Chess

Life is like a game of chess you see. We start out with a fair chance. We are up against the world as we make our first move. Which piece shall we be today, the Pawn, the Knight, the King? What we don’t understand until the game is over is that we were not any of those pieces at all. We were individuals, human beings, created by God to make our own choices and determine our own happiness. We were supposed to be the player who made the choices in life but instead we became the pieces and let life play us. We accepted our role as the Bishop thinking we could only move in diagonal directions and there was nothing we could do about it. We accepted our role as the Pawn thinking we could only take baby steps forward and our function was less important than those around us. Instead of being the player and thinking for ourselves we allowed others to move us in directions that ended up taking a piece of our self worth away. We got so caught up in the game that we lost sight of why were even playing in the first place. Take a look around you. You are no carved out little game piece on a game board. You are the decision maker and you must not accept any role but that. When life takes a piece away you must not accept defeat. You have choices, utilize all of them, and don’t become comfortable. Oh the possibilities you will have when you realize there is life outside of the game board. There is life when you truly decide to live.

Contradiction

Trapped
Trapped in the rut of every day life
Trapped in the constant dreaming of tomorrow
Trapped in motionless discovery of my problems
Trapped in knowing what is the right choice
Trapped in to doing what society wants

Freed
Freed from the guilt that possessed my spirit
Freed from the shackles that kept me so still
Freed from the responsibility of others
Freed from the comfortable feeling of routine
Freed to live and truly LIVE

Navigate

Survival of the fittest. This used to mean the strongest fastest and more often than not smartest creature remained at the top of the food chain. Back in the day we had to scrap for every little ounce of food and water and make do with a couple of logs thrown together for a shelter. And most importantly we needed to know how to navigate. Those things determined our survival. Well in today’s society most of us are not concerned with surviving in the “old fashioned” sense. To survive in today’s world means to make it through another day at work, or to be able to sit through your niece’s piano recital without falling asleep. Oh we have it rough now don’t we? We have become so numb to the essentials in life we have forgotten the most important one. Navigation. How is navigation at the top of the list?

Well, food is food. We can find that just about anywhere and in most places ALL YOU CAN EAT food. Food, check. Water. We have come up with so many substitutes for water, that actual water hardly exists in most people’s consumption of liquids anyway. Water, check. Shelter. Well considering now, we all try and compete with each other seeing who’s house is best decorated, what the bedroom to bathroom ratio is, and whether or not you have an island in your kitchen, I think shelter is more of a show than a need these days. Shelter, check. So that leads us back to navigation. Well back in the day when people were lost in the mountains, the desert, the jungle, they had to know how to navigate to survive right? Right. Today people do not consider themselves lost but if we stopped and asked ourselves one simple question, how would we answer, “Are you navigating your own life right now?” You have to know where you came from, you have to know where you’re going, and it’s probably not a bad idea to pinpoint where you are right now. A lot of people cannot answer any of those three questions and this includes myself a lot of times. Where did I come from? Where am I going? Where am I now? This, my friends, is called being LOST. Just because we are not in the jungle or desert or mountains or out at sea does not mean we need to throw the compos away. It is essential. Now I for one can admit I have thrown my compos down and thought I could handle the world on my own, but I got lost at sea in a hurry. There I was just floating through life not even aware that my ship was going down in a hurry. I sunk my anchor but wondered why I wasn’t getting anywhere. You see, we get so comfortable in one little part of our world, we sink our anchors and then we get stuck. We need to be on a MISSION.

Going through life without knowing why we are taking each breath is a sad thing isn’t it? If you are going through life for the money, your anchor is sunk; you are stuck. If you are going through life for the pleasure, your anchor is sunk; you are stuck. If you are going through life to see how many friends you can make, your anchor is sunk; you are stuck. We get so caught up in the everyday hustle and bustle we think the GPS system has our back. Uh huh. Well I don’t know about you but it seems like technology has taken over everything these days. Is it taking over our reason for being? Or are we making our ‘beings’ be controlled by everything around us? Hmmm. Check. Check. Scientists are trying with all their might to invent smart and useful robots to join us in our day-to-day lives. Well, all I have to say about that is go walk down the street and you have a pretty good chance of running into one. We are living robotic lives. Everywhere you go, there are robots, just wandering. No compos, no motives, no idea why they are putting their left foot in front of their right, but they are. Robots CAN’T navigate. Snap out of it everybody. Strip off that robotic metal down to your flesh and live for real. Let us reel in our anchors in life and get on a mission. Where are we going? And most importantly why are we here?

