May 19, 2013
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Our focus is wrong.

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Life is too short to be anything but happy.

I watch people every single day and I watch them hate their life. I watch them hate everything about it and I won’t lie. I can fall into that category too, but that also goes in line with the reason that I am writing this. It goes in line with it because I’ve made a lot of changes in the way that I live, in the way that I see things, and with that, I have come a long, long way. But it’s not something that you can perfect. No, it’s not something that ever gets finished.

It doesn’t get finished because we are always changing and we will always be changing.

This isn’t an emotional rant. This isn’t a live journal entry. This is a call to action for everyone, myself included to just wake up. Get out of that daze. Get out of that state of mind because it is not conducive. It is not beneficial, or advantageous. It is not anything but detrimental to you and everyone around you.

This isn’t something that you start on January 1st. This isn’t something that you start tomorrow, or on Monday. This isn’t something that you start today. No, you need to start now.

Like right now.

You need to start now because you need to realize that today is important. It’s important because you are exchanging a day of your life for it. Every second that you spend doing something is a second that you will never get back and you need to remember that. You need to remember that because time is finite and so are we.

And as a society, our focus is wrong.  It’s wrong because we only focus on money, and we’re so focused on getting it and investing it. We’re so focused on just using it to… buy everything. To fix everything. To do everything. And we want it so bad that we spend over 50 hours a week putting up with dead end jobs. We invest the next 20 years of paychecks to pay the tab for our own education, so that we can just earn more money and we waste away for it. We want it so bad that we literally have to remind ourselves that money is not a form of foliage. We have to tell ourselves that money doesn’t grow on trees.

And yes, I understand that we do need money. I understand that it is the focal point of our society, but should it be the most important thing? No. It shouldn’t be the most important thing because money is useless without time and far too often, we don’t realize that. We don’t take it into consideration.  We don’t even see it as a factor in the equation and that’s a problem. It’s a problem because you need time for money to have a purpose. After all, you wouldn’t buy bullets if you didn’t have a gun. You wouldn’t buy a boat if you didn’t have water, and I’m not telling you to stop working. I’m not telling you to quit your job, or quit school. I’m not telling you that money is pointless because it does serve a purpose.

It all serves a purpose.

I’m just saying that we shouldn’t worship it like we do.

It’s not worth it. It’s not worth the stress. It’s not worth the time, or the energy, and we forget that. We get so tied up in it. We get so worried about it that we forget about everything else and we lose seconds, and minutes, and days. We lose weeks, and months, and years that we’ll never get back. And the only question we can ask ourselves is, “Why?”

Why do we stress? Why do we expend the time? The energy?

Why?

Because our focus is wrong. Even when we accomplish our goals, even when we get the money we wanted, or that we thought we wanted, we then set new goals. We want more money and in general, that behavior is cyclical.

It is rinsed. It is repeated.

Over and over.

So moving forward, just think about that and think about time as a bank account. Each day you’re awarded $50,000, but it doesn’t roll over. You don’t get to keep tomorrow what you don’t spend today. It doesn’t go to the homeless. It doesn’t go to the charity or those in need. No, it just evaporates. It’s just like time.

So go outside.

Spend it.

Do whatever you have to do, but remember to spend it because it won’t be there tomorrow.

May 9, 2013
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The closest thing we’ll ever have to magic.

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Music is the closest thing that we’ll ever have to magic.

I know that sounds absurd. I also know that it sounds a bit silly and… well, unconventional. I mean, I have been involved with music in one way or another for the past twenty-six years and I have never heard anyone call it that. I’ve heard people say it was great, or uplifting, or powerful, or symbolic. I’ve heard people say it was trash, or garbage, or depressing, or complete shit, but I’ve never once heard someone say that music was magic.

…and maybe that’s not the best word to describe it, but it’s the first one that comes to mind.

It’s not magic because I anticipate it to pull a rabbit out of a hat. It’s not magic because I expect it to saw a woman in half and put her back together again, and it’s not magic because it’s going to point a wand at something and raise it, shouting “Leviosa”. No, it’s magic because of the effect that it can have on people, or the affect, I suppose.

Both are suitable.

