Driftin’ Thru

 

c. 1995
Driftin’ Thru

Well I keep driftin’ thru these empty hours
These empty hours fill my days
Lack of direction, no connection
No decision I make helps me find my way
Where has the passion gone
I don’t belong
Sometimes I wonder just what the hell I’m gonna do
Whoa baby my lack of claim
Lord I’ve lost my way
I’m just driftin’ thru

Wonder what’s gonna change
Before I see my way
I think I’ve already paid my hard earned dues’                                                      Too many times I’ve fought off crimes
Thought I’d seen the last of them troublesome blues

Lord where has the passion gone
I don’t belong
Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever see this thru
My lack of claim
I’ve lost my spirit
I’m just driftin’ thru

Won’t compromise
My resolve I prize
No one’s gonna help me forget and undo
I know you’ve tried
But baby don’t be surprised
When I deny and swear that I never ever burden you

I stand before this world
A worried soul still not cured
I stand before you naked and confused
How long will this heart cry
If I am to survive
A woe so deep within this solemn pew
Where has the passion gone
Lord I don’t belong
Oh Mr pain I just wanna part with you
My lack of claim
I’ve lost my faith
Baby I’m just driftin’ thru

Pursuit of Happiness

I have always struggled with knowing just what I wanted to do with my life. Even to this day I think to myself; what do I want to do when I grow up?

As children we are often asked “what do we want to do” when we become adults? We usually say what appeals to our thoughts, and our limited experience of what we know about that career. But how is it that some people know just what they are interested in, and what they want to become. I am amazed by the clarity of these individuals, as I was never able to have a luminous picture of my calling in life.
I think for the most part I have always known about “how” I was going to be, but “what” I was going to do is a completely different question. Dr. Wayne Dyer puts it…”Don’t equate your self-worth with how well you do things in life. You aren’t what you do. If you are what you do, then when you don’t…you aren’t”. Somewhere down the line we become a part of a society that places the value of working over the value of just what our work should be. If you are able to distinguish the significance in both of these reasons, then you know that they are relative to the state of the economy and the meanings are subject to change depending on the perspective.

I have much respect for hard working folks. I come from a working class family, and see much value in doing an honest day’s work. The America today, is quite different now than how the millions of former immigrants used to see our country. They came to a country where anyone who worked hard, and applied themselves, could start up a business and become successful. They could break out from the class they were once in, and live a life never before possible in other parts of the world. Today, I think many come to this country and argue that they still receive a better life even without having to work due to the entitlements we are giving out in our welfare state. Personally I think that working hard in a laborious job is requisite in becoming a well rounded individual.

Professionally speaking I think many of us choose a career that is not an ideal match to our personality, or that we did not want to give up the benefits and compensation that many careers offer. Unfortunately in many cases these jobs are not meeting all of our needs, let’s face it: they are boring, unexciting, and just plain making us unhappy.
Of course not all of us can simply choose a career we fancy. Unemployment figures speak volumes, and the types of work we each must seek to keep ourselves fed and clothed is testament to just what choices we do have despite whether or not that dream job ever materializes.
The sacrifices we make for the family, for our personal lifestyles, is an often overlooked subject matter but on a contrary disconcerting note; people also tend to immerse themselves into their work to a degree that recounts the adage; live to work, and not work to live. This is another topic altogether and I shall not give it any further thought other than to exclaim that these problems may just be the pastime articulations of prior generations. In a post global-economic world we now face a new set of employment quandaries. The idea that we have choices in our employment is under greater scrutiny in many parts of the world. We face forces at work that are destructive to the potential economies of many countries. The “powers that be” do not want to give up the status quo. I saw some frightening information that my studies have elucidated and I am fearful of their implications. It was not my intent to discuss the ills of our monetary system, and the corruption of our market systems worldwide; I started this discourse by suggesting that there is enough difficulty in making that personal decision on how one should economically support oneself in this life, and more precisely, how one should pursue a lifestyle that promotes one’s interests, and simultaneously be compensated for it.

