You can’t write yourself a friend or a wife or a healthy democracy.
And the system and its associated wisdom memes aren’t fixing you from the inside out.
The project is a failure.
But what else is there?

Well, let’s at least resolve
to not force unpleasurable pleasures onto ourselves.
I mean
remembering Epicurus’s theory of pleasure:
Natural necessary pleasures like drinking water, eating something, sleeping: You have to do these.
Natural unnecessary pleasures like eating something particularly yummy or taking a stroll along the harbor in the evening cool: these can add zest to life.
And then
Unnatural unnecessary pleasures like needing a specific piece of cake or building statues to yourself
Those pleasures are more for the ego than for anything else
So they aren’t really pleasures at all — they’re lonely ego-trips
Unnatural unnecessary pleasures — also known as vainglories — are to be avoided

Too much of my life is spent chasing unpleasurable pleasures
Getting annoyed, angry, outraged at others
Looking down at, clucking my tongue at, shaking my head at others
Begging for satisfaction rather than looking for love
Feeling sorry for myself
Bragging to myself
Spending yet another Saturday alone drinking wine and watching TV

And then there’s the textbook vainglories:
‘I need that piece of pie; that hot babe; this grand power and great sway; to be applauded and fawned over; for monuments to be erected to me and my glory; IIIIIIIIIII”

Let’s at least resolve
to stop choking ourselves on fun that isn’t even any fun

Let’s listen
And open
Make a list of tasks that must be accomplished for health, success, and joy at life
And put one foot in front of the other
talk to other people

Love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and mind, and our neighbor as ourself
And rest on impermanence and interconnectedness
And practice opening up, letting everything go, and experiencing what comes of such pauses in our gathering up and slicing and dicing of experience into “information”.
Let’s open up to the Love beyond being and nonbeing, breathing that Kind Joy in and out, letting our daydreams of self and other, of inside and out, of real and not real, of being and nonbeing — letting all our daydreams forget themselves

the project
ah the project
so lonely for so long
let it be
let it ride

Authors: BW/AW
Editors: AW/BW
Copyright: AM Watson