Searching for Satisfaction

Sometimes, Life is all about a fresh perspective

We all reach points in our lives where we find that we are seemingly no longer satisfied with what we have; we feel something is either lacking or something needs to much more in our lives. It’s a frustrating period. This can happen anywhere, anytime, at any period of your life but mostly seems to appear after we have crossed our first 25 years of existence. Suddenly or gradually, there is something significantly missing - in your job, in your career, and of course, in your marriage and in your relationships, particularly if it’s a long-term one. 

For the person who suddenly finds himself or herself in this peculiar dilemma and who is no longer content and satisfied with what he or she already has - the struggle to find happiness, to "find oneself" again, is often filled with emotional upheaval along a treacherous tumultuous road of self-loathing, discovery, acceptance and pain. 

I have been there or maybe I am still there – stuck in the perpetual feeling of being at the crossroads of life and not knowing which road to take or not take any road at all. Self-help books, motivational coaches, psychiatrists, psychologists, and new-age gurus don’t really help either, they simply amplify your state of limbo and very rarely cure you. After all, it’s in their vested interest that you remain uncertain about your future and buy their bestsellers and watch their sermons. 

So, after wasting a lot of money besides costly trials and errors, I accidentally re-discovered a simple childhood exercise that I practice most nights now, usually when I go to bed before I sleep. All I do is listen to music on my earphones, close my eyes and concentrate on the real me and the people or things that matter to me now. It’s focusing on the true "spirit" of what I am all about and every other thought or emotion is set to rest while I just relax. 

If you do this often enough, you will be surprised at how intimately you get to know yourself. Some of those heavy, philosophical, emotional or silly, irrational questions that you are always beating yourself up with, quietly dissolve into nothingness. and you’ll soon see them for what they are, just thoughts. Unnecessary thoughts we have cultivated and cultured, and nurtured, and jealously guarded throughout the moments, days or even years of our busy lives - until we are lost in them and trick ourselves into thinking they are a reality. They are nothing. They are bubbles on the face of the turbulent sea. They are not real. 

So, what is it we "want?" We all want to be loved. We all want to have passion, satisfaction, and pleasure in our lives. But if we waste our time searching for whatever it is we think we have to have in order to be happy, or passionate, or pleasurable, or satisfied; we will always be forever lost, living an unhappy complicated life. 

The problem with wanting something is that we are instantly limiting our choices, our chances at pleasure and happiness. Suddenly, we cannot be happy because we don't have "this" or "that." Or we are thinking too much, too often about the future and not relishing the moment. What a waste isn’t it? Not appreciating the real beauty of today for an uncertain wish of tomorrow. 

What if we just decided to "be" happy, or passionate, or pleasurable - without depending on "something" to get us there? Can we do that? Of course, we can. If we just let go of what we "want" - then the whole universe is open to us. It's like suddenly losing your job or just seeing your current job with a fresh perspective and realizing that now you can be anything you want to be! It's like giving away all you own and then having nothing to lose. In Zen, they say, "Leap from the mountain" and you will be free...so go ahead and jump!

Of Men and Women and Semantics in Between

A Woman is much more than what seems to the eye

I have a lot of single friends or more accurately friends and close acquaintances who are still single. And, I have learned much from them, especially over these last few years. While most of them are considerably younger than I am, I find myself incredibly drawn to them, to their wit, to their charisma, to their charm, to their take life by the balls attitude, to their wanting to harness fun at any cost and "take it for a ride" attitude.

Maybe it's just their ebullient "youth" that I am drawn to, maybe it's that feeling we sometimes get as we approach yet another birthday - that somehow "when we were their age" - we didn't have half as much fun, or that we somehow missed something, just saying? 

Regardless, even though I love my friends and while I have lived and loved and learned from and with them, I also believe that there are moments when I have been able to impart some small measure of - dare I say "wisdom" upon them... Case in point is what they think of woman and sex especially. 

Let’s admit it. Everyone likes sex. Some of my youthful male friends’ label women who want sex or have sex frequently as "freaks" or “nymphs”. And they, good-naturedly of course, also kid some of our common female friends as being exactly that. And more alarmingly they think it's okay to say such things.

The lingo and semantics of today's "younger" generation have, of course, changed dramatically over time but alas, much of the meaning behind their innovative verbal expressions has not. Take, for instance, terms like "slut" or "ho", these are words, which interestingly enough haven't' changed much in the past 50 years. A woman who sleeps around, who enjoys sex - is today- again - exactly that. And, just as in the past, the use of the word still has a strong immoral and derogatory connotation attached to it. A pity - especially in this day of feminism and an internet age where expressing one's sexuality is such an "in" thing to do. There are some things as women it would seem that are destined never to escape. 

I have, nonetheless, as of late, been pleased to hear a new variation on this particular vernacular - "male slut" - seems to be as apropos as its feminine derivative. There is some small measure of satisfaction in that as even in this day and age, all too often, the man who sleeps around is still apt to garner kudos as a "Stud", a "Player", a "Romeo" or a "Casanova," or simply as "The Man" - while the woman of similar appetite will probably only get a bad "reputation." Yeah, it reeks of the old double standard, patriarchy and gender bias to be sure. 

Sometimes I wonder if we will ever truly out run our own stereotypical and generationally engrained propensities. And so as I meander along it would seem I have garnered a re-education, an enlightenment of sorts, from my youthful friends on the evolution of semantics, but what is it exactly they have gotten from me? 

I would like to think that over the last couple of years I have managed to show (some of them) that a woman is more than the sum of her parts - that she is much more than legs and breasts, much more than full lips and willing hips... That just because two people might throw caution to the wind and act upon their sexual impulses - that they might "hook-up" - decency and courtesy, and good old-fashioned politeness should still be part of the bargain. 

That women aren't always the ones who get taken advantage of - that a woman is just as likely to chew up, spit out and take everything a man has to offer, before throwing it all away without even batting an eye. That people get hurt, and in the end what really matters is how your heart feels, and how you feel about yourself when you look in the mirror.

Certainly, times have changed, and yet they have also stayed pretty much the same. Nowadays we are just more apt to express how we feel openly (and sometimes publicly) than keep it all under wraps. And so, yes, such nuggets as these I try to impart to my ignorant friends when the timing seems right and perhaps somewhere, somehow, down the road, between my generation and theirs, there will be a correct evolution of these derogatory terms and gender specification will cease to be part of the equation.

Somehow, I doubt if I'll live to see that parlance of the human race but I can always dream about what it might be like and in the meantime, I'll keep passing along my random bits of yoda wisdom and publishing here in this little blog.