Ever wake up with a song in your mind for no apparent reason? Today was one of those, and here it is by ABBA. The song couldn’t be more on target with where I’ve been: vulnerable and mistrusting. My world has turned over a few times in the last few years and my previously stable, self-confident standing place of “me” has proven shaky and silly. Career, Habits, Roles that used to hold me up, all in question. Ever been there?
And, I continue to wonder what exactly is the game humans are playing, as in “all the world’s a stage and we are merely players“? There is deep truth in this Shakespeare verse1 which keeps popping up in Western consciousness, as a way to describe who we are in the mystery of life. But games can be won, or lost, and so I keep feeling this ‘explainer’ comes up short. Most of us in the western world understand ‘winning,’ and many of us want that. So, may as well play the game, right?
One of this blog’s major categories is silly pop culture references, and I’ll tell you now, it’s a cover. Any references I include cut to the core of what the entirety of my human nature is experiencing. It’s also a way to share connection across the divide between souls. I don’t actually consider pop culture silly, but the term the opposite of gravitas, which I’m getting tired of.
Welcome to humanity, one goofy, but good experience of confusion and covers.
I’m pretty sure shared pop culture helps us feel like we belong. We all are subject to influences of music and movies and books and the arts: they move us, and they also reveal and explain the entirety of us to us. For me, songs like this pop2 back up into consciousness to inform me what’s going on. As my 14 year old would say, “so random.” Yet. when you are living a way like described in the Tao3, nothing is random. So, again, what’s the game? Or given my tendencies as a wordsmith who loves nomenclature, “what’s the name of the game?”
Random Note: My positive ABBA associations got ingrained when I was an occasional crew member for Tony Robbins’ seminars some 20 years ago. I used to dance on stage between sets to help energize the audience and get people moving. High-energy crew members would get plucked from the ranks to get up on stage and cut loose. It was so fun and ABBA was on regular rotation. But not this song. This song is vulnerability, cluelessness, fresh perspectives, and questioning. This song is about my today, not those days. And apparently, I’m still holding to the continuity of my personal story. It’s not half bad, after all. I’ve been very lucky.
The Tao and Human Honesty
These days, my mind is on rewind. Un-remembering, investigating and questioning life choices and cornerstone thoughts, and knowing myself more plainly. Just this body, breathing now, feeling, doing and experiencing what is. And, still trying to relate with others. What I know is that I had some type of awakening months ago (a rude one), and that my experience of life is very different than before it happened. I’m in an unlearning of sorts, hoping to explain the journey plainly, yet the endless stream of thoughts and memories of “me-ness” keeps on coming through. I’m okay with this. I’m still doing my best patching together a sense of identity and belief systems that serve historical me and current me. And, I’m pretty sure we all do this.
It’s also a time of loads of answers arriving fast, mostly to questions I wondered about long ago. Remember when Charlie Sheen was misbehaving and occasionally popping up with some odd and out-of-context “winning” comment? Weird, right?! Notice how Trump does the same? I too, have had this internal experience of ‘world winning,’ but gratefully, kept my mouth shut. It’s delusion. AKA a belief that one can be special in the Tao of life. This delusion can happen when you have a pile of answers wake up your brain during an awakening process. When this experience happens, the entire world seems to answer your ancient, and present, wanderings via external stimulus like the news, your milieu, and phenomena like the weather and relationships, and you may think it means you are special. It’s the place where religions are often born. But with special answers comes special prejudices too, which is why laying low is often preferable.
Nada on specialness. And this knowledge is a relief.
Agendas, Answers, and Autocrats
Sometimes this awakening/answering experience can feel like magic. You wonder what to do next, and a call comes in with an invitation. Ta Da! That’s the answer. But, I sense probably not. It’s AN answer, for sure, but maybe not THE answer. That is unknowable. Also, just to be practical, maybe that invite is just simple sales, or someone pushing an agenda to join their carefully curated belief system to help fortify it, or to make money, or whatever. Or maybe it’s just an algorithm trained on your patterns placing ads funded by nefarious disruptors to shape your next web search. Or maybe it’s just a well-meaning (or narcissistic) person thinking they ARE the answer, sharing some new love they found around town. Cue a populous of folks willing to toss aside their unique & amazing perspective of life to follow undeniably powerful ego-centric leaders, and some people do win: the autocrats at top. Ooops. Oh well, anyone can give themselves away if they want to win this way. It’s a world of ‘kinda’ free will after all.
Adopting belief systems, or playing the house’s game is a choice we always get to make. We also can entrench in our curated beliefs, someone else’s curated beliefs, or run free! I’m opting for a way that allows for true vulnerability and defenselessness, and art, which seems to be our ultimate power. It’s a creative way. Because, if I’m honest with myself, I prefer the wild and waking up to ABBA’s artistry lightening up my free world.
Happy Day To You. And, these lyric videos are amazing.
- From As You Like It. This speech spoken by Jacques ends with:
“Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” ↩︎ - Yeah, I love making a bad pun a footnote. My avant-blog, my way. ↩︎
- Tao Te Ching Translation via a claimed authentic lineage can be read here. ↩︎