THE POINT

She asked, "Why do you think people need your help, Grey?"

"It's not that they need my help," I told her, "Everybody needs help, sometimes."

"You know you do it for you, right?"

"Duh, Woman! Of course, I do it for me. Of course, my motivation is selfish. I am aware of that. I do it because it makes me feel good!"

And with that she was satisfied. We'd already been over all this before, so I found it intriguing that she felt the need to again point out the self-interest motivating even altruism. It occurred to me later that it may have not have been an effort to diminish my endeavors in kindness so much as it was granting herself permission not to aspire to any sort of goodwill or charity, all things really being the same in the end, as for her they are. Nothing ever makes any significant difference at all. All is personal and ephemeral. At allowing - and at concluding that there is no good reason to do much of anything at all - she is one of the cleverest people I know. I appreciate her genius in these and many other regards. She is intelligent, fun, and keeps me on my toes.

Even when I did similarly suppose that everything was personal and ephemeral, however, a little experimentation revealed that kindness towards and support of my fellows really feels to me to be the most gratifying thing. 

With sensual pleasures, there's always the push for bigger, better, and more. After a while, and with any pleasure, a mere shift in perspective (or health, or circumstance) suddenly transforms the upward spiral into a downward spiral, and so long as the pursuit maintains momentum there remains a deadly hunger, a voraciousness that compels one to neglect, abandon, or obliterate anything in the path of its satisfaction, the ruinous energy of rapacity. For me, all that hungering only ever amounted to a keen intuition of self-destruction - or at least the annihilation of anything I truly valued in me. Stepping back to witness the trajectory of fervent desires for anything tangible, the path always seems to terminate - even in realization - in fruitlessness, dissatisfaction, and both spiritual and physical suicide, if only by the mere slow means of neglect of the greater self, or other and better possibilities.

It occurs to me now that the pursuit of gratification via kindness towards others is probably not so very different. Anything that makes here, now and all that is insufficient necessarily diminishes the quality of here, now, and all that is. To be gratified has to be the first experience, not the final. 

Honestly, I think I understand what it is to be generally and genuinely satisfied, and, man, sometimes I see the ache out there and want so much to share my joy. Here is so much love, I would say; but you know - I know - I can't make people feel it if they can't access it within in the first place. Love never came from outside of us, we only ever felt it within. But sometimes it was a smile or a helping hand that showed us it was there. A little triggering of our empathy circuitry, mirror neurons firing and - BAM! - our hearts shine. Fuck that wiring with patterns of pain, fear, and doubt, and it's a lot harder to trigger, develop and maintain love. Without love, though, sure as fuck healing ain't gonna happen, either. 

I told another about a recent experience: as I meditated I was suddenly overwhelmed with deep gratitude for our capacity to love. How extremely fortunate we are, how utterly blessed we must be to have ever known of it, ever felt it, ever craved it, ever for even a moment had a fluttering inkling of love. All complaint seemed absurd, all dissatisfaction senseless, when always here within us we have instant access to this greatest of all gifts any time we would tap into it and allow it. And how close we are to seeing that we can simply feel and be this love!

I explained it like this, and dude smirked and said, "Yeah, but you can't expect everyone to understand that."

Fuck. He's missing the whole fucking point, I thought, a bit crestfallen but unsurprised. Again, I found myself confronted by the endeavor to thwart or dismiss such a fine and simple thing. It's a funny propensity in humans - to tear down where we can't fathom easy success in building up. I get it, of course. I get it. But still, it seems to me to easy to understand that the only way to get anything done is to start. And the work can only ever be done right here, right now, by us. If we stop - hell, if we don't even start - we fail. 

I suppose some people would rather not try lest they fail. Damn. That's weak and lame as fuck. Whether or not we would make a difference, whether or not we would fail is entirely beside the point. The point is to put into the world what we want to see in the world. We can only ever do that right here and right now. Just the right place, the right time, the right circumstance for success - we don't really know these things. But for every moment that we ain't shining our shine as best we can, man, we are really fucking blowing it.

Get loving now, friends, and everywhere, all the time. Don't stop. You are loved. You are love.