Idle Reflections

Apse of the Notre Dame de Paris circa 2017, photo by Sean McGadden

Happiness: To have a long lasting sense of contentment

Love: To have a life that is filled with profound, meaningful and warm personal attachments

Generosity: To give to others freely

Friendships: To create and sustain meaningful relationships with others

Spirituality: To have connection to a reality beyond myself and the physical world

Humor: To have a life filled with laughter

Fun: To have a life that is light­hearted, filled with enjoyment and pleasure

I value friendship not selfishness. However, all people are selfish. I begin now by thinking:

I believe in family. It is the only love that is unconditional and without fault. It does have misguided intentions and expectations sometimes but only with the best things in mind. Family, above any friends and lovers, will ultimately be there for you no matter what. I really appreciate my family and I don’t know the ways I can best repay them. I want to take care of them and be available for their needs. I want to make them proud. Oftentimes I think I am not enough or strong enough to help them and gain their approval. I often agree that I am not able to be what they want me to be. I just want to be happy. I know success and happiness come with hard work. I don’t know what it is I’m very good at. I really love creating. Writing, drawing sometimes, reading, painting, compiling music, I like exercising, being active, I’m athletic, I want so many things. I want to excel at too many things but it’s almost as if I can’t tie myself down to anything. I can’t commit to anything. I don’t know why not. The world is so big, so small, everything matters so much and so little just the same.

I can’t tell if I should be thinking about joy this much but fuck it. It’s worth it. Perhaps loving something is not a compromise or a past or a future. Instead it is a truly visceral feeling of emotion when this feeling is near often and with intensity. When something is present in moments, as the way joy is, when joy is childish, perhaps even aware of a seriousness in the air I cannot evade the raw timelessness of my own existence. I might be crazy for acknowledging these truths but what else can I do but acquiesce to the notion that joy has taken my heart. Joy has it in its hands. This realization is quite frightening but I am eager and hopeful that it might caress me and not rip me up with observational efficiency. Joy has ripped me from my somber, healthy slumber and evasion of love. I have been prepared to wait lengths of time to engage with something on this earth that feels sublime and divine. Joy has so delicately floated amidst me. Joy has remained beside me and so suddenly snatched my heart from my chest. I am at the mercy of Joy. Joy is everything that gives you fulfillment. Sometimes joy is architecture. Sometimes it is my family. Sometimes it is exploring spirituality. Joy is everything that can enable one to harness positive thoughts.

I love being home and seeing my family, before long we’ll all be too old to be together all the time and to spend everyday together. I cherish the time we spend together because like any person, time flies. Being home always brings back memories of youth and I realize everyone is really moving with dizzying speed on their own trajectories. Seeing my closest friends from back in the day and others made me see the tangent I’ve gone on since the inception of our relationship. I’ve made new friends I didn’t even know in high school too. Just goes to show the way people change. It seems it’s also somewhat hard, or made easier because I have sisters who are going through many of the things I’ve gone through.

I had always anguished over coming home in the past. Mostly at the thought of flames of old love. Time’s gone by and I’ve changed and this fire has changed. She really was the center of many of my feelings and thoughts, she was my hometown. I see it all the time and wonder about her even when I hadn’t thought about her in a long time. Either way, even though she won’t go away as much as I try. I don’t think she ever will. I’ve come to accept it as something that happened and was good in my life. Good things only come around once in a while and you just have to know when to hold on to them. Sometimes you don’t or you can’t or you didn’t realize how good it was or that it even was good. But that’s the thing with many opportunities that come along. You have to take it little by little and just let the bad things remind you of the sweetness of good things. I’ve tried to hold on to as many sweet things as I can, sometimes too many. The littlest and sometimes most insignificant things in life are usually the most memorable. The big things just come to accompany them. Those sweet things, you have to let go of sometimes, but most times you can find a way to keep them close. Life is about change and movement and progress. Ever since humanity decided we didn't have to settle for what was established we can always push for more. People have been searching and looking for the next best thing and the new always. However, through it all there will remain your own conception of yourself, despite massive success or massive failure you must be able to live with your reflection in the mirror despite any of it. There is more shame in committing atrocities to your soul than there are in failing hopelessly at dreams that are just and that are yours.

Some of my good friends have reminded me that people are selfish and you can’t live for others. I love meeting people. They’re amazing. They can change your life in the best of ways. I’ve learned not to shut anyone out because you can always learn something from them and you have something to teach everyone you meet. No matter how old or how wise. It can be hard to put yourself on the line and expose yourself to someone new, but that is the only way to be real and live a full life. So as I explain my recent thoughts I leave you with this. Be happy and able to forgive those you’ve met and no longer know, love those you now have, and be excited for those you’ve yet to meet and be able and honest to get to know them! As we all prepare for the autumn and ultimately some sadness that always comes with wintertime and its struggles, remember the summer with its warmth and happiness and keep it close as well as the people.

Wanderer

Listening to merry tales

Of adventure and wisdom

Making song to people

Of present and future delights

To satiate a thirst for knowing

Becoming an entertainer, mellow

and discrete resting on advances

Parallel, but in different space times

The singularity is a lie

In this world, I must be master

Of my own realm of pursuits

For the inkling of a better world,

Starts in the permeation of curiosity,

The withdrawal from ignorance

I will capture the essence

And release it upon the world

Through my narrow lens

I want only to incite more

Opinions, more discourse, if not for me

But for those I cherish, so

They might encounter bliss, in the

Ways I am hopeful and optimistic

Of the world as we know it

This life conjures relentless unity

Of spirit and people through this

Collective suffering we may find peace.