Turning 22

Love in Vases

Love to me is like a flower; beautiful and free as it blooms and then over time it slowly dies. Everyone would like to think they can tame it’s beauty as they cut it from it’s undomesticated, home dwelling place, and then jam it in a vase to call their own. But in reality as soon as the blade has touched it’s covering, all hope is lost, for flowers do not belong in vases but rather in the soil. True love exists in its natural environment. The love I have come to know, soil doesn’t exist. Soil with rich nutrients is far from real. The earth I have seen is often times so dry and cracked no flower could ever survive. And when it rains, it pours. So much in fact that it floods and drowns the hope that the flower clung to for survival. You see, the kind of love I know, is the kind that comes in vases. They are beautiful as they sit in front of you, but looks are deceiving because there is no soil at the bottom of that vase to help that love grow any further. For this reason I have planted myself like a flower. Planted myself in an open field far from the hands that reach for any beauty I may possess. I hide myself amongst the weeds so as to not be seen by those that would like to have me in their grasp. I know I do not compete amongst several of the flowers but loveliness of that sort does not concern me. What concerns me is never letting those hands try and tame me. I want nothing to do with this love. For someone to say I love you is a powerful thing. I have seen so many say those three words and then shrivel and wilt like a dying flower just after. How can this be? To me this love only lasts for a time. It is temporary. I am not interested in provisional love, which is why it would be better for me to not experience it at all. Would it not be better to never have loved than to love and be so hurt you slowly wilt away like a flower? I have come to think so.

Tears

I really need someone but the truth is I want no one.
I don’t want to be anywhere but I have to go somewhere.
I think I understand and yet I’m so confused.
I am at a loss for words but they still come out so fluent.
I feel numb to emotion and yet tears stream down my face.
I laugh and smile and yet I feel so miserable and sad.
I close my eyes to sleep but images flood my mind.
I am so tired and yet I always seem to lie awake.
Memories consume me as tears escape me.
My heart is breaking as I realize the things I take for granted.
Where does the time go I wonder?
And why don’t more people take advantage of its precious tics.
Instead we waste it performing useless tasks.
I will never know when my time is up and yet I live as if I do.
Change.

Masks and Steel

Here’s a thought. If you were in a pickle, like a big sliced dill pickle not just a tiny hamburger kind of pickle, whom would you call? If you need advice from someone where do you receive it? Now to some the obvious answer may be your parents or relatives, but how many of us have someone we know we can count on when things get rough? You see for the most part we all have acquaintances in our lives which whom we call friends but if this friend only shows up for you when it’s convenient on their watch, can you really call them a friend?

I read somewhere that you use steel to sharpen steel just as one friend should sharpen another. When I use that phrase and apply it to my friendships, I realize only a handful of them would be relevant to that quote. The others would be more like a piece of lumber. Steel and lumber do not run around together. It is not that I would likely want to see that pile of lumber on the wrong end of a match, but when I look at the big picture in life their purpose in mine is limited. It is not necessarily that these people are bad people, because all of us could potentially be somebody else’s lumber, but if you call yourself a friend you should not change the definition to fit your own.

I think a big problem in friendships is that we all try so hard to impress others around us that we put masks on to accomplish this task. I know I used to have a closet full myself but I did some house cleaning and got rid of most of them as I finally became comfortable with me. The problem with masks is you become somebody you’re not, and so these so called friends become friends with your mask instead of the you that’s underneath.

Show people you, not the you they want, but the you that you want. I just threw out a lot of you’s, wow that may have been a bit confusing. Basically all I’m saying is, we all have a story, and every person you meet wants to tell you their story. The reason we don’t though is because we want to tell real people what we are all about. We want to tell people that we know actually care. No person in a mask would care what you would have to say. So we keep reserved, and go on living how we think they would want us to. Masks are for Halloween and lumber sits in a lumberyard. Take off the mask and get the sharpeners ready. Friends are a valuable thing.