The Lessons of a Life

At age 1: Ice cream tastes good.
At age 9: Alcohol tastes bad.
At age 11: Altered states of consciousness exist.
At age 18: Humans are hardly the most powerful beings around.
At age 20: The FBI indirectly caused my father's death.
Ah, how far Big Brother extends!
At age 23: Love contains a healing alchemy.
At age 25: Observing a dead corpse closely is an excellent chance
to reflect on our fate.
At age 27: One of the most precious gifts is trust.
At age 28: Falling in love is easy;
staying in love requires disciplined work.
At age 32: For brief moments, we can be like gods.
However, sometimes we are utterly blind and petty.
At age 38: Shopping is a form of voting:
by purchasing things you help them manifest.
At age 40: All people are storytellers and after they are convinced
their story is "right," generally they're locked into that narrative.
At age 44: The whole notion of "self" is an invention:
a useful myth, but fiction nonetheless..
At age 48: No human is infallible;
to worship another as "enlightened" amounts to idolatry.
At age 49: We have negotiate with many selves on many levels,
a task that's often difficult to do smoothly.
At age 51: Even after a person passes away,
part of them is still with you when you remember them.
At age 52: It's better to understand your enemies than to condemn them.
At age 55: Too much intellectualization
cuts us off from direct experience.
At age 58: The wheel of life moves in mysterious circles.
At age 66: There's still much to learn . . .

Beg.: 2007 Tokyo   –   Fin.: 2021 Yokohama
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