The rare and provocative poet and novelist, Charles Bukowski, once wrote, “If something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it’s your duty to be reduced to ashes by it. Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of life.”
That is a challenge I take for the New Year. I want my soul burning with purpose and desire. I want to be to be crispy by the end of 2019. I want to be the ashes of my longings fulfilled, my passions spent.
I want to know my efforts were all out, that I left nothing in the pursuit of what I love that was not exhausted.
I want to find ways to love new people and I want to find ways to better love the people I already know and cherish.
I want my horizons expanded, stretched to new sights, beyond old borders of comfort and ease. Let there be places in my journey, where, like the ocean, on a clear day you can see forever, and the end of the water’s edge disappears in the blue sky of wonder. I want that.
Let there be more books to read, more knowledge to learn, more ideas to explore, more love to share.
The world seems to be wobbling beneath volcanic eruptions of violence, political insanity, economic disaster, voracious greed, crippling poverty, and a deeper and more profound lack of respect for human life.
Can I help bring more balance? I don’t know, but I want to try. In my own small part of the world, I want to be a stabilizing influence.
That is my duty. And I accept it.
And yet, I have no desire to be played by pretenders and counterfeits. I have lived long enough now to finally accept that not all people are who they claim to be or even appear to be. Though we all have our frailties, our faults and our failures, and none of us will ever get anywhere near complete, there are still those whose dishonesty and dysfunction I do not have the expertise or the energy to play nice with.
I will remain alert and refuse to be swayed by exploiters. Nor will I stand aside and passively allow those with mean streaks and without conscience dominate my thought processes and spoil the beauty inside myself and that exists in others.
The news is saturated with these kinds of people. They will not consume me.
The arena of corrupted politicians, unprincipled corporate leaders, dirty cops, devious priests and preachers, is not the only playing field in life. There is a broader more open field where ethics are practiced and values are lived and humanity is treated with dignity. And that is where I will stay anchored.
Poet T.S. Eliot guides me when he wrote, “For last year’s words belong to last year’s language, and next year’s words await another voice.”
I want to be one of those voices.
Not a false voice. Not a sanctimonious or self-righteous voice. Not a know it all voice. But a human voice speaking and writing for humanity in the small arena of my world, in the library of my life.
© 2018 Timothy Moody
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