Give it Up

For those of you who read this blog, you’ll be familiar with my Grand Theory of the Universe and why I advise every sane person to not bother to carry an organizer because everything is random and nothing can be planned.

You may have been conditioned by your upbringing so that you flatter/berate yourself by thinking that you got where you are because of your hard work/or laziness and brilliance/or stupidity, but I’m here to tell you that you only rose from the compost heap of life/or were consumed by it because you were lucky/unlucky enough to have been born with a personality that enjoys hard work/avoids hard work and because the egg and sperm that happened to meet one sultry afternoon combined to give you your brilliant/not-so-brilliant mind.

Many people dispute my theory. But those are young, naive people. The older and wiser a person is, the more apt they are to nod their head in sage agreement with me. No one is in control of their life. And perhaps the largest disservice society does, is to drill it into our heads that all our successes, all our failures, are the result of our own decisions and therefore, we should gloat or feel guilty depending on how society is currently passing judgment on our state of affairs.

Par example, one reader, discussing my Breasts post, told me that when he was a kid he wondered why all the women in the paintings of the Old Masters were “fat.” Long ago, fat was a sign of wealth. If you were a peasant, scrounging for your food every day of the year, you were as thin as today’s super models. And that wasn’t considered healthy nor attractive. If you would have qualified for the Fortune Magazine - Versailles 500 List of 1789, you were probably fat, and every Count/Countess was chasing your dimpled derriere. (You would also be dead the following year, but that's another book.)

If you’re currently battling with your weight, because you buy society’s idea that thin is in, that thin is a sign of self control, and you agonize over every morsel that passes your lips, you will understand how cruel it is that you were born in this day and age. You would have had a lot more fun as a tyrant or as a king’s mistress back in the eighteenth century. Timing is everything.

If your horny parents would have mustered some self-control and held off their coupling for a few more hours, or even minutes, you wouldn’t have been born . . . some other self-obsessing, narcisstic combination would have emerged nine months later. But since your parents had no control over their natural functions, voila, we have the pleasant privledge of knowing you.

You were not in control of your conception. You are not in control of your life. You were not in control of that guy/girl who dumped you in high school. You are not in control of your boss, your wife, your kids, your parents, et al. You are not in control of your death.

I harp on this not to depress you, but to free you. Nothing is your fault, nothing is your triumph. Just enjoy your short ride here on earth.

Find a nice, dog urine free swatch of lawn, or a forest floor covered with molting leaves, or a snow bank if you’re currently in France; lay down on your back, arms spread wide, legs spread wide (vulnerability is the sensation we’re going for here), palms up to the heavens and repeat I accept(or J’accepte if you don’t know English) over and over until you really do accept yourself, the Universe, your body, your mind, the people in your life. If you’re lucky, some sort of animal, a messenger from the Universal Oversoul, will approach and nuzzle you.

When you accept yourself, you will find the peace and love for which you have been searching.

Let me know if I've been of any help.