No Sh*t, Please!

As I've been spending some time pondering ways to bring more focus, clarity, and balance to my life I started reading a few books on the subject. I just finished reading Hardcore Zen by Brad Warner. It's a good book. I like his take on things, and the way he describes things. He's a funny guy, and I like funny. Especially when the funny's aimed at a subject like religion, which is usually taken so seriously. Your own personal religious beliefs might be very serious and important to you internally as an individual and they probably should be. But when groups of people get together the seriousness of religion should be left out of the picture. Serious religious thinking just isn't a group activity and trying to make it one only causes problems! But I digress...

My point was that Buddhism (and Brad Warner) emphasizes questioning things. It reminds you to question authority, question yourself, question everything. That's one of the things I've always liked about it. And meditation. I like that too. So somewhere in meditating over all this talk of questioning things and pondering the focus of my existence I hit on a little nugget of truth about myself. Here it is in a nutshell: I don't want to take a lot of shit.

And I mean that in every possible way. I don't want to take a lot of unnecessary attitude from anyone, I don't want a lot of drama in my life, I don't want to put up with a lot of dogma, I don't want to be really competitive, I don't want people cramping my style or telling me what to do, and I don't want to take in a lot of shit, either. I don't want to take a bunch of drugs or be wasted all the time, I don't want to eat nasty food or breathe nasty carcinogens.

So. Now that I've got the "don'ts" covered, what about he "do's", right? What do I want? Could it be the exact opposite of what I don't want? Let's see...

That would mean that I... Do want to, um, give a little bit of good stuff? Uh, I want to give off a good vibe or attitude, I want to limit the drama and bring in more calm & peace (I had to use a thesaurus for that one), I want to allow for the existence of a certain amount of ambiguity and uncertainty (that was even trickier than 'drama'), I want to not worry about being or having the 'best', I want to be free to express myself and to be around people who inspire me. I also want to prepare and share and eat good foods & drinks, and be in healthy natural environments that aren't toxic to me.

Yeah. I do want all those things. And I do think that if I had more of those in my every day life I would feel better, and yes, even be more balanced, focused and clear-headed. Well, I will just have to work on that.

Office Time Wasted: Only about an hour, I think. But it's not really relevant, is it? The object of the game is balance so, if the job's getting done, what difference does it make how much time I actually spend on it? Wait, does that sentence even make sense?? It might be time for a tea break.

Listening To: Rancid's '...And Out Come the Wolves'