Category: Journal

Hav­ing become, func­tion­al­ly, athe­ist (or what­ev­er you call a deist that does­n’t believe in after­life); per­formed vig­or­ous shad­ow work (with­out know­ing it was called that) that now man­ages my (still for­mal­ly undi­ag­nosed) depres­sion; and med­i­tat­ed my way and/or read enough con­ven­tion­al­ly philo­soph­ic and/or esoteric/occulted mate­r­i­al; I’ve melt­ed my per­son­al­i­ty enough to like­ly be sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent­ly amal­ga­mat­ed than when the cliff fell away a lit­tle more than 4 years ago.

Prax­is of the ped­a­gogy was the only way to reform as some sort of jalopy Voltron. A past lover became a best friend, and her patience and wis­dom helped the re-assim­i­la­tion. And Sum­mer died, and I griev­ed not her death, but that I did not ful­ly appre­ci­ate the beau­ty of her soul until it was gone. And I med­i­tat­ed, prac­ticed grat­i­tude for what I had been able to appre­ci­ate, and resolved to do bet­ter in the future.

The dri­ver here was a con­cep­tu­al unfold­ing of “one life to live” much like the unfold­ed pro­ton of The Three Body Prob­lem. Inscribed upon the cliche before care­ful­ly re-shelling the wal­nut are new com­mand­ments.

• Strive to prac­tice and cre­ate grace as often as you can, but give it to your­self as well.
• Val­ue your encoun­ters, but not so much that you engage in bad ones, or engage too much in good ones.
• Con­trol is ephemer­al; if all you get from try­ing to hold it is pain, let it go.
• All things end, how well you do with them when you’re with them is up to you.
• What­ev­er pow­er you need is already yours. God is a mid­dle­man.

It’s so trite to write, but liv­ing it feels cor­rect. An equa­nim­i­ty brought about by hold­ing grace as the goal, freely giv­en when avail­able, and saved up as need­ed.