…Life, I mean. Man, I used to be a SUPER pessimistic person. I still can be, if I’m not being careful. I can be mean and ignorant and insensitive and bitchy. But in recent months, there’s been a shift in my attitude which has been welcomed. It’s nice to believe that in the big picture, life doesn’t suck. It’s nice to look at the details and think “wow, this sucks, but I can take it on the chin and be better for it.” What do I attribute that tolerance and progress to? Iuhoh. (Oh that’s the sound of “I dunno” when it gets stuck in your throat.) I feel like it’s not for me to say, but let’s leave it that I’ve been to church more than once (ok, twice). And I still sit there petulantly with my arms folded, furiously writing down questions and accusations and sometimes even snarky insult towards life and Jesus and God, and yet I keep coming back to something along the lines of “if you were as much of an asshole as you wanna think you are, you’d have gotten up and left by now. But you’re still sitting here, listening to what you really want to wanna believe is bullshit.”
I’m not there yet. I don’t know when or even if I’m gonna be. I’m risking disappointing my parents who would believe this would be me unable or refusing to think for myself, and this is the mindset I come from, so you can see what a fucking hypocrite I feel like right now. Right now I’m taking the commentary for how it applies to me in real life and am using it as an blackboard for inner discussion and sorting out how I feel about stuff, but sans Jesus. I still prefer to thank The Universe, a large, purply, sparkly nebular cloud of energy and happiness and love without any human attributes whatsoever, including body and personality. Jesus to me is a super duper guy, a Mr. Wonderful, but he is not the Lord of my Life. That deliniation, that superiority doesn’t jive well with me. I want it to be an equal relationship where Jesus would respect me as much as I respect him, a friendship in its most true and ideal sense. But all these churchies have to make it about submission. And they have to throw Satan in there, saying he’s to blame for all the sin in the world, which I actually do feel is a load of crap. The word sin comes from a greek word which I forget how to spell it but it means “to miss the mark”, as in archery. So when you sin, you miss the point of life. It seems unnecessary and pandering to give sin enough power to have a persona such as Satan. Miss the point, get up, dust off, try a new strategy. If I were to believe in Satan, which I don’t, he DOES, unlike The Universe, have a personality. Nobody gets along with that douche. But no representation of Satan makes sense to me. Not the little green girl in the Exorcist, not the Super Devil from Family Guy…if anything he’s the big flaboyant gay misunderstood Satan from South Park. This is probably just my innate desire to see only the good in everyone, a trait which has gotten me into major, major trouble. (Maybe Satan just needs a friggin hug, huh? I bet I could turn him around. I’d find his tickle spot.)
So yeah, I don’t know where I was going with that, other that truly, Life is Beautiful, and I am desperately grateful for my ever-unfailing and amazing family, my wonderful friends, my artistic opportunities, a job with which to pay for my life here in this gorgeous town where I sleep a block away from my favorite thing in the world, the ocean, a job which reqires my to be my best self everyday and encourage children to be their best selves, which they always are anyway. and For the time I have to pursue my dreams, my peace, my loves and my passions. I have the time to volunteer to nurse and help injured and otherwise upset animals who can’t help themselves. How wonderful is that? Kids and animals and art and friends and sunsets and a soul to breathe it all in which only a few year before I imagined as small and black and sticky, like a burnt raisin. And now it looks like this.
For all this I offer up thanks, and I hope someone nice catches it and appreciates it as much as I appreciate everything down here at sea level.
Love,
CAT