Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (Sorry Elton and Bernie!)

Well it's been almost four months, but I'm finally back! Time flies when you're having fun...literally. I quit posting for several reasons. Mainly I became overwhelmed with what I wanted to say and giving myself a deadline of writing every Sunday just wasn't working. It's like I put a lot of unecssary pressure on myself to meet a deadline that didn't even matter to anyone but me. Once I missed one (due to a bottle of rum and a hot tub) I felt like I let myself down and it was quite the slippery slope from there. I've been reading, thinking and writing for myself during this time and finally have a clear mind. I don't feel bogged down with emotion anymore. There is a lightness in my life which I am very grateful for.

This entire experience so far (including my brief sabbatical) has given me a new outlook on life. Now obviously others before me have had these same thoughts, but I think it's such an amazing and thought provoking way of looking at things that I hope it might mean something to all of my friends who read this. You see, I mentioned that I felt like I let myself down by missing a deadline. But it wasn't just the deadline, I felt like I was chosing fun over actually working on things that would make a major difference in the rest of my life. In my mind I had laid out a path, a plan of action, and my straying from it made me feel like I would never reach my end goal. And that my friends is the exact problem.

We are taught from a very early age to follow a path and that if we work hard, stick to the plan and stay focused we will one day reach our goal. How many times have you heard the phrase life is a journey? The problem is that calling life a journey implies that it has a definitive destination. We never go somewhere without a destination. I know very few true nomads. Of course someone wise ammended the statement to life is a journey not a destination. This person was on the right track.

To help make this concept much clearer I found a little clip (I hope you like the producers of South Park!) that puts the musings of a philosopher by the name of Alan Watts to life. Mr. Watts was a British philosopher who is credited with opening the eyes of the Western world to Eastern philosophy. Obviously he was quite successful since my last post was about a children's movie deeply rooted in Zen philosophy! He is a very interesting character and his thoughts are quite fascinating...

I love that clip. I think it is completely profound and turns everything that we think about life as we live it upside down. We are always focused on a destination...school, jobs, getting married, having kids, getting a giant house, driving the right car, making sure our kids get the right foot on the same path...but the ultimate destination should be in learning who we are and that is done in each and every experience and interaction that makes up our collective human experience. We must learn to sing and dance along the way because if we don't we get to the end of the road and think, "That was it?" We should learn to enjoy every second, to be in the moment, and stop worrying so much about the destination. What's the point of making it to the end if you're miserable the whole way? It's like riding in the middle seat on an airplane to China between two people who both need seatbelt extensions and the air conditioning is out! You get there, but all you can think about was that horrible plane ride.

I honestly think this is the reason why so many people find themselves (including yours truly) in "crisis." Midlife crisis, quarter life crisis...it seems in this day and age that it is acceptable to be having a major life crisis at any age. The pressure that we put on ourselves to stay on these paths is incredible. As a 33 year-old unmarried woman I feel this pressure all the time. The normal path for someone like me is to go to college, get married, and have kids. Well, I managed to go to college...at least I got one thing right! Why is this the path that we feel everyone should take? From an evolutionary standpoint I'm sure we are hardwired to mate and reproduce, but (despite politicians) humans these days seem to be a much more enlightened species then our early ancestors who were battling for survival. It seems like our main focus should be to reach our fullest potential. For some that exact path may be their fullest potential, but for others maybe it isn't. I think as a society we have a very one-size-fits-all mentality when it comes to what a successful human life should look like.

Interestingly enough this concept is present in a lot of children's literature. Take sweet little Dorothy for example. She just wants to find her way home so she and her gang follow the yellow brick road in search of the Wizard of Oz who will help them all find what they are looking for. Unfortunately the Wizard turns out to be a fake and Dorothy finally comes to realize that the power to go home lies within herself, all the while wearing a pair of fabulous shoes (as recently recreated by Christian Louboutin!) The same is true for my personal favorite Alice. In Tim Burton's reprisal of her character she is constantly being questioned if she is "the real Alice." She needs to slay the jabberwocky, but doesn't feel like she can do it. Eventually, after a rather strange journey, she finds the power in herself and realizes it has been there all along and that her time down the rabbit hole is just a beginning.