It’s magic because it can take everything that has ever happened to you, everything that is happening to you and minimize it, or amplify it, or both of those things all at once. What do I mean by that? I mean, you’re not the first person to feel heartbreak. You’re not the first person to feel alone, or alive. You’re not the first person to feel anything and I’m not suggesting that it’s not important, because it is. It is important that you feel that way. Even if every other person in the world has already felt that way fifteen times over again, it’s important that you feel that way too. It’s important because one way or another, it’s important to feel. It’s important because it shapes who we are and how we see the world.

It shapes our perspective and that’s part of what is so magical about music. It’s magical because it’s universal. It’s something we can all hear. It’s something that we can all feel and it does this thing, where it infects us with raw emotion and sometimes it just minimizes it. Sometimes it takes that feeling and it lets us know that we’re not alone. It gives us comfort. It gives us relief, and puts our mind at ease, but not always. No, sometimes it does the opposite. Sometimes it infects. It takes that feeling and just makes it so intense, so overwhelming that we can hardly bear it. Sometimes it literally breaks us down.

…and that’s magic.

Now think about your favorite artists, your favorite bands and musicians, and think about everything that they are. Think back to the first album that made an impression on you. Think about the first time that you listened to it, and think about the song that made the biggest impact on you. What made that happen? Was it the meaning? Was it the guitar or the piano? Was it just the melody of the chorus? What was it? What changed you?

I can’t tell you how many times that I’ve gone back to listen to an older album and discovered and rediscovered music. It’s not that I hadn’t heard it before. It’s not that I didn’t know the words, or the riffs. It’s not that I didn’t know every note that the singer was going to belt out, because I did. I knew everything about every song on that album, but that’s not what changes. Recordings don’t change. We do and that’s what makes the difference.

It goes back to perspective.

It goes back to experience and understanding. It goes back to just… getting it. I can’t tell you how many times that I’ve gone back and found a new favorite song on an album. I can’t tell you how many times that I’ve gone back to a song and rediscovered what the lyrics meant. I can’t tell you how many times that I’ve gone back and just found a new understanding. I can’t tell you because it happens every day. It happens every time that I go back.

…and that’s magic.

It’s magic because it is just sound. It is vibrations in the air, yet it affects the way that we act. It affects the way that we think and feel, and it can unite people a million miles apart. It helps us define who we are now and it helps us remember who we were. How many times have you listened to an older album and remembered instantly, where you were the first time that you listened to it? Or who you were with? Or what you were doing? How many times have you listened to it and remembered what was happening in your life at that time?

Again, I can’t tell you how many times because it happens every day. To me, to you, to everyone. It happens every time that we listen to music and it brings back memories. It floods us with nostalgia, with angst and frustration. It reminds us of the things that made us happy, the things that made us sad, and every minor mood in between. It takes us somewhere else, some…when else.

And in that moment, we travel through space and time.

…and that’s magic.

April 25, 2013
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The way that we live.

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There are incidents that really make you think about the way that we live. About the people that we are. No, I’m not talking about the incident in Boston, or Sandy Hook, or even 9/11. I’m not talking about a tragedy, or a massacre, or genocide. I’m talking about the day to day. The here. The now.

I’m talking about the little things.

For instance, I took my niece out a few weeks ago and we went to Peter Piper Pizza. For those of you that don’t know, Peter Piper is very similar to Chuck E. Cheese. For those of you that don’t know Chuck E. Cheese… I am sorry and I would probably make a note to bring this up to your parents tomorrow because you were kind of, sort of seriously deprived.

For the deprived, these places are essentially arenas filled with child-sized habitrails, dated video games, and overpriced pizza.

In other words, it is a paradise for children.

Now that we have established the setting, let’s get back to the scenario. We arrived at Peter Piper. I bought a package that involved a large pizza, a couple of drinks and some tokens to play games. When the pizza arrived, it didn’t take long to realize that we weren’t going to finish it. Not only were we not going to finish it, but we weren’t even going to eat half.

What the hell do you do with a half of a pizza?

Simple, you throw it away.

