Peace, Love, and Happiness

As I get near the end of my existence on this planet---the only existence I ever have, from all the evidence and facts I have amassed so far---I am trying to come to terms with whatever significance it ever has. And I have belatedly recognized the following simple verities. First, health is of primary importance. Without it, life simply is not worth living. Second, money is related to maintaining good health, apart from preserving dignity. Third, love and peace of mind, in addition to good health and money, will help me attain happiness, even if I don't actualize my potential.

One never grows out of love in principle, but one certainly may grow out of love for a specific person. Love is at once mysterious and simple, universal and personal, unchanging and conditional. 

By the way, some love poems of mine can be both hypnotic and sleep-depriving because they were written with of blood, sweat, and tears. If I had not written them, I would have either gone crazy or done something worse. Now in the twilight of my life, I think I finally understand what love is all about. It is not about money, fame, or power. It's not about sex although that helps. It's about understanding, caring, and respect. I have loved quite a number of women although almost none of them deserved my love. I somehow discovered that about them quite belatedly. They were in fact common and pedestrian and boringly selfish to the core even though they put up a good acting game. No wonder there are guys who are too cool and experienced to fall for that trap. Certainly, I am not one of them, but I am learning to be wiser and more circumspect.

Anyway, today is Friday and the night is dragging on with its seemingly interminable dreariness, but the entry in today's wacky "Free Will (sic!) Astrology" restored zest and effervescence to my spirit. Life is always good if you think you are not alone and there is somebody out there in the cosmos who cares enough about you to stop you from killing yourself and to lend you a helping hand if you need it. As Vladimir Nabokov once counseled, don't be angry with the rain, it simply does not know how to fall upward. It behooves us to apply that principle to a variety of phenomena. I think you should not get all knotted up, excited, hot and bothered about any force of nature that insists on being itself, and please don't waste your time and energy trying to defy the law of gravity. It's fine and dandy and even funny if you find it tempting to go against the flow, but please don't expect the flow to follow you in your rebellion. Well, two weeks from now will be the day of reckoning for me with regard to my foolish bet against my inclination to gluttony. It looks like I am going to lose my wager on losing weight. Not only I have not shed any poundage, I have actually put on weight. Ah well, c'est la vie!

Do you know that you have about 100 billion neurons (brain cells, for the lexicon-challenged) in your brain. That also happens to be the number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. Please don't ask me how the scientists know how to count this. I have a lot of difficulties with math and statistics and counting. I only know how to count one, two, three, and then many. I am not smart at all although I certainly try to project an air of intellectuality by using polysyllabic words and complex sentence structures and by religiously eschewing the exhortations of Strunk and White. Anyway, back to number of neurons in the human brain and of the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, I submit that there is no coincidence that the number is roughly the same. We all know of a mystic dictum "As above, so below" (although I do admit that that hardly applies to hair on the head and that of below!). The macrocosm and microcosm are mirrors of each other. Everything that happens on a collective level has an intensely personal impact. The better you know yourself, the more likely you are to understand how the world works, operates, and functions---and vice versa. I urge you to be alert for concrete evidence of this principle. Your life, especially your love life, will be immensely successful if you make it your daily meditation. Back to the eternal question and issue of love, the next time somebody loves you or dumps you, don't be overly excited or sad. It all amounts to the same thing, to both sides of a same coin, to the nature of emotions and feelings. Perhaps what you must be really concerned is that whether or not you really like yourself. You cannot, should not go around measuring and estimating your worth and desirability by the number of people who love and hate you. I often find it absurd and galling that some women who are short, ugly, poor, and stupid think that they are beautiful, charming, and highly desirable. Lack of self-knowledge is indeed pathetic and a stumbling block for growth. Any human worth his salt knows himself. I suppose only cowards have an unwarranted inflated sense of themselves. A thirst for knowledge implies a possession of some courage. Knowledge might hurt and wound one's sense of self, but it can also be liberating. That's probably why I have carried on with a certain insouciance and defiance and pride because I have no fear of confronting myself, warts and all. I thus feel nauseous whenever I see a certain "men" with feet of clay preaching gamely about decency and morality while unwittingly displaying their cowardice and hypocrisy. Their words and their actions are pathetically inconsistent. Seeing them wallowing in the game of chicken shit of peacocking and showboating and grandstanding makes me realize that I am at least redeemable since I don't pretend to be who I am not.

(to be continued)