2 January 2004
I’ve always resisted the idea of making resolutions for the New Year, partially out of sloth – I know that I’ll not keep them – and partially out of resistance to the idea of doing something that aligned with bourgeois values: work harder to garner greater material wealth and prestige. I think that the dawning of middle age – perhaps it is a late morning? – has forced me to revisit this resistance to planning. I’ve always been a “rise with the tide, go with the flow” type of guy. It has served me well, to a point at least. My definition of “well” perhaps being somewhat different than most of my fellows would have it.
I am breaking with my tradition; here are my resolutions – in no particular order – for the next twelve months:
1. Employment: Locate a suitable job teaching special education
2. Music: Record my CD (vanity, vanity…)
3. Music: Formal studies! Theory and counterpoint?
4. Music: Resume gigging in Ventura, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles Counties
5. Financial: Debt free and living on a budget (How bourgeois can it get!!!!)
6. Spiritual/Emotional: Spend disciplined time in meditation/prayer, find a community of faith
7. Spiritual/Emotional: Do works of charity and peace that cannot be paid back (all anonymous)
8. Physical Health: Eat well and exercise
I am listening to Jaco Pastorius playing Continuum… the man is truly the god of the electric bass. But I digress.
I suppose that I have come to a point in life where I want to make changes. This is not so much a referendum on how I have lived (boring, says I) as much as it is a course correction that is aligned with my values. What are these values?
Peace and Harmony – I gave up trying to save the world years ago. Now I just want my corner to be tidy and a haven for peace and beauty. If I do this maybe somebody else will, and then somebody else, and so on until the world is saved by stages.
Do no harm – If I can’t help you , I certainly won’t hurt you. That is much harder than it sounds. This has been the great challenge of my life and continues to be the central motivation in all that I have done. I have failed miserably at times. Other times I have had modest success. There is much that I have done of which I am rightly proud. I want to continue doing what is good and learn to leave behind what is not.
Live, laugh, love – In one-hundred years all of us will be gone and nothing will be left but the sound of our laughter and the salt of our tears… enough said on that one.
Honest and meaningful work – I do like to work. But I cannot work for something that I do not believe in . I won’t whore myself out for material gain. Unlike some of my leftist friends, I do not see corporations or wealth as evil. I see them as areas that have been easily corrupted, however. Greed is the enemy, not wealth.
Speaking of my core values… Here is a poem by D.H. Lawrence. Extra points if you can name the band that used it in their eponymous album!
A Sane Revolution
If you make a revolution, make it for fun,
don't make it in ghastly seriousness,
don't do it in deadly earnest,
do it for fun.
Don't do it because you hate people,
do it just to spit in their eye.
Don't do it for the money,
do it and be damned to the money.
Don't do it for equality,
do it because we've got too much equality
and it would be fun to upset the apple-cart
and see which way the apples would go a-rolling.
Don't do it for the working classes.
Do it so that we can all of us be little aristocracies on our own
and kick our heels like jolly escaped asses.
Don't do it, anyhow, for international Labour.
Labour is the one thing a man has had too much of.
Let's abolish labour, let's have done with labouring!
Work can be fun, and men can enjoy it; then it's not labour.
Let's have it so! Let's make a revolution for fun!
Ah, but I am just a fool...
No comments:
Post a Comment