What is important to you?

What is important to you? Is it the air that you breathe? Here, each breath is so fresh, it really seems special. I like to remember that. How precious it is. Our relations, so tenuous, so fragile, so ethereal, we must honor them every moment. Such a blessing to feel connected with someone, even if only for a second, sharing a joke, or sharing anything. It is like holding hands in a freefall. Since we are all falling at more or less the same rate, it seems like we are not falling at all. We share this illusion, of not falling, but we all are falling, falling right on through, until we hit bottom and gasp our last breath and the ride is over, and everyone we ever knew almost gathers around our corpse and sits motionless together, feeling the loss. It is like we all, all of us sharing this existence, are in the same elevator as it descends down, sharing the inevitable pull towards....the first floor.

What is important to you? Is it not the ride? How do you feel when you step out of the elevator? What was your experience with all the others? Did you bond? Was it meaningful? or scary, or painful? Is your life worthy of you? Is it sacred, joyful, and profound? Or do you inwardly loathe yourself for leading a less than profound existence? A life that has been robbed of all of its dignity due to the foulness of the taste in your mouth left by cigarettes and alcohol, the crass, callow commercialization of every aspect of your existence, the imposition of the yolk of capitalism, scrounging for the next dollar needed to stay alive, to be comfortable. Selling your soul to survive or thrive.

You have been crushed by the weight of the system. You had to compromise something so cherished and sacred in order to survive and get here. What have you sacrificed to get here? Did you sell off a part of your soul? That is everyone´s little secret, behind the happy faces. Don´t worry, if you are reading this, you probably are still whole or holy, and needn´t feel shame or remorse.

After all there is something inside all of us that forever remains unstained or untarnished, our saving grace. This is how we can go on and love each other and forgive, and never be so arrogant, as to judge.

The system is to break you down, like a young horse, to domesticate you, and make you an obedient slave, your spirit diminished and compromised. Why is it that children are so exhilarating to witness? Is it not because you get to see a human being in its free, unbroken state? But if they go to school, it won´t be true for long. They will be broken in too.

I have asked in the past, why do children stop skipping at some age? Maybe it is a sign that they have been broken in, and their unbridled lust for life has become adult like, that is, severely diminished, and play is no longer so carefree and easy. Because, you might notice that adults have forgotten how to play freely and need to get drunk.

In the story called Peter Pan, the little flying boy didn´t want to grow up. Why is that? This essay addresses that question. What did we lose to get here?