You will always fail. The game will always be over. You will always lose.

Bushido teaches that the secret to developing genuine virtue, genuine values and ethics and meaning, is to see yourself as already dead. Then look at the world. When it’s all over anyway, what can upset you? When there is nothing to gain, what did you really lose?

Or imagine that today is the last day you have to live. That can be very positive, too. Indeed, and it is the last day. Tomorrow, you won’t be who you are today, and next week might as well be another whole life.

Ever get so cold that getting warm again hurt, perhaps really badly?

Yes, frostbite is very painful. The pain will pass when you stop straining. We are not super human. It would be wonderful to fully embrace being human. Instead, we choose to be ideas, machines. You cannot be responsible for life. You can only live it. What have you really controlled?

I’d say reactions, but outbursts are often hard to predict too. You can have impulsive responses, and those impulsive moments are natural and human as well.

You have had a part in countless things, and we all do. We will all keep the rhythm of life as long as we live, and we will all sing the song of our hearts. But what happens when you strain to hit the perfect note?

When we strain our voices, song becomes screaming. When we strain our dance, dancing becomes violence. We don’t have to be perfect. Being itself is perfect. In your weak moments, you are just taking part in a natural cycle that is the source of all your strength, all your wisdom. You experience the greatest clarity when you realize you don’t really know anything at all, and you just listen to the bird song, and watch the sun rise. Then when you can, let this move you to act.

I can say that to people that preach that they know it all. No one knows it all. The most knowledgeable will take the greatest fall. This has happened time and time again. South American empires started as peaceful, even blissful, philosophers and scholars.

Even Einstein probably knew that he did not know everything. He was just good at figuring out some things. He seems like a humble kind of man. Geniuses scout the mind really well. Ideas are everywhere. The genius just may have gotten there first. First isn’t best. In fact, the truth is perhaps the opposite. The biggest losers are often the ones who get there first. They are worthy of respect or contempt to the degree that they realize they are still living with their family, that they still live in this world.

There is nowhere to get that will make you a better person by getting there faster. There is no depth you can fall to that you cannot walk away from, except for maybe death, and depending on what you believe perhaps not even that.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~