When do we get to play? I mean play for real - like NHL-hockey-player playing. Where it’s for real money in a real game against real opposition.
Where we’re invited - or better yet, commanded - to completely unload. To grab our brimming grail of rich potential, look for the whitest, untouched canvas we can find, and with absolute abandon splash its red brilliance on everything in our lives. When does that happen?
There’s this scene in the last X-Men movie where Juggernaut, this massive brute who’s mutant power is giant strength, is chasing Kitty Pryde (another mutant) through a building. Instead of racing through hallways and doors, Juggernaut just puts his head down and smashes through the brick walls. Bursting through one impossibly thick wall after another, he’s unstoppable. Meanwhile, Kitty, who’s power is phase shifting, zips along in front of him, flashing in phases through the matter in front of her.
The intoxicating thing about all the super-hero stuff we’ve seen is that deep down we believe a tiny, microscopic fraction of it is actually true. Some have a seemingly inhuman or unfathomable strength that isn’t a direct result of experience, or schooling, or career path. That, without even trying, a few can touch things that most people take a lifetime to achieve.
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From the Thoreau blog:
“Some men make their due impression upon their generation, because a petty occasion is enough to call forth all their energies; but are there not others who would rise to much higher levels, whom the world has never provoked to make the effort? I believe there are men now living who have never opened their mouths in a public assembly, in whom nevertheless there is such a well of eloquence that the appetite of any age could never exhaust it; who pine for an occasion worthy of them, and will pine till they are dead … The age may well go pine itself that it cannot put to use this gift of the gods. He lives on, still unconcerned, not needing to be used. The greatest occasion will be the slowest to come.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations:
“When an object presents itself to your perception, make a mental definition or at least an outline of it, so as to discern its essential character, to pierce beyond its separate attributes to a distinct view of the naked whole, and to identify for yourself both the object itself and the elements of which it is composed, and into which it will again be resolved. Nothing so enlarges the mind as this ability to examine methodically and accurately every one of life’s experiences, with an eye to determining its classification, the ends it serves, its worth to the universe, and its worth to men … What is it? Whereof is it composed? How long is it designed to last? What moral response does it ask of me; gentleness, fortitude, candor, good faith, sincerity, self-reliance, or some other quality?”
A distinct view of the naked whole … love that. Continue Reading »
