I’m tired of trying to be perfect. One day I’ll feed worms with the decaying organic matter that once was my body. And all I do here cannot change that. I don’t mean to sound depressing, but it’s true. Just learn to be. Be. I am here. Drain the marrow, smell the proverbial roses. Get stuck by the thorns, and bleed. Bleed that crimson fluid that feeds life to my cells. Pack shotgun shells with laughter, and shoot into the crowd. Laugh out loud. Dance sometimes, and worry not how foolish it may look. Finish your book, and maybe don’t even let someone read it. But finish it so that you can say you did. And then start another story, and another. Why can’t I write a story? I don’t care if anyone ever buys it. I don’t care if it is garbage. Write 500 and I’m sure that in that pile of rubbish, there will be one that stinks slightly less than the rest, at least one. But that’s just it, the point is not in the ending. No one really likes endings. The goal is not the goal, but it’s only after we attain it that we understand it wasn’t what we wanted. We had fun working toward it. The magic is in the pursuit, the search.

The trick is to remain in a constant state of departure, while always arriving. The illusion tells us to look ahead to a moment we must reach, something like a plateau. However, when we get there it’s still now, so we must stay vigilant against the illusion. The illusion robs us of our life, by telling us that we must get these things sorted first, then in some distant future when all is well we can sigh a deep sigh of relief, and then, and only then can our life begin. But don’t you see, it’s a lie. Until you die, you will have problems, the only way to avoid them is to shut off completely and then you see that becomes a problem.

Freedom lies in letting go. Relinquish the need for all the answers, surrender the obligation to do the “right” thing, and release the pressure to be perfect, all these things originate in the mind and are tied to our faulty perceptions.

You can do this. You can break free from the trap your mind wants to lure you into relentlessly. That vicious cycle can stop, but you have to be willing to give up the fight. Only then can you be the victor, by losing. Losing the things that hold you down,  keep you unsatisfied, make you feel like you can’t have peace. Who says you can’t have peace, because you owe some money, some worthless rectangles of paper. After all, if you don’t do things just so, something bad might happen. Whoopity doo! Things will never cease to happen, they cannot. The nature of reality is just that, an ever-present moment, that simultaneously holds all other moments, and things just keep on happening, all these wondrous and glorious things, things upon things upon things. And there are all these small perspectives, these individuals looking out on them as if through a tiny gap in an enormous brick wall. They see a sliver of the picture and claim knowledge of truth. But how arrogant when they have such a limited field of view. Break through that wall like the protagonist in your book. Self-acceptance is the key you wrote, symbolized by the dynamite used to destroy the brick wall of worry, fear, and doubt. I think we can eliminate the self, thanks, Alan Watts. The self isn’t necessary. The key is simply acceptance. Accept what is. Accept the bad, the good, the indifferent. Accept it all because the only other option is to spend every waking moment fighting viscously with a reality that won’t give an inch to your whims or desires. Not because the world is fighting against you, but because you’ll discover that resistance is a product of your mind, and the tension between your ideal reality and the one that exists. You are in your own way because you’ve forgotten that life is simply to be lived.