Don't bother to hold on to anything.
Not your things, not your concepts, not your
It's all impermanent. Like everything; forever changing, evolving. And, in fact, it makes sense to surmise that the quicker you evolve the stronger you will be.
So much, so much, holds us back. Mostly things that we ourselves feel we can not let go of.
I am speculating here, not giving a sermon. I am going with the flow of my own stream of consciousness to see where it leads and, if perhaps, there is something worthwhile at the end of it.
Writing as discovery. Writing as play.
As a side bar, since we are talking about writing, I borrowed a big fat, squat, chunky book from the library last week called 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. I actually took it out for some sketch ideas for my comics, but as I have been leafing through it, it turns out to be a fascinating compilation and even in a single page synopsis, reveals much about each piece of fiction and it's author. What struck me is how most of the featured writers are visually eccentric, charismatic, striking or mysterious. Writers create worlds that did not previously exist. They bring mini worlds into our world. They offer up places to go and characters to get to know. I have found this book to be immensely inspiring, insightful and motivational. What a noble pursuit. What a gift to humanity, a wonderful legacy a well crafted and enduring work of fiction is.
Anyway, I have taken a tangent. I was talking about holding on and letting go. I was riffing on the subject. Seeing if I can surprise/educate/liberate myself with some automatic writing.
As you get older, your priorities shift. Your motivations change, your needs morph. You are lying in bed and thinking back on activities a decade or two ago, some still fresh in memory, present in influence on current character/behaviours, and you realise that since those times so much has changed - circumstance, cast, location.... reality! ..... that it may all just be a story. But it was only just yesterday! It happened! I was there!
Meaningless. It's gone. Life has shifted. Everything is different now.
You have to catch up with yourself. You cannot linger too long. What about now. Now is going to be the memory of ten years from now. Are you making it worthwhile? Or are you wasting time re-running old clips?
Take stock. Be rigorous. Be ruthless. Don't keep what is no longer of any use. And that includes concepts. In fact, especially concepts. What use are the old ones? This is now, now, now!
Past a certain age there is more and more that cannot compete with the highs of youthful delights. You can't be as wild, you can't fuck as much, you can't ride high on ego and delusion and drugs and induced micro oblivion sessions. You can't run as far or as fast - to things or away from them. You can't delude yourself into believing that you are going to change the world. You can't get caught up, lost, in romantic notions, fantasies of perfect results or days of wasteful, hedonistic indulgence. You just cannot. You have come head on up against one of the undeniable realities of existence - we get older. Then we die.
And at a certain point of getting older, even getting older becomes something precious. You want more of it - as challenging and, in some ways (if you are using the old, un-adjusted ways of thinking) less ostensibly enjoyable (on the surface level) as it is - because well, the next phase is... is.... death. And no matter how diminished it may be or may get, it has to be better than the alternative.
Right? The inevitable alternative.
So, between being young and being old (as in debilitated level old, compromised old) there is a stage of reckoning.
I was this and that. Now I am.
A level of acceptance is necessary. One could call it a degree of surrender. A letting go.
All that is left is what is to come.
Let it go. Face forward. Peer up ahead. Not too far. Not the edge of the cliff. What's left of the journey. Do you want to go somewhere in particular? Amble? Rush? Take it as it comes? It doesn't matter.
But what does matter is what you feel matters to you is treated with respect and reverence. You need to honour your higher self. And you can do that by bolstering your present self with as much dignity, passion, thoughtfulness, care, time and joy as you decide is necessary.
The game is not over. Not by any means. It has just changed completely. Its not that the rules have been rewritten. It's that you need to rewrite them. Gulp. Right?
What did you expect? Easy? Nah, save easy for when you are dead.
Now is the time to really awaken and embrace all the fucking beautiful and wonderous shit you can.
Be astute, be open, be willing.
You have been given a second chance.
Sure, in some ways it's not as loaded up as the first chance, but at least this time you know it's not going to last. So you can make each moment count more.
Ready?
You were born for this!