“The truth is simple. If it were complicated everyone would understand it.” – Unknown
I don’t need to form an opinion nor explanation about the above quote. It’s simple. Anything I would write, would complicate it.
This next quote was told to me years ago by a friend, who said that her grandmother would say it all of the time. I didn’t quite understand it, and I needed her to explain it to me:
“Snow does not fall to kill the world, but that every beasty shows its tracks.”
She said that it means that a lot of times what we think are “bad things” happening, happen only to suss the bad players out. So in that sense, “the bad things” are actually “good things”, or at the very least “good things” usually always come out of the “bad things.” And it is always wise to remember, when the “beasties” show us their tracks, this reminds us that the beasties are all around, and we should not follow them to our own detriment.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:
2769. What childlike characteristics do you still retain?
I’m sorry to be delayed with today’s post. I’m grappling with a pinched-nerve in my neck which is like having the worst toothache that I ever had, in my neck and in my shoulder. I am sorry for those of you who deal with daily pain for years on end. Pain is so miserable and distracting and annoying.
The above video is part of the best scene from Babylon, a movie which we watched last night. Babylon is about the change from silent films to “talkies”, and it takes place in 1920s/30s Hollywood. The movie is not for the faint of heart. It shows the debauchery and the underbelly of early Hollywood like you would never expect. The film is long (3 hours), but I found it be interesting and entertaining and thought provoking.
The scene above is a monologue from Jean Smart, who plays a notorious gossip columnist who has just written an unflattering feature about Jack Conrad (played by Brad Pitt), a washed up, silent films era star. In the scene, Jean Smart’s character is telling Jack that while he is no longer “spotlight” material, the beautiful thing is that he will live on, indefinitely, in the films that he starred in, for generations to come. At the end of the scene, where Jean Smart’s character tells Jack that his time is up in Hollywood, and there is nothing that he did to create this fact, and there is nothing that he can do about it now, we see Jack Conrad leave the room, disquieted but grateful that the gossip columnist gently but firmly told him the truth. “Thank you for that,” he says, almost under his breath.
I appreciated this scene so much because it so clearly depicts when any of us hear “a truth” that we deeply know, but we have not yet let this truth surface to our consciousness. We don’t want this truth to be the truth, but yet when we finally face the truth, we are also grateful and relieved to no longer have to pretend anymore, that it is anything other that what it is. It is what it is, is the ultimate truth about anything when we finally face it head on. And the truth can be so painful, and yet so liberating all at the same time.
This scene in Babylon is the ultimate scene of letting go of ego, and of realizing that the idea of life is bigger than any individual life in it, even the lives that are lived out in the spotlight. Life has gone on longer than any of us can fathom, and it will continue to go on, long after each of us departs. Towards the end of the scene Elinor St. John (played by Jean Smart) says this:
” . . . It’s the idea that sticks. There will be a hundred more Jack Conrads, a hundred more me’s, a hundred more conversations like this one, until God knows when. Because it’s bigger than you.”
Elinor does leave Jack with a hopeful thought about people seeing his movies long after he is dead, and in that regard, his memory lives on. On a broader scope, that’s how anyone of us continues to live on after our deaths, for generations and generations in families, and in close groups of friends, and even in societies. Our stories become lores and legends. Our mannerisms become traits in family genes. Our habits and rituals become customs and traditions. Our creations and treasures become heirlooms and antiques and springboards for more creation. The ideas of any essence is what sticks. “That which is bigger than us”, never ends. We are each just small waves of an endless/timeless ocean, and this truth is both frightening and liberating in equal measure. It is what it is.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Isn’t this a wonderful time in the world to be a curious person? Thank you, Google. National Geographic used to be a stack of weirdly thick, yellow framed magazines on my grandfather’s coffee table. Today, National Geographic is not only a magazine, but also a website and a streaming channel. Never has information been so vividly and easily accessible to us, in our lives. We all can be Einsteins if we want to be. It turns out that Einstein and Curious George had a lot in common.
Einstein also said this:
“I think 99 times and find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in silence, and the truth comes to me.”
I love this phenomenon, don’t you? It is thought that some of our greatest insights and answers come to us in our dreams, when we are at our most relaxed and not desperately turning the wheels in our minds. That’s why it is always suggested to have a tablet right by our bedsides, to jot down the wisdoms from our dreams when we wake up.
When we were in San Francisco a few years ago, my husband purchased me a jade bangle from the Chinatown district. Chinese people have prized jade for over 7000 years. They consider jade to be a living force which protects the wearer and they even believe that jade has some healing properties. It is a wonderful souvenir from that particular trip. The jade bangles do not have clasps, and you want the bangle to just be slightly bigger than your wrist, or otherwise it is annoying to have the bracelet slide up and down on your arm too much, and bang on everything in sight. Therefore, due to their tight fit, the jade bangles will not slide on to your wrist when you are too rigid and uptight, and trying to force them over your hand. “Relax, relax, relax” is all that the shopkeeper kept repeating to me as I was desperately trying to try on my bangle, like one of Cinderella’s sisters trying to stuff her foot into the glass slipper. So, finally, taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes, I let my thoughts float away, and then, I slowly opened my eyes, only to see and to feel the jade bangle sitting nicely on my wrist. (and then I started panicking about getting it off of my wrist, but that is another story for a different blogpost.)
Maybe today is a good day to “relax, relax, relax.” Maybe today is a good day not to force anything, but instead let the answers, and the inspirations, and the guidance float over to us, only to set nicely into our hearts. It took me a long time to figure out that I will never be able to outrun any of my dogs, but if I just stay calm, and I stand in place, with a gentle, knowing confidence, my dogs always run right back to me. Perhaps that is the same with “the truth.” If the truth came to Einstein in this fashion, it will work for us in the same way. Maybe the truth never left any of us. Perhaps, we just haven’t been relaxed enough, to let the truth bubble up slowly to the surface.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
“Sometimes people don’t want to hear the Truth, because they don’t want theirillusions destroyed.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
This one hit home for me when I read it the other day. Once you get into your fifth decade of life, you can reflect on more than one experience when you woke up to the Truth about something, and you desperately tried to wake others to the Truth, as well, only to come to understanding that we humans are intensely attached to our stories and to our illusions. And the bigger question is, “Why do we feel it is so important to wake others up to the Truth?” And the even bigger question is, “Are we sure that our Truth is the Truth, or have we just shifted into another illusion?”
Times when I woke up out of an illusion which I was keeping about certain people or entities or clubs or relationships or employers or belief systems or habits, I felt so devastated, at first. I felt so duped and gullible and silly and exposed. Later, I grew compassion for myself and I felt relief and liberated. In my excitement about my knowledge and freedom, I would try to espouse “The Truth” I had recently discovered to anyone who would listen. Some of this came from love and a desire to help others, but if I were to drop all illusions about dropping all of my illusions, a lot of my need to “enlighten others” came from a need for validation and approval of my own beliefs, and maybe even a little bit of superiority. My ego sometimes likes to believe I am one of a chosen few who is in on any particular “Grand Secret.” My ego likes to think she is “The All Wise One.” This may be my biggest illusion of all.
As I have grown older, I have come to see The Truth as less about words, and tomes, and rules, and rituals and judgments and stories. The Truth is just the experience. The Truth doesn’t need justifications and validations and explanations and podiums and trophy cases. The Truth lives on, even in the illusions. No one can break The Truth. Everyone lives The Truth. It can all be honed down to The Truth if we want it to be, but if we want to be entertained by our illusions, that’s okay, too.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
