Staying alive

from JoeUser Forums
With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,
 
This morning, bright and early, My Little Honey and I got up and met our friends, Allen and Eve, for a walk through the desert. Another friend, Collette, did an 8k race at about the same time.  People in motion. Such a good thing.
 
Both Allen and I weren't so sure we would be alive today.  He suffered from some very serious, life threatening illnesses; I suffered from being shot in the head and having post neurological trauma issues.  As we walked together we talked about how we managed. He relied on his faith in himself and his wife's care.  I wasn't sure what I relied on, except I had faith in medicine and myself. But our conversation led to some things.
 
Insurance companies refused to insure my life.  When you are 19 and an insurance company (actually, many insurance companies) refuses to give you life insurance, you begin to wonder what they know. I decided that I was probably not going to live as long as others.  Such a thought does things to a person.  For one, I had a sort of carpe diem point of view. I lived as much as I could in the moment.  I read the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, I read The Way of Zen. I enjoyed women, motorcycles and a fairly vagabond lifestyle.  The thing is, I kept having birthdays!
 
Risk taking is a good thing when you are young and stupid. Boundaries get stretched, things get learned, and life has a way of deepening one's point of view.  At thirty something I figured I was probably beating the odds, met My Little Honey, and shifted course. The rest of my life has been, in a sense, a balancing act between living for the moment and planning for the future: quite a delicate and sometimes tedious balance.
 
We must do both: take risks and maintain stability. Without risks we never grow, rarely discover new things, and have no real sense of our own power to endure or overcome and obstacle.  Without stability, things are always in the air and the ground keeps shifting.  Its hard to keep one's balance.
 
Wisdom is finally having the sense to mediate the two.
 
Be well.
religion
1,487 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top
We must do both: take risks and maintain stability.
End of quote


Exactly.

This brings to mind an idea I thought of after Reading Lila: An Inquirey into Morals by Robert Pirsig. Pirsig talks about two aspects of "Quality" in this book (capital Q intentional) as being both static and dynamic. He goes on to say that the universe needs both to exist -dynamic to create the Good (so to speak) and static to maintain it. Kinda like a...baseball game I figure. You have the static "latching" of getting and staying on the basis coupled with the excitement and flash of the dynamic to make the game go. Without both, there IS NO baseball!

Anyway, just an idea. As always I appreciate your post. They help me maintain my balance on that thin wire called Life.
Reply #2 from JoeUser Forums Top
Oops...where's the edit button? I misspelled Inquiry! Anyway, while I'm here, here's a link: WWW Link
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Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

Lila was a good effort to expand on The Zen of MC Maintenance. Its the dynamic that is so important in our lives. Thank you, Roy, for reading my notes and especially, for leaving a few tracks. Be well.