I'm laying in bed writing this, listening to my wife play on her phone, before we go to bed.
It's a perfect moment.
I'm grateful for it.
I love my iPhone. I haven't envied Android users anything, with one exception.
It's a game, sort of. It's like geocaching, crackpot conspiracy theory, and the us-vs-them game dynamic of World of Warcraft got put in a blender.
There's an iOS version of the app now, and I got it two days ago.
Today on my way home from Richard's birthday party campout I hunted down and took over my first interdimendional portal, at an abandoned workhouse, so that my faction, The Enlightened can help guide the efforts of the extradimensional Shapers in bringing about a new age of peace in our world.
Seriously.
See?
I'm grateful that I get to participate in this compelling game of pretend that THOUSANDS of adults are contributing to.
I'm also grateful that the efforts of The Resistance have proven unsuccessful at stopping us. ;-)
Richard is family to me.
Tonight I'm at his birthday party.
He's just lovely. Over the years I have known him, we have taken care of each other. He's often take-charge and responsible, and is generous with his time and effort. I count on him for common sense advice and help.
At the same time, I take care of him too. He's kind of like my kid.
Our relationship is complex and beautiful.
I'm grateful for him.
Every so often I have this really surreal experience. Someone who's read one of my books or heard The Big Little Podcast will send me email thanking me for the work I do for and about ageplayers.
I'm immensely grateful when this happens. I take it as a sign, a validation, that I'm making a positive difference in the world.
I remember back when I was first trying to wrap my head around being kinky, and felt so terribly lonely, and unsure of myself. It was an awful feeling.
I know I can't stamp out that feeling universally, stop others from ever feeling it, but it's my constant desire to give people the tools to get through that and lift themselves out of that morass of doubt and pain.
So when I hear from folks that that's so, it sure does feel good.
But it can be a little weird. I'm still a regular joe. I get up in the morning, scoop the cat litter, take a shower, and go to work. I almost feel like the guy who gets those emails, he's not real.
Sometimes people send me gifts, which is lovely, but makes me feel guilty, or occasionally, takes my breath away.
Yesterday I got a spectacular gift from a listener, a musician who calls himself Comet Music. He composed and recorded a song for me. This one.
Give it a listen. It's lovely. I'm grateful my work matters to kind, generous people like this.
Taoism is often paradoxical. It's extraordinarily simple, which makes understanding it incredibly complex.
A core idea in Taoism is its "three treasures", three virtues that when practiced bring peace, and power to your life. They are:
- Compassion
- Simplicity
- Humility
It's that second one, simplicity, or jian (pronounced chian) that's on my mind today.
Jian
A related idea that goes right along with jian is that of detachment. When I first began my studies about a decade ago, mindful detachment was a total mystery to me. I thought it meant apathy, or indifference. Not so at all.
Verse 7 of the Tao te Ching has some instruction on this.
The Tao is infinite, eternal.
Why is it eternal?
It was never born;
thus it can never die.
Why is it infinite?
It has no desires for itself;
thus it is present for all beings.
The Master stays behind;
that is why she is ahead.
She is detached from all things;
that is why she is one with them.
Because she has let go of herself,
she is perfectly fulfilled.
Detachment isn't not loving or caring about a thing. It's just the opposite. It's having identification with all things. It's not playing favorites.
Let's say you go out to eat, and want the chicken. But they're out. You have the salmon instead. Because your needs are simple, just to eat, either choice is fine. You're detached from having to have the chicken. It's not that it doesn't matter. It's that you are fine however it works out.
When your needs are simple, you can fulfill them simply.
That's it.
It's taken me over a decade to work this out. I'm grateful for the experience and the knowledge.