I see a lot of people, in pain. For most of them, they choose to be in pain. They get haunted by things that happened or things they did in the past. Or they live in dread of tomorrow.
Some, are in pain for what others did. Or they live in regret of what they have done. Past, future, but never present.
One interesting thing, though, people are never afraid of the moment. The present. Even if you saw a ghost, you're probably afraid of the ghost, but not afraid of the moment you're in. Even then, you're afraid of the gost cause probably of two things:
a. That the ghost will harm you in any way - the future
or
b. shit you've known to be true ain't true no more. Shit. What ELSE could be wrong? - the past
You might be crying, but you're not sad of the moment you're in.
Most pain, comes not from actual pain. It is the thought of pain, or the memory of pain.
As the Man of Tomorrow, I was scared shitless of the future. I left college with a computer science degree, but decided to gamble everything on being a writer. Man, I saw myself sucking dick for the next meal. I was fucking terrified, man!
And then, there were shit I did. I was sometimes too scared of facing certain things - like checking my SPM results. Just in case I gave the wrong answers.
I lived in regret of some shit I did in the past, wondering if I could have done it better. Wishing that I did something other than what I did.
And then I got a chorus of all these stupid yahoos, who are all addicted to pain, jumping up and around me.
There was nowhere to run, motherfucker. Except. The present. The moment.
I am dreading making one particular trip to Kuantan. Scared shitless. But right now, in this moment in time, I got nothing to worry about. I got tons of work to do. And I will do it. But not right now. Right now, I'm just chillin'.
I cringe at any and all mistakes I did. Having a good enough memory is a blessing and a curse. BUT. Right now, I am not doing any mistakes. I'm just chillin'
I run away from a lot of shit, and I have found, in my years as a fleemason, that the best place to run away from all the bad things in life, is the present moment. This instance.
Gives me focus. Gives me power. Gives me control. And my powers, when focused, are very useful to me.
I read up a lot on fighter pilots, in my youth. Used to dream of piloting an F-14B Tomcat - my favourite fighter plane. And the hardest one to fly properly.
And these people, they live between half-seconds. Half heartbeats. Cause in one second, a plane that is supersonic, breaching Mach 1 - the speed of sound - would have traveled 340.3 meters.
One, two, three, and you're over a kilometer away.
You don't have time to look behind. And yet, in our brief lives, we still look back, constantly.
They don't have time to look back at the ground they just covered. They don't have time to think of crashing to a wall of rock in front of them. All they do, is figuring out what to do in-between heartbeats.
That's why Chuck Yeager, one of the greatest pilots ever, made popular the 'cool-in-the-saddle' way of talking amongst pilots. They might have multiple bogeys closing in on them, and all their missiles are armed. A few of them might have grazed the fucking Sabre they were piloting. But - loose your cool - and it's wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am.
I'm no fucking pilot. I still lose my cool. I lose my saddle. I fall off constantly. The only question for me would be, do I have the balls to get back on it again? That, can only come, from experience. I'll be ready for it, when it comes. For now, I'm just chillin', man.
Ain't nothin' gonna hold me down now.
