Tygarjas Twyrls Blog

So, I have a posting in progress about this little divine revelation I had one nice afternoon in June several years ago, but I don’t feel like I’m ready to publish it just yet. I mean, it’s not even fully written, but that could be taken care of in the time it takes me to type this posting. Which brings up the next point, I’m just not sure what to write about. . . So we begin with a ramble, or as my 12th grade English teacher would say, a mumble, and see what comes out of it.

I was thinking first about writing something about suffering, and how to make it stop, but I’m enjoying myself too much to right now so maybe I’ll come back to that one later; maybe on a day, God-forbid, in which I’m suffering.

As I write that, though, I’m immediately reminded that there are many, many people suffering. As in, they don’t even have a computer, or, like, you know, water to drink let alone piss in. And I mean that literally. I am so very blessed that I can piss in water without giving it even a second thought, and there are many, many people on this planet who don’t even have clean water to drink. And thank you Michael Foley for that observation!

So quickly, I suppose, the topic naturally progresses into: Gratitude.

And here’s the thing about gratitude: naturally feeling it is great as a symptom of one’s life, but it also, often, can act as a cure. I mean, people actually have the audacity to complain when it is raining. Now, I’m living in a state in which we have a drought and the water bill is high. And people complain when it is raining? How pathetic is that? I mean, if anything in this universe, call it what you will, is kind enough to regularly provide the basics for me continuing my life, I find myself considering how fortunate I am that the only inconvenience I possess is that my pants are a little damp, or that I have to use windshield wipers, rather than, you know, starvation or dehydration. How nice that nature, or whatever, is kind enough to replenish regularly my supply of life-giving substance which I can urinate in!

So, lately I am blessed enough that gratitude is a symptom of my life for at least the moment, but I have not forgotten that as I worked for these moments I perceive now, it was often I needed to thank existence for what I did have in the face of the suffering that seemed to try to pull my gaze toward the narcissism of self-pity. And so, in the face of what I longed for, I could at least thank God I knew of such a notion at all. And not only that, but that I had clothes on my back, food in my stomach, a way to pay the bills, and clean water to drink, never mind to piss in! In fact, truth be known, when it comes to water, my guiltiest pleasure is that I can even bathe in it rather extravagantly. Not only using the sacred common sustenance of life to keep myself from contracting disease, but also of enjoyment to cause pleasure, relaxation, surcease of pain!

Should one choose to bathe in gratitude, as water to filth, and inevitably disease, so will be washed away the film of the illusion of what one lacks, from the lens of one’s life. Gratitude will clean any of discontent who wish to have a clean, fresh-feeling heart with which to overcome any obstacle in one’s path.

Mahalo!