Running In Place (RIP)

There is something very freeing when doing a show based on your writing, and also very vulnerable.  Tonight I chuckled, as I was running in place. I had this image in my mind of my life, seeing all the places that scared me, frightened me, places where I hid, or ran from, and yet it appeared like I was running in place the whole time.  Jackson Brown has a lyric that says, “I look around for the friends that I used to turn to, to pull me through, looking into their eyes I see them running too.” We all seem to be running to death, as fast as we can. Rejecting right now as though it is hell on earth.  The joke is on us, we spend so much energy, trying fix others, ourselves, controlling, hiding, running, worried, thinking that we are escaping, but really we are only really ever here. Sooner rather than later you will have to forgive, accept that life happened as it did, not take it personal, and move on.

Tonight I saw fear as a joke. Fear makes us run, hide, and yet when we stand in Truth and love, and dwell there and speak from there, hell subsides. Because fear is always telling us to run, get out, the ships going to implode, you can’t handle it, and yet if we stay there and deal with it, we seem to be okay. Do we make mistakes? Do we fall? Sure, but not as much as we think we do.  Heck, I lam learning lines for a show I wrote, and there is a lot lines. The best I can do is show up, learn them, practice, and fall.

As we approach Valentines day, most people are searching for some idea of perfection, the perfect love, the perfect partner, and yet some of the longest relationships I know, are built on imperfection. For example, we go to the movies to watch our hero’s go on a adventure, and most of them don’t have it together. The disciples in the bible didn’t have it together but  they wrote on their experience. Most people don’t have it together, but that is what makes us wonderful. We strive to do our best, we come up short, we laugh, and cry, and hug each other, then do it all over again.  Love isn’t  about perfection, waking up isn’t about perfection, it is about living in the present and enjoy the experience.

Please fall, please make mistakes, please get up, please move forward, yes people can be real jerks, who cares, don’t take it personal.  A friend knew I was divorced and made some comment about divorce people, and then there was that weird pause when the person realizes this is where their foot is in their mouth. We both laughed. It’s funny and what he said was partly true.

People often ask me how I can get on stage and speak, or speak to groups, and I offer this, “Actually how can I not. I love it.” We all have gifts, but life is a practice, the mind is only telling us over and over what we already did and know. So stop taking the mind so serious, and taking yourself so serious, and realize we are making the whole darn thing up. All of it. Till we decide that our way doesn’t work, so we start to just listen deep within and follow and laugh lots. That is why I feel we search for happiness so much on this planet, because we just need to keep laughing, smiling, and seeing that life is really quite fun.