Peace

Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 07:55:07 -0400
To: brown@isd.net
From: Carolyn L Burke 
Subject: Re: Gravity.

Carolyn

My box has flexible and coloured translucent walls, though sometimes they become clear. I want the world to be a certain way. I don't just want to paint the box fromthe inside - actually being able to effect chnage turns my crank.

At 03:09 30-9-97 -0700, Rue Barb the Tangled wrote:

RB

Does it? I have my semi-annual midlife crisis every March and September. (the times of Spring, and my Birthday) - I used to dream of bending the world and changing it. I cannot rest knowing I have not done so. It is a fire - and yet I wonder if the change is actually for the better, or just for change's sake.

Worse yet, I wonder what I would actually give to put out the fire. There is an incredible freedom in contentment. To simply let the things that plot and whirl do so without my involvement. To find a Mountain near my home, or a coastline, and play guitar, write, dream, and love someone till I die. If I not driven, I'd give almost anything to have it, I fear, -- to join the lives of the unextraordinary..

The things you say and write make me wonder. If you could, if you could find peace in your life, yet live realizing that you made no impact - would you? Hopefully, you'd say no. Yet, one must admit, the temptation is always there, like gravity.

The answer is easy for me. I will find peace in making an impact - not some idealistic making the world a better place perhaps. My impact is in making my life and that of those around me better. I've already done a lot of that. Creating places where the previously disenfranchised friends and I fit in - that is an incredible impact.

And now that that place becomes more successful in the world, it will become more of a lever for moving bigger things. I don't suppose that the type of world will change, but parts of it will become friendly to people like me - people who wanted to be professional people instead of professional societal categories.

Funny, now that I am working the categories successfully myself though, it is less of an issue, though still a large goal. Is it about my own happiness, or still also about improving things (vaguely)? Hmmm. Both finally.

So peace, that elusive fat cat satisfaction, can meld with ambition rather than replacing it. Event he relaxedest hippy monster will not meet peacefulness every moment. It is elusive for each of us in most moments, even the sitter on mountain tops.

Isn't it? :)