It seems a central theme of my life
lately has been “living in color.” Recently, my ex wife left a
meme on my Facebook wall with a note attached that said “This
reminded me of you.”
I like that. You see, typically we are
raised to understand life in black and white. There is a right answer
and there is a wrong answer. Period. Those of us who are particularly
creative never actually fell in line very well with that, and those
of us who were downright obstinate set our jaws and said “fuck
you.” For those for whom religion has taken hold, there's another
layer of pretense that underlies all of the impetus we may have to
find the inner “fuck you” that's required in life for us to truly
become our most authentic selves.
That is to say that if you honestly
believe your god is going to punish you for all of eternity or reward
you for all of eternity on the basis of your willingness to suffer
now, you're more likely to tow your religion's line and never
question it fully lest ye also slip up and find thyself damned. This
is particularly true if your religion is something you've inherited
rather than something you have chosen. You see, when you inherit your
religion, you're less likely to know any more about it than what has
been taught to you in your youth, and it takes a strong person to
reach adulthood and then to question all of it for themselves. This
is why most people who claim Christianity as their religion and claim
the Bible is their scripture have never actually read (from cover to
cover) the document they claim defines their faith. You see, their
faith is in something they've been told and not anything they've ever
researched themselves.
So, on the basis of the notion that
black is black and white is white and that morality is neither
defined in grey scale nor color, people make decisions for themselves
based on the precepts of a religion that they don't themselves truly
understand, but to which they devote themselves fully. They will stay
in marriages that don't work. They will choose not to hang around
certain types of people (though a novice reading of the life of their
Christ will show you that he had no time for religious people but all
the time in the world for society's dregs. They will search their
bibles for loopholes instead of for more rounded truth. In the end,
it's all bullshit, because our lives were given to us in color and
truly should be lived that way.
I will grant you that I see in a lot
more colors than a lot of people, and despite my self-diagnosed
“enlightenment,” I've been known, at times, to be the biggest
hypocrite of all. (Such as when I espouse peace but call a lady a
c*** at a stop sign and tell her husband to stay in the vehicle lest
he be put in the position of digging through his shit for teeth.) But
overall, for my whole life, I've agreed with the sentiment shared by
my ex-wife Kelsey who shared the meme that life is about using the
whole box of crayons. That's why I never really fit very well in
religion, even when I was religious. I ask too many questions, and
when I don't like the answers, I go look for the ones that make more
sense.
Kelsey and I were speaking of the fact
that in relationships with me, women find themselves more free than
at any other time in their lives. “The thing about you,” she
said, with a bit of both anger and admiration in her eyes, “Is that
you absolutely, no matter what costs to yourself, refuse to settle
for anything less than what you want for yourself out of life. And
that was part of our downfall, because in the end, I gained the
strength to recognize what I wanted for myself in life and it didn't
include you anymore.”
I get that. I'm good with it. I do
refuse to settle. I know what I want out of life, and come hell or
high water, I will have it or I will die pursuing it. Lately a few
people that care about me and for whom I also care deeply, have
described me as “relentless.” That's a great compliment for a guy
whose mother searched high and low for a copy of “the Little Engine
that Could” to teach her 4 year old that he should stop using the
words “I can't.” I think I can! It's the greatest lesson I've ever learned.
You see, my friends, we can... each of
us, own our lives and live those lives in color. We can have the
desires of our hearts and we can make the sorts of choices that
reflect the sort of abundance that life offers. For those who believe
in God, remember that in his perfect world, before we fucked it up,
the rule was “from every tree of the garden, you may eat freely,
EXCEPT (paraphrasing here) the one that leaves you thinking that you
know the slightest goddamn thing about the difference between good
and evil." We are each caretakers for ourselves and those around us,
but in so doing, there's something to having life and having it more
abundantly. There's something to living life in color.
When I was a child, I had a tough time
with black and white, because I learned a little faster than most,
but each of us need to consider for ourselves what our values are –
not because we inherited them, but because we have decided them for
ourselves. You see, when we do that, legalism disappears. We don't
search our scriptures for loopholes to sign out a day-pass from our
morality. Instead, we live as we truly believe rather than as we've
been taught to believe, and that is when we become not only adults,
not only our most authentic selves, but free! May you find freedom
and from that freedom may happiness spring forth.
Have a great week.
Harry
So, I thought I'd appeal to my friends
to
