You Don’t Want This

By Amaya. Gayle Gregory

You don’t want this, and when it finds you anyway, you won’t have needed me, or anyone, to show you how to get it. You say you want IT, but you don’t. You want a better life, a sweeter deal, not this. No one in their right mind wants this.

It’s beautifully simple, and minds don’t like simple, they want complexity. They gravitate towards drama and finding things to take up arms over, even when those arms are merely words. They want to stand in reverence for what they believe, driving out those who see it differently, the ones they see as harm bringers.

It’s different for everyone, the idea of what brings harm. Funny that, so funny that it lights the fuse of wars, burns witches at the stake and Jews, and other unfortunates, in the gas houses of white virtue. Even the ‘patriots’ cleaning their guns, making certain ammo is close at hand, waiting for the signal to attack, believe they are right, that they have to right to take lives in their righteousness.

Not funny at all.

You don’t want this, because when it finds you all that insanity drains away, like blood dripping out of slashed wrists. Everything you’ve fought for drops, not because you have no compassion but because you can’t not have compassion for all. You see that with everyone’s models of the world, the hatred and anger, the divisiveness and righteous fury, life couldn’t be otherwise, so all the hot air in your balloon is exhausted.

Sounds horrible, doesn’t it? I told you that you don’t want this.

You can’t know what it portends, that it ushers in the peace that passeth understanding and the stress of living, the desperation of striving, the fear of dying, fades away too.

Words, no matter how wise, will never do justice to what this reveals, and yet, words appear and point the way, coaxing you forward, ameliorating the fear. Life is like that. It is compassionate, always urging you to leave the troubles behind. That’s the ache you feel, the urgency, the inner sense that life doesn’t have to be this way.

But, righteousness feels … right. When someone doesn’t get angry with you there must be something wrong with … them. We humans like to feel, to feel intense energies, to feel something, to feel anything. It’s addicting, a fix to feed the anger, the hurt, the wounds, the awkward wrongness of righteousness.

Eventually, the fix wears off and you are faced with feeling what you feel, what you are desperate to avoid … and this really is funny, not laughable but paradoxical, what you’re desperate to avoid is exactly where your life is taking you, kicking and screaming or voluntarily going along for the ride. Either way, you’re going. You can’t avoid it forever, a lifetime or two maybe, but forever, never.

Me? What do I know? I’m nobody, just a character in your dreamscape, your built-in cheerleader, an imaginary friend. Honestly, you don’t need me or my words, but I can’t seem to stop them from flowing, and you from reading. Life has you. It always has, even when it doesn’t feel like it. You’re dreaming your way to the recognition of what this is, what you are, whether you want to or not.

And, oh … I lied when I said you don’t want this.

Like this, and want to read more? Check out my latest book, Actuality: infinity at play. It breaks the spell of knowing. https://amzn.to/3Rd4CTY

Artwork by Kiri Østergaard Leonard, 2014 – www.kirileonard.com