrote a masterpiece.
Holy Cow.
I congratulate you and I have a lot of joy for that.
It is when we are on the ropes, backed up to a wall, that we find out what is within us. The ordinary, the cruft of our opinions and preferences is pierced through, clarified like glass, and our core values and principles are laid bare. It isn't great craft, but great exigency, that free these words from my spirt.
You are a poet who sees in every situation the carbon particles floating like tiny fragments of what never was and that perhaps depending on a change in that paradigm called "thought", can "be."
What would this world be without poets, thinkers and those of us who swim against the current?
You have to take risks, sometimes you find unicorns, pink ones, cranquicos and others who are valued customers.