#132

Living with your hand open is a tough and pointless gig. I'm suspicious of the notion of true karmic balance; when I think of balance in universal terms I do not think of perfection but a raging chaos whose ever-churning median is roughly stable and subject to collapse. So I do not believe that everything that goes around comes back around the same, I do not believe that you get what you give, I do not think that "good" deeds "outweigh" "bad" deeds (context and valuation, muddied waters). Those equations are part of the mathematics and sometimes things happen that way. 

However, guarantees are fake. There are no guarantees in reality. No givens. 

Furthermore acting generously or being kind because you believe that you are certain of returns is insufficient. That betrays a readiness to oversimplify things. I have never believed that action which is materially beneficial undertaken for reasons based at root in self-interest or greed or pure posturing in order to be perceived a certain way as ethically valid. It's fine, of course. Not going to cry foul on philanthropy or charity merely because it is selfish. Hollow and venal action can have positive results. 

I care more about motive because I care more about meaningful action. It seems gauche these days to be mindful of authenticity or even think that it is real, but there you have it. It also seems naive and stupid to suggest living an open-hearted life of positive sacrifice in the age of internet, and I get that. It is fucking rough out there and the current religion is the aggressive acquisition of securities and immortality.

But man, there is no use pretending that going through the motions is enough. If you are going to be generous, it can't be about skimming off the rounding errors. You have to be idiotic about it and let go of the security which allows you to be in a position to give without feeling. Everything you give needs to have weight to it because it ought to cost you something to let it go and you ought to be glad in the paying of the price, glad because you're strong enough to take it and it glad because the giving is enough and you don't have to give a thought to getting anything back.

Let everything drop from your hands. No hiding things in your fist. Open. Everything you own including your life is only borrowed; what the hell could it matter to hang on to it like that, clinging and grasping? Not to say that your things are somebody else's or that anyone can have whatever they want, but that what you own does not own you, that the pay not be more value than the work. 

We are all going to die and maybe it would be cool if on the way we treated each other like human beings instead of capital, if we had the courage to let ourselves be seen for who we are and the courage to see others as themselves, that all we owe each other is everything and nothing. Yeah, it's impossible to be a human being on internet, it's impossible to escape performance, everything is tainted, yeah, yeah. 

Generosity of spirit and a commitment to an open heart are more essential than ever now that they have been relegated to crude simplemindedness. Just gotta do it anyway, best you can, every opportunity you can catch, and fuck 'em off when they shame you. 

Life is for giving as many gifts as possible, for becoming a great and skilled gift-giver. That there may be an oversimplification; but if so, one I can get behind.


--JL