I know what you’re thinking. Why would you waste food like that? Why wouldn’t you take it home? I could. I could take it home, but let’s face it. The pizza in Peter Piper is less than mediocre. It rates somewhere between Little Caesars and those frozen dollar pizzas that you find in the end caps at your local supermarket and even then, even once it gets home, it will just sit there. It will sit, slightly askew on top of the gallon of milk and the jar of pickles that no one has touched since last August. It will sit there for three trash days because no one ever remembers to throw it out. It will sit there, taking up space and doing nothing more.

…but that’s not the sad part. The sad part is, I couldn’t just give it to someone. When we decided that we didn’t want anymore, it was still fresh. It was still hot, but we’ve delved into this sad little world where that’s not even an option. If I had offered it to someone, they would have looked at me like I was crazy. They would look at me, then at the food and immediately assume that something was wrong with it. That it had spit on it. That it was dropped on the floor. That it was drugged or tampered with, and to me, that is awful.

That is sad.

It’s sad because we live in this world where we have so much distrust, so much suspect, that we’re isolating ourselves from everyone. From everything. And it’s sad because it wasn’t always like this. We didn’t always frown at someone who smiled at a child in the supermarket. We didn’t always assume that they were dangerous, that they were a pedophile. We didn’t always assume the worst of everyone in every situation. We didn’t always have so much distrust, so much suspect…

We didn’t always have so much hate.

But we do.

And that makes you think. It makes you think about the world that we live in and the people that we’re becoming. The people that we’ve become. It makes you think about the day to day. The here. The now. It makes you think about the little things. About who we are. About how we live.

And I can’t help but take that and wonder where that is going to take us.

I can’t help but wonder where we’ll end up.

…or how we’ll end up.

And I can’t help but think that if we started small, that if we started fixing the little things, that things might not be so bad. That we might be able to acknowledge people as people again and that maybe someday, I wouldn’t have to throw that pizza away.

March 30, 2013
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How does something like that happen?

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For as long as I can remember I’ve looked at everything around me and just wondered, “How does something like that happen?”

For once, I’m not being sarcastic. It’s just observation. I look around at everything and just wonder. I wonder where the idea came from. I wonder what the person that created it went through to get there and what pushed them to finish it, to pull it all off. That goes for everything. That goes for art, for music, for projects, for jobs, for everything. I look at it all and I think to myself…

“How?”

The answer is they just do it. They don’t think about it. They don’t tell themselves that they’ll do it tomorrow, or that they’ll start it on Monday. They just do it. This goes for smokers who want to quit. This goes for people who want to start working out. This goes for artists that want to get noticed. This goes for everyone. The only way to do something is to do it and as obvious as that is, it’s something that we never do.

I’m as guilty as anyone. I went to Rowan University for what seemed like (and kind of was) forever. Each and every year that I was there, I told myself that I would do more next year. That I would start my novel, that I would learn photoshop, that I would tour with my band, or that I would start a business. I told myself that I would always start something, that I would always do something, but I didn’t. I just told myself that I would do it tomorrow, or on Monday, or next year.

I always told myself, “Don’t worry. It’ll get done.”

In case you were wondering, it doesn’t. Monday never comes. Next year never comes, and nothing ever gets done. We’re habitual by nature and for that, we stick to our habits. We stick to our routine and what makes us comfortable. We stick to what makes us comfortable because it’s easy. Because we are what we are and overall, that’s not so bad.

But we’re better than that.

You’re better than that.

I’m better than that.

So the next time that you have an idea or want to quit or start something, don’t tell yourself that you’ll do it tomorrow. Don’t tell yourself that you’ll start on Monday, or next year.

Just do it.

Just quit smoking. Just start going to the gym, or running, or writing, or whatever it is that you’ve been telling yourself that you’re going to do.

Just do it and look back in a month, or two months, or in a year and think about how silly you were. Think about all of those days, or months, or years that you spent telling yourself that you would do something and think about how easy it was to get started when you weren’t waiting for something. When you weren’t waiting for tomorrow, or Monday, or New Years. Think about how easy it was to just get started and look back at all of the changes that you’ve made. Look at everything that you’ve done and revel in that. Revel in everything that you do.

Not everything will work out, but you’ll learn. You’ll do something.

And in the end, you’ll never look back and wonder, “How does something like that happen?”

March 23, 2013
3075

The Field

By | Food for thought | 2 Comments

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