THE STORY OF JOHNNY WHOOPER SWAN We go to school trusting our parents. We meet a teacher there who stands up front with a big desk, and a pointer. She or he trains us in an authoritative manner. We attach mentally to a life long need for authority in order to live lives successfully. Right so far? In my case, at the age of 25 I was ready to enter the practice of law where I hoped for success and a happy life finally. Very shortly, very shortly, I became anxious. There was a foreboding. I was made more uncomfortable with each experience. Law work is nothing like what I was told it would be. The system is corrupt. But I still cling to my expectation that career success is necessary to my happiness as a man. Each day my grasp of what the fuck success amounts to after all becomes more clouded, murkier. I hear songs on the airwaves and at concerts which describe my life as the life of a fool. What am I becoming? I want to rip off my business suit to run naked in the street with my hair on fire! But I am too afraid. In strange, weird (weird comes from a word meaning wise), fragmented steps I go about a journey of my own believing myself to be the first man to have failed in such a total way which journey works so as to break up my career, end a marriage, and start an entirely new way of relating with my two children whom I love deeply. Almost magically I meet a woman who is a career counselor who asserts a beautiful message that I am made to be joyful in my work everyday and at all levels. This understanding sets me on a completely new course. It is no longer a world of systems to me but an undivided one of unlimited beauty. It reminds me of a painting. A true masterpiece. I am drawn from within to learn the truth about my identity and nobody else can teach me that. From this point onward I will use thinking capacity for mastering mechanical processes and follow my heart, which includes my whole nature, which includes your whole nature and that of every human being for all the rest. I’ll go by the name Johnny Whooper Swan who does not explain itself to anyone. By my fruits shall I be known. Watch me soar!

Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Okay. So it is true that a person can get hurt in this world, just living. Especially so if that person is behaving recklessly and dumb. But, I want to know why we hurt each other? And ourselves. This is by far the most of it, injuries I mean. Down right vicious play, for what? Money? And wars? For what? Money? Property? If a man who sits at a desk offers to pay you vast amounts of money to beat another guy, a stranger who never did you any harm, senseless will you do it? Why?

Can you not say, No?
Why not?

Is it boredom?

If I am a rock star and somebody who wears a suit tells me he will pay me a lot of money to go on the road of his choice and on a rigorous schedule of his making and play many gigs night after night so I will be likely to resort to heavy doses of drugs just to keep my body going to complete the tour, will I?

Can you not say, No?
Why not?

Is it boredom?

Is it something you are trying to prove? Something you feel you must live up to?

Who would ask it of you?

I realized one day that most of it was to please people I detested and thought detested me. That hurt. My pride. And it was pride drove me to it. What?

So many friendly little guys you like have succumbed to a life of pride. Just makes you sad.

I heard that a fellow was a lonely, ugly teenager who had no friends left home completely unprepared to go into the wilderness more or less to die. Got lucky, I guess, and was found by some friendly Navajos who took him in and healed his wounds and then taught him the ways to live out West. When he grew up he repaid them by selling to the Army their secret hiding places for food and the Army used the information to starve them into surrender. Golly, that's sad.

Can you not say, No?
Why not?


I wonder.
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