Friday, January 16, 2009

The Greatest Lessons of my Life (are still being learn't)

There comes a time in every person’s life when something horrible happens, something that shakes up your life so drastically, that it leaves you questioning your very understanding of good and evil, of how and why the world exist, of why you exist. At this moment, you may come to the conclusion that the universe is meaningless, or that its meaning is too great for our feeble, un-godlike minds to understand. Either way, the person has to accept that a satisfactory answer to the question, “WHYYYYYY!?!?!?” is not available.
It is at this crucial point, that a person begins a journey of thought and action to give meaning to his or her own life, despite the fact that shit happens, and ain’t nothing you can do about it. There are many strategies. Some achieve peace and meaning through spirituality, and I know others have chosen to try to live each day as if it were their last, without regret. In my moment, (I was in high school at the time) I chose the latter.

In Zorba the Greek, the character Zorba chose to live each day as if it were his last, also. I’m going to include one part of the story here:

"Look, one day I had gone to a little village. An old grandfather of ninety was busy planting an almond tree. 'What, grandad!' I exclaimed. 'Planting an almond tree?' And he, bent as he was, turned around and said: 'My son, I carry on as if I should never die.' I replied: 'And I carry on as if I was going to die any minute.' Which of us was right, boss?"

Living each day as if it were your last gives you permission to do a lot of things that have negative effects in the long term. For instance, if there’s a chance I could die tomorrow, I’m going to eat this entire can of bean dip with my fingers, I’m not going to class, and I think I might challenge someone to a knife fight and see if I can win. Etcetera, etcetera. I doubt I am the only one who has ever thought this way. And I’d bet that I’m not the only one who found herself living longer than expected, suffering the consequences of her choices, and finally asking herself, “What now?”

Well, now it’s time to plant some trees I suppose. It wasn’t as clear to me as it is now what my new path would be. I just knew that I was going to be less destructive… This idea is actually what brought about the title of this blog. My bro once wrote me a letter when I was still in high school that mentioned something about how I have a wildfire inside. While I am fairly sure he was referencing the intense mother-daughter fights I used to regale the family with, I felt it was an accurate description of my “insides,” so to speak. I felt very intensely that… I felt very intensely. My passion was misdirected and much like a wildfire, I caused havoc throughout the Californian West Coast. So I decided, hey—let’s keep the passion, just express it in a different way. Wildflowers. Yeah.

So at this point, I “followed my heart” to Thailand, then Alaska, and I took some chances. And who would have guessed, the meaningless universe threw me a bone. By being my goofy self I can do a lot of good things, make positive impressions on the lives of others. While I’m not prepared to write about it all just yet, I know things are happening. Far from figuring this all out, I do feel more confident that at the very least, my feet have tread the trailhead.

And by the way, I have never been in a knife fight.

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