Blank Canvas

1. Thank you to my parents for raising me.
2. Thank you to my first yoga teacher for setting me on the path of mindfulness all those years ago (at least it seems like forever ago).
3. Thank you Lacey for loving me.
4. Thank you Lilah and Eden helping me see the world through your eyes and getting me outside of myself.
5. Thank you to the people who raise my food and bring it to me, clean and edible.

The Onion provides an idea of what people were really thinking (NSFW) as Apollo 11 astronauts walked on the Moon for the first time.

(via kottke.org)

Thank you to…

1. … my children for being who you are. You’re awesome.
2. … myself for being persistence about my efforts to live more healthily.
3. … the people of the United States of America for investing in my education.
4. … my wife for working together on all the mundane things that make up daily life.
5. … my wife for the way that you communicate with me. I think it makes all the difference. You’re also awesome.

Right now, I’m in a room where the men are outnumbered 5 to 1. This is a common occurrence in the world of higher ed. I once ended up in the back of a limo with eight women on a business trip. That sounds much more fun than it was.

I can’t go back inside that box. It frightens and stifles and suffocates. Not for your love will I return. I mourn because we cannot be together wholly, callow fantasy, two minds made one. Alone we spend our time together and die.

What am I?

There is a primal urge in me that hungers to belong, take a label as a badge of confraternity, and feel safe in the harbor of settled thoughts. Or I could set out for the landless horizon letting the to and fro of truth lead me along, unburdened by the ballast of labels.

I father children. I marry wives. I walk in the sunlight. I rest in the shade. I study the words of Buddha. I hear stories of Shiva. I doubt the gods. I cherish life. I fear death. But what am I?

In conversation I may apply labels—husband, father, Buddhist, atheist, Thelemite—to aid comprehension. But inwardly, to myself, I hold back. I hesitate at the head of that path. Some wiser part of me knows that deception is the fate of those who follow there.

What am I? By lack of definition, I am everything, a being of great immensity, without beginning of days or end of years. I reign from the rivers to the ends of the earth. If anything is sacred, I am sacred. Petty labels have no power to contain me. Only fools fall for that old trick.

What am I?

I am.