Not an Oracle

It's become my new motto, 'take the plunge.'

I've been saying it every day recently as a reminder to myself that I have to throw myself into the day. I have been far too passive of late, letting things happen to me or waiting in the background. By telling myself to 'take the plunge' I allow myself to become immersed in the day. I dive in to it and deal with what needs to be dealt with as it comes. I'm aware that I spend far too much time worrying about what could be. It's wasted energy. By taking the plunge, I live in the moment and the results can be surprising.

Life is a delicate architecture and each day presents it's own earthquake. The foundations we have laid may not be as strong as we may think and sometimes we need to re-build. It could be one or two rooms at a time and sometimes you need that earthquake to bring the whole goddamn thing down so you can start again.

"In horoscopic astrology, a Saturn return is an astrological transit that occurs when the planet Saturn returns to the same place in the sky that it occupied at the moment of a person's birth." *

So here I am, slap bang in the middle of my first Saturn Return and it sure does feel confusingly turbulent. Theoretically speaking,'adulthood' should be the period of our lives when all the pieces start to come together; we develop a greater understanding of who we are and what role we play in society. The last threads of childhood should be cleanly snipped away and we can finally inhabit the adult skin we've harvested on our bones for all these years.

Throughout my early twenties I was convinced that as I began to reach the next decade (I still struggle to accept the word 'thirty'), everything would start to make more sense. The truth is, personally speaking, I've never felt further away from that ideology. The world is even more confusing, I will never understand a planet that harbours war, famine, murder, prejudice, animal cruelty and all the evils we see gracing the newspapers and magazines on a daily basis. My own personal world is just as confusing; I see people creating their own families and I am forced to accept that the prospect of doing the same is very unlikely. The idea of a career is a fallacy and I find that my greatest achievement is knowing that I have been able to make it through the day.

This is beginning to sound like 'Oh, woe me.' - However, this is not the case. I'm grateful for being in the position I am. It could be worse. We are the architects of our own future. We are solely responsible in shaping our own fate and we do this by making the most of what we have. In saying this, I'm still awaiting that 'Eureka!' moment. That soul-tingling, bone-shattering, mind-imploding instant where suddenly everything makes sense and you abruptly find yourself hurtling down the right path and you kick yourself and laugh because you 'knew it all along'.

I'm sure it's coming.

I guess most of us are looking for a similar thing and by this I don't mean having lots of money or owning an expensive house or being made 'top of the class'. It's beyond possessions or any other material object. It is about finally having that knowledge of where you fit in between the land and sky. It's about understanding how your actions are contributing to a greater use, therein attempting to create a better world even if the action is small in nature. It's about contentment, fulfilment and connection, however you may find it. I guess some people spend most of their lives trying to attain even a pinch of these things. It is a journey and at this moment in time, I have no idea of the destination. I can only hope that by the time of my next Saturn Return, I will have made a little more sense of it all.



*Source [Wikipedia.org - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_return]

Breaking out of the habit is the hardest thing you can do. Leaving the comfort and safety of what you already know is not an easy feat. But this is the only way to truly live; to drink up the new and open your arms to opportunities before they perish on the vine. Grow wise and be cautious but walk on that ledge and immerse yourself in the sights. The bright, bright lights and the biting breeze. The raw freedom that comes with taking a risk.

This is how life should be.

Shatter your preconceptions and never assume anything. Never take anything for granted and love like it will never last. Because it never will. Celebrate the small things and take time to look up at the stars and the sun and the moon because the answers come when we tilt our heads upwards. Connect your feet to the ground and walk wherever you can. Make that connection between your body and the land, like it was always meant to be. Be outside and live outside of yourself. The truth will come to you that way. Stretch away anything that holds you back and learn to let things go.

That is how it needs to be.

It must be because I am a Libra. Indecisive and eternally seeking balance in everything I do. When the truth is, the scales will always tip one way or another. The concept of the perfect balance is merely a mirage. We juggle our daily lives as best as possible and the more organised individuals may even be able to plan and juggle the events of the next few days or weeks. And then life decides to throw you a curve ball. A huge whacking asteroid-sized curve-ball that is coming straight at you full force. You suddenly find that you are now no longer juggling those elements, you're sheltering yourself from being pelted by them.

Those of us that are better equipped may just open up their arms and embrace the collision and deal with damage-control later on. Others may have refined the use of the elegant side-step approach and manage to avoid the majority of the debris. There is a third type, the ones that stay catatonically frozen in fear; desperately hoping that the laws of gravity will suddenly change and the impending damage caused by these falling parts is inevitably spared. The chances of this happening are relatively slim.

