A Good Morning.

A quiet, clear, peaceful morning.

This is a very special morning, for I have been greeted into it
without any thought. My mind is calm, almost meditative, despite all
the challenges that might lie ahead. My body is well rested despite
all its niggles, and the breeze that pushes the curtain and blows over
me is soothing to say the least.

There have been a few mornings like this one, I'm sure, but today I am
in it. The absence of an agenda, the presence of peace - ah, heaven.

A train blows its horn in the great distance, a dog barks, a
motorcycle makes its way uphill, and birds call out in rough chorus.
I just get the feeling birds and dogs have mornings like this one all
the time. For now, the rat race can be ignored.

Any race can be ignored, particularly the human race. Wait a minute!
Did that come out right?

Why do we create things that don't exist, when we haven't quite
figured out how to enjoy the ones that do? Do we really need to pull
out four hundred grams of metal and plastic and share words with
someone half way around the world, just because we can? Do we really
need hybrid cars and anti acidity pills? Does everything material
really need to come with the hidden cost of slavery?

Why am I putting together cohesive thought when I can be thoughtless?
Ah, but I'm already a slave. Addicted to having something to do, I
cannot stop. To stop would be to die, and we're all scared not quite
so much about death itself, but really scared about all the things we
might be stopped from doing.

Will we ever, any of us, get to do all the things we want to do? We
choose in the meantime to somehow accrue the means to do all we want
to do, and add pretty little to the enjoyment of everything we have.
Yes, we're blind, but that is our choice! We love our choices, we
really do. We have to have the choice of being thoughtless or full of
thought, and we'd choose to be full of thought because we have a brain
and we have to make the most of it.

Exhaustion, forcing us to sleep, is the one thing we haven't yet
figured out how to beat, second to cheating death. It is ridiculous
to think about people with pacemakers having road accidents, but that
is our complex punctuation to our own will to change the way things
work. We haven't done badly when we can cross the Pacific ocean in
less than ten hours, and the seat in the sky at thirty five thousand
feet is mighty comfortable, but I wonder if that can compare to lying
on the grass, chewing on freshly cut sugarcane, with miles of green
around, and only birds and bees for company, having nothing to do.

Truth is, we need both. We need the hassles and we need the peace and
we need to constantly figure out some things just because there is
nothing we'd rather do than make sure we have plenty to "do". Once in
a while, out of control, we might fumble our way into a moment of
peace, but it won't last, because we will get up and reach out and
start a chain reaction that wakes the whole world up. This is the
world as we know it, and we don't really care what the truth is. The
truth, too, is what we choose to make of it.

We could have chosen to have a two day week and a five day weekend,
but we're not yet there. We're not yet where we can be so productive
that we can have most of the time for fun, and having to work so
little that our lives can be spent in idle peace. But we're terrified
of idle peace. We don't mind shots of it, but that's only to prepare
us for the next race ahead. So, we'll come up with something to
"work" on, no matter how much we have already accomplished.

We're doing okay, really. We're not the dominant species on the
planet for no reason. We'll learn soon enough about the mistakes
we've made, and when it's a matter of survival, we'll fix most things
that are wrong. If we completely screw up, we'll find another planet.
It won't be this sort of paradise, but by then, we will know how to
make paradise.

I love being a human.

- BSK.