So we are exposed to this idea at a very young age, but our culture is so focused on keeping everyone on the right path that I think we actually wind up more lost. Personally I think society as a whole would be a much nicer place to interact if children were taught about other things in addition to math and english. Maybe that should be the job of the parents, but I don't know too many people who don't feel like they were damaged by their parents in some way, so I honestly think that for now it would best be a job left to the professionals!

There is a new show on MTV called "If You Really Knew Me." It's amazing. You should watch it. The premise is that highschool children are lead through a series of exercises that open their eyes to the fact that they all have more in common than they realize. From the prom queen to the school dork to a gang member the kids all come to realize that they all have problems and they all just want to figure out who they are. I always cry when I watch it. To me that is more educational than learning calculus. I haven't used calculus since I took my last calc final in college! People are yearning to reach their potential, but are so limited by the paths their lives place them on.

I read a lot of Depak Chopra. The man rocks my world, but it takes me forever to read anything he has written because it is just so deep and so eye-opening that I have to read each chapter over and over and over again. Even then I feel like it has barely penetrated my mind. Currently I am reading The Book of Secrets. It is about unlocking the hidden dimensions of your life. Yes, it's exactly what the doctor ordered for a prickly little porcupine like me.

There are 15 secrets in this book. Now, I'm not going to share them. You should read it for yourself, but one of the most profound points Mr. Chopra makes is on the very first page. He writes:

"The Greatest Hunger in life is not food, money, success, status, security, sex or even love from the opposite sex. Time and again people have achieved all of these things and wound up still feeling dissatisfied - indeed, often more dissatisfied than when they began. The deepest hunger in life is a secret that is revealed only when a person is willing to unlock a hidden part of the self. In the ancient traditions of wisdom, this quest has been likened to diving for the most precious pearl in existence, a poetic way of saying that you have to swim far out beyond shallow waters, plunge deep into yourself, and search patiently until the pearl beyond price is found.

The pearl is also called essence, the breath of God, the water of life, holy nectar - labels for what we, in our more prosaic scientific age, would simply call transformation. Transformation means radical change of form, the way a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly. In human terms, it means turning fear, aggression, doubt, insecurity, hatred, and emptiness into their opposites. Can this really be achieved? One thing we know for certain: The secret hunger that gnaws at people's souls has nothing to do with externals like money, status, and security. It's the inner person who craves meaning in life, the end of suffering, and answers to the riddles of love, death, God, the soul, good and evil. A life spent on the surface will never answer these questions or satisfy the needs that drive us to ask them.

Finding the hidden dimensions  in yourself is the only way to fulfill your deepest hunger."

How many times did you have to read that? If you answered once...well you answered wrong. I would encourage you to rinse and repeat.

We live life on the surface and that is what leads to our gnawing hunger, our dissatisfaction. There is nothing wrong with following the path that society expects, but I think that unless a person is willing to take the plunge and search for the "pearl" this path may ultimately lead to emptiness. Look at how many people are dissastisfied with their jobs (um hello...me, me, me), their marriages...look at how many self help books are out there (I can probably tell you). Some people are searching...others are still on the surface too afraid to dive into the depths. I would say don't be too afraid to take the jump. You can always come back up for air.

Over the past few months I have learned that shedding my quills is not my ultimate destination. Fortunately for me it has actually been the beginning of a new desire to live my life differently. I have plenty of work to do, but I don't look at it as a journey anymore because I've realized it will never end. Like any epic road trip it can only be made better by great music and company! Each and every experience (no matter how much rum is involved) usually allows me to learn a little bit more about myself than I knew before. My walls have been years in the making, but it is amazing to me that even when I feel like there is no way they will ever come down I find a chink in a brick and slowly but surely they keep crumbling. The interesting thing is that these holes I'm creating are being filled with thoughts and ideas, people and feelings that I never even dreamed of. "The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry." Sometimes that's a good thing.

As Tim Burton's Alice says, "“I believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast. Count them, Alice. One, there are drinks that make you shrink. Two, there are foods that make you grow. Three, animals can talk. Four, cats can grin. Five, there is a place called Underland. Six, I CAN SLAY A JABBERWOCKY!” Anything can happen when you look inside yourself. Caterpillars do become butterflies and porcupines, well they become something. We'll just have to see.

Source: http://leigh-howtheporcupinelostherquills.blogspot.com/2010/08/goodbye-yellow-brick-road-sorry-elton.html