I think, perhaps, that Life is what happens when we, physical, human representations come into contact with the spiritual, the super-natural, the divine.
Like, if we are the trumpets, violins, and cellos and the Divine is the notion, the creativity, the spirit that put the notes in their rightful spots. When these forces meet, something new happens: something called music.
If I knew how to dance, like a nice two-person number that Mario Lopez would Dance With The Stars, I might compare it to that. It makes a lot of sense, the whole "two working together to make a singularly beautiful action" thing...
But I don't know anything about dancing.
But music... yes, music makes sense to me. The notes are there, on the page, sure, but they actually don't exists in or on the page -- they're actually somewhere else. They're nowhere, really, until some kind of musical instrument plays them.
But when that happens, and when notes are played well, and when they are in tune, and on pitch, and played with a beautiful timbre...
Well, I really don't think there's anything better.
//
Every once in a great while I have these random moments of clarity; like suddenly everything makes sense and I have this peaceful, beautiful perspective of all that's in existence. They're always brief -- like a flash of lightening that burns a shadow on my mind's retina, leaving an imprint, a sense, much more lingering than the moment itself. They come and then they go, usually at strange times, and I'm left trying to stay in that moment -- or, rather, go back to it, because it was over almost before I realized it was happening. All I know is that somewhere inside that Presence is the way I want to live.
Well, maybe you know what I'm talking about and maybe you don't, but I had one of those moments today when I was taking out the trash at Starbucks -- a fairly hideous job (particularly on a wet, snowy, cold day like today), just below cleaning the bathrooms and just above cleaning the floor drains -- and as I was was dragging the heavy cart with two huge garbage cans filled to the brim with empty cups, leftover coffee, used napkins, and assorted pastry shards a strange thought entered my ever-brooding head: "Don't forget."
"Don't forget," it said again.
And I said, "Huh?"
And then it made sense.
"When you move on to a new job where you don't have to get dirty or serve coffee to bratty customers or drag two hundred pounds of waste a hundred yards to a stinky dumpster, don't forget what it was like when you did."
"Don't forget that there are people that still do this. And when you someday stand in line as a customer at the Green Empire with no employee discount, don't forget that some of the people behind the counter have Master's degrees. That some of them have kids and families. And that for one reason or another, they are all here because they need to be."
"So be kind to them. Appreciate them when they do a good job. When they give you coffee and make you smile, love them back because they are going out of their way to make your day a bit more special, in spite of the fact that nobody is paying them much of anything to do it."
I won't forget.
//
Sometimes I hear people criticize a movie or a TV show for not being realistic. But the truth is, we don't really want realistic, do we? I mean, if we really wanted REAL real life, we'd set our lawn chairs outside the neighbors' house and watch them every night.
Hm.
No, I think want we really want are romanticized snapshots of what real life can be. We want those ideal moments when life is beautiful and good (or just more exciting). We want a glimpse out of the confines of our own lives, with our 40 hours of work and our 2 hour commute and our 5 minutes of bliss, into "that" -- that something else that is interesting and funny and magical and dramatic and adventurous.
Maybe what we're looking for is meaning. Maybe well-done TV shows and movies are just condensed, time-wise, to the point where it's easier to find purpose in them, and so we gladly lose ourselves for a couple hours for the fair trade of belonging. It does make sense, I suppose; our beautiful real life "moments" are often so spaced out, it's hard to connect the dots, to make stars into constellations.
Maybe we just want "friends," or for "everyone [to] love ME" (instead of just Raymond), or maybe we're even just looking for drama -- to live in "The OC" or to be a "Survivor" of something exciting.
Maybe filmmakers and TV writers are just packagers of purpose. If they're guilty of anything, perhaps it's creating some kind of thematic gravity that pulls us in and allows us to see life at its most simple and refined -- life that actually makes sense, most of the time.
Or maybe I'm a complete whack-a-doo who thinks too much.
I suppose it could be both.
//