I Am More Than My Life


The one thing Buddah, Mohammed, and Jesus agreed on was, “I am more than my life.”

I am bigger than the events in my life. If I am to leave any legacy, it is not to let those events define me solely; for in any working class grunt there is the capacity for heroism. And what is heroism other than becoming bigger than your life. Most of us don’t often confront conditions that warrant its release, so we define ourselves by the performance of our everyday tasks. Are we on time or chronically late, do we keep a clean or a messy house, are we deemed valuable or marginal by our employers, and do we command respectful compensation for our time and input during that employ? Are we found fulfilling or wanting in our relationships? Do we give freely of our time, because it really is OUR time, or do we resent others for trying to drain it from us? Are we good looking enough, thin enough, or sexy enough? Are we taken seriously? All this pales when a genuine crisis arises.

How do we deal with mortality? That is the question. And the answer is quite well, as a rule. All of a sudden it is there, in our faces, mano e mano, mortality itself, undesguised and unrelenting, and we are there to meet it. We may not recognize ourselves in that moment, because we are pure and unrehearsed, just a living being fighting for survival, but this emerging stranger in ourselves becomes more familiar, like someone we suspected might be there all along but were afraid to believe in. In that moment we, the true we, are bigger than the life we allow to define and limit us. This crisis becomes a true defining moment. Maybe we really are worth the effort to draw breath from the planet after all.

“Hold on a minute, “ I can hear some of you saying. “I do battle every day.” Yes you do. But do you choose your battles, and choose wisely? When you are “in” your life, you are narrowing your options for a successful resolution. That is why generals are pictured hovering over their maps, plotting a hopefully wise course of battle surveying the terrain with a bird’s eye view, all necessary elements taken into consideration and decided upon. Do not go flailing into that good night. Have a plan. But first you must decide if the battle is important enough to warrant your time and your angst. And then it is a fight among many in the course of a life you may not have necessarily chosen for yourself. This is when you need the hero to drag you away from the banality that demands its due. Remind yourself that this is only a trifle in the scheme of things, a minor skirmish designed to keep you busy from adressing the major issues of your being. Keep it clean. Keep it clear. Don’t mess up the landscape so that you miss the wonder that is your life. Your one shot at immortality. Keep it clean. Keep it clear. Go right to the source. Cut out the middle man; the prestige car that announces to the world that you are deserving, the trophy mate that screams out your potency fantasy, the sporting event that shows the world your hunting prowess even though you’ve long been estranged from the receding jungle. Stop buying the old pitch and see clearly, cleanly. Lean toward your source and it will sustain you.

Okay, where do I find my source? Its right here. If I stop listening to the hucksters, tune out the consumer conveyer belt that calls itself television, I can hear it. It may sound like a waterfall or just a simple hum, but it will be mine and I will recognize it. And then I will hear the extraneous noise around me for exactly what it is, noise. I will see the colors and slogans bombarding me like flash cards for what they really are; some snake oil salesmans’ idea of where I should drop my dough. And you will know that this is not the purpose you for which you were born.