You'll notice how I mentioned that the better equipped individuals are the ones who embrace the downfall. They don't mind the cuts and the bruises caused by all the pre-juggled life shrapnel because they know that there will be plasters and splints to help repair the damage later on. Life is messy. It's complicated and downright difficult. It's also surprising, unpredictable and beautiful. Some of us have mastered the technique of keeping things going when that curve-ball is coming at you faster than a chased gazelle. These are the lucky ones, the rare breed. They can even keep a smile going at the same time and these are the true heroes, the life warriors. The ones that I have much to learn from. For now I will have to learn to ride the wave, endure the impending impact and try my hardest to make informed decisions and maybe, just maybe keep a smile on my face.

1) Imagine that your skin is as delicate as egg-shell and your bones are as brittle as sticks of cinnamon. Smash and scratch your way out of them, break through the common form for it is not your own.


2) Exhaust yourself. Run until you fall to your knees and your eyes sting from the beads of sweat being exorcised from your pores. Crawl until you cease to bleed anymore. It is at this point that you know you are nothing but truth.


3) Lose all your memories so that you can start again.


4) Spill your words on the page, even if they make no sense. Articulate that which the voice can not. Coherence does not matter since the world doesn't follow the same rules.


5) Change your scenery. Take it in. Remember how the pieces fit together but don't apply them to your life.


6) Remember your dreams but most importantly, remember your nightmares.


7) Death is merely the end of one of many processes.

It seems that lately time has become my enemy. I can't seem to get a grasp on it. It's not like we were ever great friends or anything but I used to have a relatively good concept of how time passed. An hour would feel like an hour, a minute would feel like a minute but these days they don't seem to follow any sort of rules. They say time flies when you're having fun but what happens if you're not having fun and it's still hurtling by like the speed of light? I think that either someone has re-written the rules or this is some sort of universal joke.

There are days when I am convinced that I am the relic of the person I used to be. The teenager with the naïve heart and wilful tongue. The restless spirit that clung to the electric impulse of adventure, readily absorbing stories with never-ending eagerness, eternally unsatiated and unsatisfied with the idea of finality. I am not that person anymore. I am not quite sure who I am. It was with that very statement that I set about my journey of self discovery. I was unprepared the unfolding of events that transpired during my voyage.

It's so easy to feel burdened. We go day-to-day carrying the events from the day before and the day before that with us. If we are not careful with what we pay attention to, these things become our burdens and serve only to hinder us and hold us back. The key is paying attention to the good experiences and the positive events. These are the driving forces of the human spirit and keep us grounded. The odd negative or constructive criticism can also provide fuel but we must learn to let the majority of negative events go. Situations take place, bad things happen, the trick is acknowledge it and then dispense of it. The greater the weight of these past events, the harder and more challenging it is to move forward. It's like they say, 'the past is the past for a reason'.

'Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace' ~ Albert Schweitzer

I have often debated whether or not I should post anything about this subject matter as it more than likely presents a minefield of various different reactions. I have landed in numerous debates around the dinner table about this topic, where I have tried to put my point across or explain my views but a lot of the time, it is either undermined or glossed over. The very last thing I want to do is to come across preachy or condescending and I can understand why some people may get defensive or don't want to talk about it. I used to act the exact same way. However, if it makes one person stop and re-think their lifestyle and make a change then I believe it to be justified.

It was a warm, sunny day in early summer in 2010. Not a cloud in the sky. It felt like any another other standard day; I awoke the same way, drank my coffee in the same manner and went about my day as I usually did. Unbeknownst to myself, I would not be going to bed as the same person. I had been browsing the internet for some part of the morning and I stumbled across a post on Facebook with a link to a video by Paul McCartney. An ex-Beatle was about to change my life. The video was called 'Glass Walls' and I distinctly remember Paul's introduction, '... I have often said if slaughter houses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian.' The next fifteen minutes broke my heart. It literally felt as though someone had slashed open my own chest with a rusty blade, torn out all my internal organs and thrown the bloody mess into a meat grinder. This video had reduced a grown man to tears and made me swear from that moment onwards not to play a role in any part of that process I had just witnessed.

