I Believe in...

You and Me, A Thing Called Love, life after love...that not everything is gonna be the way you think it oughtta be...take your pick.

Before my termination of employment, I spent quite a bit of time loitering around Pasadena, loath to go home between school, therapy, work, or any combination of the three. So I took to hanging around Vroman's, which quickly became my favorite bookstore. On one occasion, I happened upon this book, This I Believe, a collection of essays culled from the vast number submitted to NPR. In it, various people - from all possible walks of life, all levels of fame/recognition - set out in very brief, straightforward, concrete essays just what it is they believe in most strongly. They share that which is most central to their self-determined raison d'etre. I wondered if I could do it; then, just those few months ago, I couldn't have done it. After all, one of the guidelines is brevity. 350-500 words. I can't order lunch in 350-500 words. Expressing a core belief? Couldn't do it.

Now I can. This, I believe:


I believe in mere destiny, that every sentient being walking the Earth has a small but indispensable purpose.

The God-Consciousness lies within us all, waiting to be accessed: that special spark of life in each of us that's more than the sum of its parts. The stuff of old stars that was in the Earth before the Earth solidified, and is now in us all. The quantum mechanics that bind us all at the tiniest levels, where physics as we know it don't work properly. We are all connected, if nothing else, by the very matter which constitutes us.

Think about it: basically, either everything happens for some reason, or nothing happens for any particular reason. If it’s the former, as in my philosophy, how can any of us not have a destiny? In the course of a human life, you never know what you've said that had profound influence on someone. Many are the times I've been talking with an old friend, or a colleague, and heard, "Man, I always think about what you said..." and proceed to rattle off something that sounds like me, that I cannot remember saying.

It’s a revelation; I lived for so long under the belief that my life was pointless, that the end of my value to the world had been during my squandered college years – and that it’d been entertainment value. I was a dropout, a do-nothing, the guy on the couch.

Then I discovered a truth: chemical addiction had a terrible power over me, and was largely responsible for this horribly skewed perspective of a life that was, after all, nowhere near finished. I achieved sobriety a little over three years ago, and life has been a spiritual journey ever since.

With newly cleared eyes, a cleansed mind and an open heart, I have been able to see so many strange confluences, “coincidences” too serendipitous to be random. I was afraid to try and reconnect with an old flame far away, in order to make amends – only to have her email me for the first time in three years to let me know she was in town, and could we get some coffee? Just today, I began wondering about two dear friends I hadn’t seen in a while. The first turned up in front of me two hours later, pestering me to join her for dinner – and the second turned up at the same restaurant we’d chosen. It’s these little things that convince me, hands-down, that there is a latticework design to human existence, and each individual life is a thread with its own place and pattern.

I do not know what my mere destiny is, but I can feel inside, in that god-conscious place, when I’m on the path toward it. I am now, and have been richly rewarded for the steps I’ve taken.


Okay, brevity makes my writing suck more. Back to verbosity.