The Big So What.
What is it about life that creates such seriousness? Is it we imagine our importance? Is it that we stand in either great awe, great gratitude, or great fear? I'm getting a visual here: imagine the three monkeys of "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" fame. Okay, but what is it about awe, gratitude and fear that makes us not just laugh our heads off? Why are we not in a perpetual state of joy about just being alive?
Life is sometimes hard. I totally get that. I had one of those lives, and depending on which specific compartment of my life I focus on, I still visit that train occasionally. But so what!
That's right. So what!
We are here on loan. This life - our breath, our friends and family, our careers, our passions - are all a loan for whatever time (another part of the Big So What) we have living on this Earth. Scholars, philosophers, scientists, and spiritual teachers cannot change this fact. We can write volumes, create art, take photographs and always do good, but we are here on loan.
Who is the loaner? Who is the loanee? And, why? Ah...the Great Mystery abounds.
So, try to wrap your head around it this way: The store opens. I go in and have a choice to get a laughing doll or a crying doll. Seems like a no brainer. I get the laughing doll. But when I take the doll home, I drop her a few times. She stops laughing. She starts crying. (For those missing the metaphor, this is life dropping us on our heads.) I say to myself, "I got the laughing doll not the crying doll." I take her back to the store and exchange her for the crying doll. (Something different.) I take her home and drop her a few times. (Same pattern.) She starts laughing. I keep her.
Would the first doll just continue to have laughed if I would have never dropped her? (Not sure.) (Am I asking the right questions?) Does it really matter? I just went and got the other doll. (Problem solved.) I treated her the same way as the first. (Same pattern.) But her response to the same treatment was to laugh. (Are you getting the random nature of these dolls?)
So it just doesn't matter if you are a laughing doll or a crying doll, but we are all just dolls being loaned. This Life is borrowing us. In our way, we say the Grandmother Earth is taking care of us here and we are taking care of her. All of our relatives are the plants, the animals, the stones and the people.
It comes back to what we believe it's all about. But really - so what - because nobody really knows for certain. There are too many choices, too many faiths, too many cultures and belief systems - many disparate - to say that one is right or another wrong.
So what if it all comes down to whether you are a laughing doll or a crying doll?
Then - for real - all this stuff - the career, the friends and family, the purpose for being, is just smoke. Just one Big So What.
But, if you do have a choice...which doll do you want to be?
