Journal Entry, December 17th, 2012

Life will knock you about in the most unexpected of ways. You may think it’s all smooth sailing. The experience of life is what you make it – either you can take these blows and hide deeper within your shell, or you can stand up and reorient. Reorient yourself, so your life is as effortless as is your very breath. To live and to live intensely is the only purpose of life – not money, not fame, not people, friends, family, or all the crap that you surround yourselves with. When was the last time you did anything with intensity? I know I certainly haven’t had as much intensity as I did when I was four, falling repeatedly from my bicycle and scraping my knee off with every fall. I know certainly haven’t had as much intensity as I did learning my mother tongue, or learning my first words, or learning how to walk. Somewhere along the road, the intensity of life lost its expression, to be overshadowed by layers and layers of what I call my personality. This personality seems more inhibits me than defines me. Somewhere along the road, I made assumptions upon assumptions – assumptions so weak they would crack at the slightest tremor – assumptions which are apparently credited to holding my life up. When did I start doing things with expectation? What expectation did I have as a child, learning a language or learning to ride a bike, learning to throw a cricket ball? That I wanted to become an orator like Lincoln, a rider like Armstrong or a bowler like Alan Donald? I just did things. There were no expectations, and no fear of consequence. Why is it that we can still count on things we learned as children? It’s the purity of simply doing something with complete involvement and intensity. If only we spent as much time simply doing whatever we do with total intensity as we do worrying about what we like and dislike, we’d be a far joyous generation that we can even hope to be right now. The whole damn planet is going about finding out “what you want and what you like”, when what you like is in and of itself a collection of garbage from your surroundings. In essence, you and me are just carrying around unfulfilled promises and dreams, and slapping a new coat of paint on them, making them our own.