2002-06-05|9:22 a.m.
A told me yesterday, after picking me up from work, that he wouldn't leave me alone on the 21st anniversary of my birth. So, I even compromised and offered to go down with him to LA so he could attend his event. But, the catch is that he has to take me out to some nice LA bar that evening to complete my rite of passage. I figured I'd just go spend the day with MM, the LA dweller, if he'd let me.
Last night at the last meeting of Art of Living, the group had a little birthday cake and sang for me. It was really sweet.
There was also some lasting wisdom passed on to me. Nirmala, our instructor, asked us what was love. And a few people said things like, "It is unconditional," or "It is limitless," and such. Nirmala expanded the idea to say that it was our very being. Although, I understood what she meant (or am yet to, who knows), it was the less silly sounding comment, about it being hard for us to see the more intense and real it is, that struck me. With A, this makes sense to me. Sometimes, I want to convince myself that I don't need him because of how difficult he makes life for me, it seems. That, I will admit. But, in all that, I always need him. He is a very part of me. It is far more difficult for me to say, "Yep, that is what makes me love him," because what is there is beyond my ability to put into words and into tangible thoughts. It is the moments that I am so very thankful for his existence. It is the moments that I am thankful that he is here at this moment in the vastness of time. It is moments that I am glad he didn't appear on this earth in the form of a toad.
And this is all, with me loving others maybe with the same intensity. But, the difference that I have with A is that he is the one that I have chosen. And as na�ve as it may sound to older, wiser people, I am even quite certain that it is a lasting promise.
"I've got reservations about so many things, but not about you."
Just for the record, John Donne wrote, "No man is an island," not Jon Bon Jovi.
I have been flipping through Steal This Book, and despite its clever schemes, I was thinking about why I don't steal things. Here are the five-fingered reasons I don't steal:
1. Most things I want or need, I have.
2. I would hate to be criminalized in the minds of others if they found out.
3. The engrained teaching of my parents that stealing is bad (i.e. stories of children in India stealing bread and getting their little hands cut off).
4. Where I have what I want and need, I don't have the money/time to be caught and pay the legal repercussions.
5. The final and probably the most important reason, I wouldn't be stealing from "corporate pigs," Hoffman calls them, I'd be stealing from the underpaid employees that make and sell the crap. The suits are always going to make what they want to make, drive the cars they want to drive, and buy the homes they want to buy. They will simply shave off the excess losses whether or not that means people's wages.
I do still steal music, computer games, and sodas from faulty soda machines that spit them out. So, if thievery is what gets you into Hell, I am still going, I suppose.
Word of the Day: rectitude- the quality or state of being straight/ moral integrity or righteousness