The strange thing is that I had always had some form of awareness about how the meat industry worked but I had found it was quite easy to detach myself from those events that took place in the slaughterhouses and farms. The neatly packaged, processed meat that can be purchased from any supermarket did not resemble the living creature it once was. It was easy to not form the connection. I had often shrugged off stories from vegetarians and vegans in the past. I did not want to acknowledge the truth and the last thing I wanted to do was to change my eating habits because someone was trying to make me feel guilty or bad about it. It was difficult not to get defensive and claim 'well everyone else does it' and 'it's unhealthy not to eat meat'. I am a little bit embarrassed looking back at those comments now. I had spent twenty-five years quite happily not acknowledging what had happened to the food on my plate. From the moment that video ended and I swore to myself 'never to eat meat again' I threw out all the meat products I had previously bought and started researching vegetarianism.

The transition was relatively easy. I did my homework on the topic and with trepidation, I looked further into the meat and animal-product industries. I was shocked to read that humans are not evolved to be carnivorous; that in fact our teeth are blunt and square and our jaws 'grind' in order to better masticate vegetation rather than sharp and pointed teeth prevalent in carnivores that are established to tear at flesh and chew. Our large intestinal pathway is not developed to process meat as with carnivores who have small intestines to quickly dispose of the flesh to prevent it going bad and causing disease. Humans also don't have claws like carnivores and so forth. I was fascinated to discover these facts but also somewhat upset and angry that I had not received this education at a younger age. I also learnt that some vegetables, nuts and seeds have high protein content and there are an abundance of health benefits as a result of not eating meat. A whole new world had opened up.

To this day, I can not comprehend the torture and barbaric treatment of sentient beings. My stomach turned as I witnessed 'factory workers' and 'farmers' secretly filmed while they cruelly beat, kicked, stabbed, threw and tortured these helpless animals. Seeing calves being taken away form their mothers and hearing their cries and seeing the fear before they are killed was unbearable. It was beyond difficult to view and I still can not understand how a human-being who is supposed to be capable of empathy and compassion act in such a way. I will never understand it.

I think there is definitely a stigma attached to vegetarians and vegans but what we have to realise is that we all have a choice and choices are not always easy things to make. I have been subjected to a lot of judgement and jokes because of my eating habits and lifestyle choices. All I ask is that people open their eyes and mind and acknowledge the truth. That is all. Whatever choice they make is up to them and that is not my business. I will not pass judgement or make jokes. My only regret is not being aware or having this information at an earlier age but the important thing now is that I am and I do.

So here is a link to that very video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql8xkSYvwJs

Please be warned, it is very graphic but I urge everyone to watch it just once. Maybe an ex-Beatle will change your life too.

Writing is like wading through your own vomit.
It is the only way to physically see what is inside of you.

Here's an idea. How about stripping away those conformist ideals? How about we live how we want to; in a peaceful and non-judgemental way. It would not matter that someone dressed a certain way, loved another person of the same sex or followed something they believe in. As long as it causes no harm, why should it matter? Think of the variety, the characters and excitement of knowing that we did not have to belong to a particular social group.

Of course this is just an idea and I am an idealist at heart.

There is very little we can be sure of, we wake in the morning and we sleep at night. We can never be certain of the 'in-betweens'. As much as we try to predict what the next move will be, the game changes and the villain you thought you were fighting turns out to be yourself. You were just wearing a different mask that day. The Earth orbits the Sun. We breathe the air. We run in circles. We make people feel good. We make people feel bad. This is just the nature of the 'great game of life'. The majority is a plateau of running through the motions. For the lucky ones or the ones who make moments slightly more precious, the plateaus are few and far between. It was all a choice anyway, whether we like to believe it or not. We can choose our landmarks, they are ours for the taking. The tragedies and the heartaches do not have to be our landmarks if we do not want them to be. The freedom is in the choice. The smile from a stranger that brightened your day, an act of kindness, the greeting card you chose for a friend's birthday. It is comparatively easier to layer all the knock-backs up in one nice big piece of guilt-cake and make that your foremost landmark. That's just human nature. Unless you are a psychopath, the rules do not necessarily apply if you lack the capability for any sort of empathy and an egocentric drive. The beauty is yours for the taking. The longing, the joy or the tears if you so wish. Our landmarks don't have to be our fault-lines, they don't have to cause a great volcanic eruption or a devastating earthquake if that is what we choose. It may seem far easier to bake that guilt-cake in the oven for another decade or so but we don't have to. Start again. There is very little that we can be sure of but be sure of this: no-one else will live your life, no one else will create your landmarks.