Peace seems to be a rather elusive thing in many people’s lives. Peace is a quality that is usually sought after by those of us who have the least amount of it in our lives. More often than not, it is sought from sources other than where it needs to begin, and like all things, it begins from within and not without.

The first step in finding peace begins with a simple lesson, a lesson that all of us will have trouble in learning… how to shut the fuck up. That’s right… shut the fuck up. That means you, and that most assuredly means me.

Shutting the fuck up is not as crass as it sounds.

Simply put Shutting the fuck up means just that… If you want peace, you have to stop talking, stop doing, stop changing and start being. After all most everything we do in the name of peace is not as important as what we do once we have our own inner peace. Sadly, we cannot have peace if everyone is so busy doing and not one person is being.

Therefore, I will say it again.
If you want peace… stop doing, start being.
It begins here….
Shut the fuck up.

Don’t you think it’s about time we all just tried to shut the fuck up?

It’s time to Stop explaining our individual perspectives, it’s not as important as allowing another perspective to exist in tandem to our own.

Think about it,it’s actually very simple…

Stop trying to change the world and start trying to change yourself, if others see… not hear… but see that your way is better then they will change of their own free will and not by coercion or strong arms tactics that always seem to fail anyways. Perhaps you may even conclude that your way could use some adjustment and you might be able to address the mote in your own eye that you have been avoiding by scrutinizing at the boards over the eyes of others.

Stop thinking about how bad things are; stop invigorating the problems of the world by creating new paradigms of horror. Stop believing in the negative hype that is dreamed up to cloud your mind to the truth of you as author of your own existence.

Stop killing each other in the name of your individual truth, screaming your platitudes as you die as a martyr or kill thousands under the umbrella of being a Hero.

If you want peace, you only need to listen and then listen some more. Keep listening… truly listening until you begin to understand that there is no real difference between yourself and your so called enemy other than a lack of communication or even common sense.

So now, I take my own advice and end this piece by simply…
Shutting the fuck up.

In so much as I am a sinner I am also a saint.
As often I am the predator, I too am often the prey.
When I look around me and see madness, all I can do is shake my head in amazement, as I then proceed to blunder my way through my own personal experience of living.

These dualities, though not absolutes, are part of the riddle that is ourselves.

Like bumblebees, who aerodynamically are incapable of flight, so to we beings of questionable intelligence soar to new found heights… and then plummet to all time lows.

How quick we are to judge one another, how quick we are to judge ourselves.

We forgive friends and family almost out of ritual at times, we forgive strangers, and yet for some reason we can not forgive ourselves.

Nothing is ever good enough… we call it striving, climbing, growing, doing, becoming… yet in the end, we can do many things… and have nothing to show for any of it.

Nothing of true worth, nothing of truly lasting impression.

I can do nothing, we can do nothing… we are powerless, we are helpless, we are inferior to their schemes and indecisive plans. We have no voice… we have no sound bites… we can’t even get our spin to whirl in the right direction… much less any direction.

And then I snap

I plummeted, man did I plummet. I hit rock bottom and I do believe I tried to dig myself a little bit lower, just in case there was any madness I missed.

From there at the bottom of all things I looked up and there was still light. There was still a twilight of hope even though that light was so far away. So distant, so abstract, so surreal.

I clung on for dear life, and I weaved and I bobbed. I did everything in my power that would enable me to become whole. I didn’t care who got in my way, or where the journey led me, but it was truly there ahead of me.

Yet in the end, I am no mighty hero returned from a war.

I have been reforged into me, a regular Joe… with a few mild quirks and quite a number of strange ideas.

The treasures I liberated while on this crusade are plenty. The gems that glitter in bright sunlight for those crusaders of olde, are for me trinkets of wisdom and perhaps a few pearls of regret.

My coins are forged of human compassion, a finer gold you never did see. Engraved upon it’s surface the 3 phrase motto is simply I understand, I forgive you… and just as importantly… I forgive me.

I have known heroes, and villains all of which were truly quite inept, though mostly harmless. I have played both roles equally well at one time or another. In the end I see it for what it is, what it always has been… madness.

Madness evolved to solve the madness. Madness to sort through the madness of all that there is. Madness built within stories and riddles we enact in our daily lives. We gorge at the madness, we feed in the madness, we wallow in the madness and then are surprised when madness exacts its price. We say stupid things such as we had no clue that doing such a thing was a bad idea..

Such as eating the filthy lettuce on the floor couldn’t possibly make us sick or that washing your hands before a surgery was probably not a good idea, or that there was any chance coffee could be hot enough to burn you.

I have climbed out over it all, I see the vast landscape of insanity.

I laugh, pull out my Yo-yo and remember this simple truth.

Psychosis is just art waiting to happen.

Would you care to join me, up here?

I’m waiting for the sunset, this ought to be magnificent.