The Dog and the Cart

Life is a dream.

The one you’re being chased.

Narrow escapes and nowhere to hide.

You wake up and the dream isn’t over.  The cancer is still there.

No escape.  Nowhere to hide.

A short breath.  A whisper.  A disturbance of the water.  And then we’re gone.

Lost jobs, Lost money, Lost friendships, Lost lovers, Lost health.

The avalanche of emptiness.

At 40, you should be having a mid-life crisis.  Not preparing your funeral.

Life throws our plans into the blender.

Living is nothing more than dying slowly.  And some people are more hare than tortoise.

And just when all things start to seem so frail, I think about this….

Most of my memories are jumbled and faded.  I can’t see all the moments in my head.  It’s remembering what happens in a movie but not remembering the scenes.

But I remember the first time I kissed my wife.

I remember that clearly.

When I write, I listen to music.  Right now, I’m listening to Brand New’s Science Fiction.  It’s easy to get swept away in the melody.  The hypnotizing lyrics and pulsating tempos.

I’m in a groove now.

It keeps me writing.  The flow.  Where my thoughts take me to distant places and then back again. Centered and removed.   A meditation of sorts.

And I’m wondering just how far out there to go.

Because maybe one day it will be too far.

Just like Kurt Vonnegut said, “I want to stand as close to the edge as I can, without going over.  Out on the edge, you see all kinds of things that you can’t see from the center.”

Joseph had his multicolored coat.  I have my cup of coffee.  He had dreams to interpret.  I have people’s stories.

1) Everything is connected.

There was once a famine in Egypt.  But there was a boy that could interpret dreams.

Just like Drake, Joseph said it was God’s plan.  What was meant for evil, turned out for good.  In the real world, it doesn’t always seem to work out that way.

But it’s a game of hindsight.  We can’t always see it.  Because most of the time, we’re just in it.  Playing our role.  Like a giant cosmic dance.

Does that make free will a myth?

No.

But fate will have the last say one way or the other.

2) Reality is a spider web.

It’s woven together and touching at seemingly random points.

But this mystery is its beauty.

The connections are sometimes only seen if you take a step back.

3) Put your hands together.

Do you feel your hands?  Are they touching?  No.

There is more empty space floating around an atom than solid space.  Which means your hands are actually just floating next to each other.

We are all just masses of energy.  Floating through space.  Our kinetic potential lasts but a lifetime… then what?

That’s the mystery.

Are we not scientists?  Is reality not a cold, hard place?  Full of facts and equations.  Full of rationality and answers.

As I type this, my hands hover over my computer.  Never actually touching the laptop.  But the energy dissipates and the words are placed.

4) The Purpose.

From my mind, the neurons and synapses congregate to form the thoughts that later appear in language.  The calcium channels opening and closing, my muscles twitching.  My heart pumps inside, with no desire of its own. With only the purpose to continue.

To keep going.

From our essential core we know this truth.  Keep going.

We have seen.  Tasted.  Lived.  Keep going.

We think we lost the path.

But we keep going.

5) The dog and cart

There’s an old story.  And it’s rooted in stoic philosophy.

It goes something like this:

There’s a road.  And on that road is a cart.  And tied to that cart is a dog.

The dog is pulled by the cart.

The dog goes where the cart goes.

The dog did not ask to be tied to the cart.

As the cart rolls, so the dog must follow.

The dog can go willingly or it can resist.  But either way, the dog must follow.

The dog can curse, bite, pull, bark, howl.

Or the dog can wag its tail and hop along willingly.

The dog’s happiness is not related to the cart or the rope or the journey.

The dog’s happiness is in its response.

6) Take a step.

Life is a choice.

A choice inside a dream.

The spider webs we walk call to us.  Come and see.  Come and see.  Take a step.

Wag your tail and sing a song.

Hover your feet over the road and see what will happen.

 

Have you found the beginning? No? Then why are you looking for the end?”

     —Jesus

 

p.s

What if the dog bites through the rope?  What then?

clp Written by:

3 Comments

  1. Tabb Breedlove
    June 7, 2018
    Reply

    I recently caught myself in one of these magical, epiphonous, beautiful, philosophical frames of mind. It was like a rain drop in front of me when I pulled myself out, back into this realm of reality and the few pieces I was able to pull from it made me feel not alone. I thought to myself what things in life can we really, truly feel And this was what I came up with: ” We are born into a world of birth and death and love1″ These are the true and few things that bring us to that heavenly plane of existence.
    Then again u know me, I’m weird. But loved this. Thank you for posting.

    • clp
      June 7, 2018
      Reply

      Perfect! thanks for sharing

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