Listening to: Cyndi Lauper "At Last"
Reading today: Rabbi David something or other thinks gays are reincarnated as rabbits which he says are wellknown to be b
Drinking today: More filter coffee, FairTrade of course
Hold on to what is good even if it is a handful of earth.
Hold on to what you believe even if it is a tree which stands by itself.
Hold on to what you must do even if it is a long way from here.
Hold on to life even when it is easier letting go.
Hold on to my hand even when I have gone away from you.
- Pueblo Blessing
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Tuesday, Jun. 08, 2004 - 5:35 a.m.
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Shortlived Minds Floating in Space
I'm over here at SquirrelX's again. I am sorry to say I am behind on reading her entries.
But once again a quote struck me, since it is something I have been mulling over in several forms for the past little while:
"What you possess in the world will be found at the day of your death to belong to someone else.What you are will be yours forever."
__Henry Van Dyke
There was something similar I read as a quote the other day, something like knowledge is something you gain that can never be taken away, unlike your house and your belongings.
And someone said something similar recently in a comment to me, about how our fortunes can change and I could lose my house, and the people with the family and kids in the tiny apartment could find themselves in a better place etc.
Well, you know what? This whole "who/ what you are/ what you learn/ what you discover" bit being yours forever is a bunch of bull pucky.
Yup.
Ask Ronald Reagan's friends and family if he was the same man through his alzheimers that they knew.
Ask me if my mother after shock treatment, and chronic fatigue syndrome is the same person. She has to reread every novel in her bookshelves cuz she cannot remember what they are about. She cannot deal with stress like she used to. She used to be calm and strong, and now she is angry and difficult.
Ask my neighbor Angelwing's sister if he is always himself, he who was in a coma after wiping out on his motorcycle from last June til this January. She says his personality has totally changed. He used to be quiet and circumspect and shy. Now he is outspoken, and embarassingly frank, flirts with all the nurses and is demanding and funny. He has no memory from one day to the next, just memory from before he was in the accident.
All this "you are who you build yourself to be"... and even the bits about if you do good in your life and help people etc, your reputation and who you are will stay. Bull pucky. Ask the people who have come as immigrants from other countries where they helped friends, and chaired hospital committees but now are alone and looked down on since they have phds but drive taxis and speak haltingly with an accent. Ask the people who spent their lives working to take care of children who move away and send a card once a year, whose grandchildren have met them once, and who die alone.
Ask anyone who has had any change of health or fortune. The popular outgoing people who have had hopes and joys dashed and are broken and reclusive. The shy quiet people who have gotten success and admiration through some sudden change in fortune, and their personalities change.
No, who you are is no more stable than what you have. A knock on the head, a depression, falling into dependency on alcohol or drugs, schizophrenia or alzheimers and you will not know yourself, and your friends and family will be interacting with a stranger who bears little ressemblance to the person they knew and loved. If you are lucky they will stick with you, even though you cannot remember them, or the good things you did together, or even what your own name is.
Sometimes you may be damn lucky to have your house, when your health is gone, or your mind. Sometimes you might die except for the fact that you kept enough basic physical belongings to ensure your livelihood or your physical safety... ie a warm jacket or a working fan might make the difference between dying alone of hypothermia or heat exhaustion in case of a war or a blackout or losing your job. Who knows.
But all that "your knowledge will stay when your belongings will not"... what faith that is. And the idea that giving out love will bring love back in etc. Oh, sometimes we know that it is those we have given our all to who beat us, rape us, dump us for the cute waitress, or abuse our children. And hoorah for the random kindness of strangers in situations like that.
Even thinking that you will meet up with your loved ones, or keep your soul when you die, in a recognizable form. Who the hell knows. If a knock on the head or heroin in your veins can make you not recognize yourself while you are alive.
Yeah, the platitudes we rock ourselves to sleep with at night, and in the bright of day.
Enjoy what you have now I suppose.
Gee, does everyone think this much when reading SquirrelX's quotes??
(I have actually considered starting a diary devoted only to picking apart popular but braindead quotes)
well, back to work. See what little more I can do before six am. tah.
Read my other entry from tonight... something about Pumpkin Pie... which Dangerspouse could only think of eating (does he mean the pie or the person?! hehe)
nite nite.
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previous meanderings - future past
Goodbye Michael. May your next life be kinder to you. - Thursday, Jun. 25, 2009
Taking Care of Your Cows - Thursday, Jun. 25, 2009
Saint Joseph robs the cradle and eats spaghetti - Sunday, Jun. 14, 2009
sticky notes and broken irises - Friday, Jun. 12, 2009
The FOODCOMMANDER - Monday, Jun. 08, 2009
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