Dave's Blog

Monday, September 20, 2004 1:29:11 AM

I am not who I thought I was.  Whatever I thought I was at 
various times in the past were but surface effects of my 
interaction with whatever I perceived as reality at the time.  As 
a teenager I could not see a purpose for my life, and lamented 
that I was destined to be a statistical placeholder.  As a young 
man I joined the Coast Guard rather than wait for the Army to 
come calling on me, and although I knew that it was an ethical 
decision, I did not know how profoundly ethical it would turn out 
to be over the years.  As a young husband I constantly faced 
conflict as I tried to resolve my role with my personal need 
for independence, without any professional advice or insight 
outside my own experience.  When I lived in Silicon Valley I felt 
that I was beginning to fit in, as I had plenty of friends who 
would party with me and welcome me and admire me as we drank our 
lives away at the Tied House and at Hardy's Bavarian.  When I  
followed my heart and returned to San Francisco I felt that my 
only purpose was to teach, to pass my experience on in some way 
to the new programmers and system administrators who were trying 
to do their best in a dwindling and ever more desperate computer 
industry.  Once I stood in an aisle at Safeway, trying to decide 
what I wanted to buy, and realized that I knew what everyone who 
had been important in my life would like me to buy, but that I  
had no idea what I wanted for myself.  I returned to San 
Francisco thinking it was to follow someone else, when in fact it 
was my own heart and dreams that I was following.  

As Margaret studied metaphysics and developed a good profession 
helping her friends find and fulfill their dreams, I fancied that 
I would be a good minister, and sought to educate myself and 
to shape my dreams and ambitions to that end.  As Margaret 
studied ways to prosper I also studied, and I believed that I 
only needed to do what was necessary to support her journey.  
Somehow I found myself subordinating and ignoring my own dreams 
and desires once again.  Today I am not sure what I want, but 
I am sure that it is not what other people want, and that I have 
probably not expressed my desires properly to myself.  There is 
still some discovery to do.  

I have come at least to the point where I realize that I am not 
my occupation, that I am not where I live or what I know or which 
circle of friends is willing to associate with me.  I realize 
that I am a unique expression of the infinite unfolding Universe, 
and that there is no way that another unique expression can stand 
in as a proxy for my own.  I know that I have a purpose in this 
self-expression, and that all I do is for the greater glory of 
the infinite expanding eternal Universe.  That whatever I do in 
my journey to discover this self-expression, all things are good 
in that they help me proceed.  Either I discover that something 
works for me, and it helps me express my joy, or I discover that 
it doesn't work for me, and I move on to the next possibility.  
Right now many more things work for me than not, and this is a 
better condition than I have seen in many years.  

Sometimes a picture from the past will haunt me, as I wonder 
how I could have done something that was so totally not me, and 
then I recall that all of it was part of the journey that took me 
here, and even being here is the journey that will take me 
further into self-actualization.  I know that travel is part of 
my nature, that I enjoy a good laugh, that comfort is more to me 
than a bourgeois refuge.  I know that I like playing with toys, 
and that some of them can be very big and expensive toys.  I know 
that I love to support the people I love, and that I love to be 
supported and loved by them as well.  I know that loving and 
being loved, supporting and being supported, have carried me 
further than I ever could have gone alone.  I know that I have 
learned skills and concepts and principles that I would not have 
known had I wanted to go it alone.  I know that my social habits 
complement my professional habits, and that a greater exposure to 
the world around me has brought me a greater exposure to the 
potential within me.  

I'm not quite ready to write my own mission statement or to write 
my business plan.  Each piece falls in place under its own weight 
and momentum, and I am watching my life put itself together like 
a film running in reverse.  I rely on the laws of circulation and 
attraction to provide the best for me, and I am open to receive  
the greatest good that opportunely knocks on my door.  I have 
been fortunate in receiving the best so far; my home, my wife, 
my career, my toys are all much better than I ever could have 
imagined.  With my eyes, heart and mind open, I am watching as my 
unfolding life writes its own mission statement, so I can 
recognize it at the right moment of fruition and say "that's it. 
That is my purpose, my fame, my reason for existence, as it 
always was and as I knew one day it would be."  

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