The Lights Are On

At some moment I did answer Yes to Someone - or Something - and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.

Dag Hammerskjold
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Hello Arlene
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Yesterday I took a long walk to get to a particular market that is much further than I usually walk. I took one crutch and my shopping cart. I left at about noon and was home again at 4. It was another cold and rainy day. If someone had seen me they might have said "Aw. Look at that poor old crippled man with his cart full of things. It must be so difficult for him to get around." Or words to that effect.

But if I had heard that remark I would have said "You're talking to the wrong guy." Sure it was hard and painful, but I did it, and that's the important thing. Having recently come through a horrid experience of lies, loss and betrayal and having survived it, my point of view about life has a fresh energy and a unique new fire.

I vividly remember the day, when I was just a lad, that I said "Yes" to being an actor. It wasn't a choice, it was a realization. What I didn't know at the time was that the moment of acceptance was going to lead me into a full life of troubles and triumphs. From theatre I eventually moved on into radio and television, music and dance, drawing and painting and now writing. The world of a serious artist is a commitment to the personally unpredictable.

At night there are lights outside all the windows in my new home. If I happen to wake up in the middle of the night there is a beacon across the way that shines in my bedroom window. I don't mind it at all. In fact I find it comforting. It means that the world is still there, energy is flowing, life is still going on, I am not the only living thing.

We are all amateurs at living no matter what we do, but life itself is a constant which knows what's it's doing. Our task is to try to understand it, to see all the sub-human people and things that drag us down, eliminate them and thus get a grip on the intangible, super-human things like, purpose, future, destiny, enlightenment. I believe the only way to live a righteous life is to look forward at it, to be proactive in whatever enterprise is current, even if on crutches, to walk, with certainty and curiosity into the land of the living, to say "Yes."

DB - The Vagabond
Never Give Up
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