Waters of Memory

I go on tour tomorrow. I hope I'm ready. I feel so mixed up about it, like it's the end of my life or something. Ten years down the road it might seem so simple, but then again, if you give most things ten years of thought, it might just become a little more simplified than it originally was.

I'm finally done working in Dickson for now. We worked much later than we anticipated, but it's done. I didn't really have much need to be home anyways. Just got here and did what I was going to do anyways, fix dinner, watch the news, write, read, and go to bed. I have to keep catching myself at work, as I tend to undermine my motivation and determination with defeatist thoughts. I could write a book on defeatist thought and how it destroys your life.

I do that a lot. I don't think most of the problems I have with people are actually with those people. Most of my problems with people are with myself. I do my fair share of projecting and accusing, getting mad, being insensitive, feeling hurt or rejected. I don't really know how much of that is actually legitimate, but I'm going to war with myself over this one. It's a big problem. I'm going to discipline myself out of it by any means necessary.

I think when I drive. I think when I work. I can never be sure or predict what I will think about thought. It just comes. Today I was thinking about the state of America. What if we only had four more years of life left in us? What if the Mayan calendar, which is still more accurate than our own, is right, and life ends in 2012? I don't know if I buy in to all of that, but if you believe you have an end, and you think it is soon, it could compel you to do amazing things, or not... I think most people don't believe that they can be amazing. I think they feel that their purpose in life is to get by, to try and carve out a plot of life for themselves. In the grand scheme of history and of the vast population of this planet, it can be hard to fathom pnersonal worth.

I was thinking along those lines this morning when I remembered Greek Mythology and the belief that after you die and you are delivered by the boat man to the shores of the after-life, you are then given a choice of two pools to drink from. One pool is contains the Waters of Memory, while the other pool contains the Waters of Oblivion. You can drink from the Waters of Memory and remember the life you lived, the good and the bad. Or you can drink from the Waters of Oblivion and remember nothing of your previous life. Have you ever seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? That runs along the same lines as the Pool of Oblivion. Great movie, by the way. But I sit back and I think about life and how it seems so many people have chosen, in this world, in this day, on their average drives to work, to drink from the Pool of Oblivion and forget their worth, their capacity for greatness, even their capacity for darkness. They just keep driving, teaching themselves that this is what they have been given, that they will never make a difference, that they live to work and work till they die.

I choose to drink from the waters of Memory. I know my life is intense. I know it and I pay for it every day. People I care about leave me, things change, I can't just be happy. I see too much, feel too much, hope for too much. So many people do, but they just don't do anything about it, except regret who they are and hope that it fades with time. It will, but only if you let it. But there isn't a single great person on the pages of history who wasn't extreme, radical, and persistent. I remember that too.