Dinosaurs

Read an interesting thing about dinosaurs and it got me thinking.

What if we have our own emotional and ideological--belief--dinosaurs? Big, honking modes of reasoning that we base our action on that get so commonplace and so big that their failure is all but doomed by any change in the landscape.

This could be a long-standing belief or even a new one that one is trying to "get into" and thus gets a little overzealous in application.

Or it could just be one that has served its usefulness and is slated for extinction.

I know I've got a bunch of those. For as chipper as I can be, there's still some damn "struggling/starving/misunderstood" artiste in there somewhere. I still don't expect/live instant overnight, magic change. Or even expect a paycheck after years of toil. The delivery of the promised goods.

Here's the deal. You work night and day for years. You pay your dues. You blood, sweat and tears. Give up half the stuff you love and most of what you "like" for that which you will not live without.

And nothing happens.

Wash, rinse, repeat. Ten years goes by.

At some point you start to develop a dual mentality. Do the work, get more real, progress--whatever--get more yourself--and then go about your life. Eat, pay your bills, put your shoes on, etc.

But if you're really going for it. And I get enough comments at the gym on my pink and red shoes (and all red outfits)--and I know myself well enough--that I know I'm not shorting myself, but do I wake up certain that a payoff commensurate with the work I've put in is at hand?

That the world must bend to my will if I'm right? That if I go deeper and bring back the invaluable new, it must eventually be valued?

Uh, no.

Do I work certain that it will come? Pretty much--and if I look back a year, or even six months and apply the same rate of growth for the next five years, everything I want seems unavoidable. It's just a matter of dotting the Is.

But how do I let go of this "don't have enough" time/money/energy/love thing? Cause as I understand it, that's the last dinosaur that's keeping my ass in the Paleolithic era. And how can I be certain that what I'm doing is right and inevitable--and WILL MANIFEST--when the most certain thing about it, for me, so far, is it's stubborn refusal to produce even a trickle of negotiable fiduciary.

I guess it's a matter of bringing my ordinary, strong and daily faith up a few notches. To a cosmic, "certainty of love, every momentarily, the truth IS and must be" faith.

To blast whatever last pockets of doubt in myself and my surroundings with certain and compassionate care and attention. Or loving ignoring. If that's what love is at the minute. Then I guess it wouldn't even matter if anything every happened anyway. So content and joyful I'd be.

[Related note: approaching ourselves with a more certain compassion may be helpful--for as I see it a lot of this stuff is just, as my cousin says "a set-up"--not our or anyone's fault, but just the quickest and most certain way we'll learn what we want to learn--mainly to not let the cavity creeps get us down from what I can tell. How can you learn that without, at least for various periods and in certain ways, armadas of cavity creeps trying your last nerve? Sometimes you get in a car crash because you're messing around in your life and not paying attention. And sometimes it's to get you a new car. My point is that god/the universe forgives and loves us in ways more powerful (and faster, more effective) than we do ourselves. We then become the brake--out of fear.]

I'm so ready to walk upright, have fire, and make tools I could spit. Buy property. My own house. Apartment even. Lord help me if I get laid--or go on a date and have a beautiful woman put her arm around me. It'll take a minute to remember that that's normal.

It's not like I'm some wierdo who lives with his mom. Yeah, I live with my mom, and, yeah, my freak flag is where it is--and relaxedly unbudging (even if you're a corporate lawyer, honey). But I'm alive like I never even expected. And content like I never even knew you could feel--or existed. Full and focused.

Maybe you don't have to do anything for your dinosaurs to die off. But let em go.

It may be a little strange to wake up one day and never refer to yourself, even jokingly, as a caveman again, but it also appears certain to me that that day comes for everyone at some point.