Cerebral Backlog

There is a significant distinction drawn in the art of acting between relaxed and neutral. An actor, so it is said, should never be completely relaxed on stage. Completely relaxed is boring to watch. When not actually doing something, instead of relaxing, one should adopt a neutral stance, not acting but ready to act. This resonates beautifully with something my friend Cindy once said, that she was "just waiting for God to pass her the ball." My vision of a satisfying, aligned existence is sitting under a tree, calm, engaged, and intensely aware, ready at every moment for the universe to call on me, to pass me the ball.

I feel like my life is filled with coincidence. At any moment, if someone were to ask, I would have something interesting to describe to them about the mechanism of my day. Socrates (I think) wrote that "the improbable is extremely probable," that is to say, the odds of something remarkable happening to you are very high indeed, even if the odds of a particular thing happening might be rather low. What I have come to believe about these occasionally startling coincidences in my life is that they are expressions of the universe passing me the ball. When I run into somebody just as I was thinking of them, there is reason; I am meant to serve them (or they me) in some way. When I happen to have exactly the resource that somebody needs, it is not an accident, but rather evidence of my utility to the universe. It is refreshing indeed to think that I am functional in some way.

There are moments, however, when I am not in alignment, and any pass from the universe would likely hit me in the nose. It has become sharply clear that every moment I spend being overwhelmed, despairing, or caustic is not necessarily a phase in my natural cycle, but rather a hedonistic lingering in moods that pay me off in dramatic verisimillitude but prevent me from being functional to the greater good. From now on, when asked how I am, if I am feeling shitty instead of saying "pretty shitty" I shall reply, "My shit is trying to vote in my life, but it will learn eventually."