Many things we take for granted in this life, but at times we may ask ourselves and wonder about how our prior dreams might have come to fruition. Maybe we are thinking back and wondering had we gone in a different direction, how would our lives been changed. Of course there are many people who are quite satisfied with the outcomes of their career choice and are quite happy. This is truly a blessing. Grievously in today’s world there is uncertainty. The choices of one’s occupation may continue to dwindle and become extinguished. The idea that our culture can provide satisfying employment for us is being questioned and is cause for many heated debates.
I have witnessed many conversations on how individuals have elected their decisions. Many have chosen the career based on income potentials alone. Many have just fallen into their careers by default, be it a school job turned full time endeavor, or for lack of any other alternative choice available, therefore their part-time job became their full-time career. However one may choose their calling, I must admit that in this age, no matter how one chooses, or what one chooses, it is good to be employed.

…..

The Ripple Effect

Kind words can be short and easy to speak but their echoes are truly endless.

-Mother Teresa-

I thought about how I would be remembered when I pass from this life. How my family would remember me, and how my friends would remember me.

I was watching a podcast on actor Andrew McCarthy, as he was discussing his new book “The Longest Way Home- One Man’s Quest for the Courage to Settle Down”. He spoke about his personality, and how he came to be a writer. Intrigued I purchased and read the book. He talked about his travels and how he seems to feel more comfortable in his skin the farther he is away from his home. He said that when he travels, the destination is really not about where he is going, but rather traveling allows him to simultaneously find a destination within himself that is brought out from the traveling. It is not so much where the destination is, but rather what the destination does to him inside that counts. I was surprised to find that after listening to him, we seem to share similar approaches in dealing with the world. He was speaking about some of the issues with intimacy he has struggled with in his life. A quest I have sought in the time of my continuance on this earth.

I think that at times the further I was out of my comfort zone in life, the more I was able to allow an uninhibited experience and project a truer form of my self, without the subterfuge the ego often interposes. The meanings that we come to understand this world; however beautiful and lovely, or however cruel and unkind the world may be is ultimately a decision that is up to us. Long ago I came to conclude and deduce that on some levels we are ultimately alone in the universe, and that it is up to our own reckoning of our experience on how we should act and live our lives. To some degree I still believe this, but as I age and the more I study, I see other degrees of understanding that just might complicate this premise. Of course it all depends on the information you immerse yourself in, but I will usually derive the foundation of my education in a “common sense” basis, ergo using pragmatic approaches to the world as cited by the likes of John Dewey, or Confucius. Ruefully others who approach the world without any intelligence and understanding using the aforementioned premise: are destined to shape attitudes from others around them unleashing their unapologetic and narcissistic egos on the world.

Sadly yet understandably many of us become cynical, embittered, and even hostile to the ignorance and aggressive acts that others impose upon us who happen to share our collective environment. The manifestations of our behavior may touch many people that we truly do not fully appreciate the length and breadth of this reach. We cannot of course be accountable for every nuance of our behavior that impacts others due to the interpretation and judgments of others sensibilities, but the principle of the premise argued here supports that we should be held accountable for our behavior in the world. Those that do not comprehend the scale of this notion are unaware, thoughtless, or in worst case scenarios: apathetic, and care nothing about their impact on others. I fear that these individuals have truly lost their way, and as Leo Buscaglia postulates the opposite of love is apathy and not hate as many may believe. Lacking any feeling about our way in the world, how we affect others, how we go about our business within our social provinces is probably the defining element that ails our society at large.

When Mother Teresa was asked if she needed help with money or fund-raising in a town she was visiting to see the opening of a shelter, she replied, no thanks, that there was nothing anyone could do for her since her cause was not about money, or publicity. When asked again if they could somehow do something to help, she replied….”If you really want to do something, wake up at 4am and go out on the streets and find someone living there that believes they are alone, and convince them they are not!”

I sometimes struggle to find an association with others that I greatly care about. I may have disappointment, or I have not understood them for either a lack of my comprehension, or for choices they have ultimately made without consideration of their loved ones. I too have shown an apathetic eye, (something I am not proud of), toward segments in the life I have known. I have tried to reconcile this to the best of my abilities by building better coping strategies, educating, and reinforcing my existing strengths. My combative blueprint for this disease of the soul provided me with an awareness that I have personally undertaken to qualm any exhibits within my behavior. The Me mentality seems to be a major contributor to the problem and once again sources back to the creation of ego.

I still find myself in dissension and often have issues with others that lack a citizenship our culture truly needs. My perceptions and observation usually give me a dose of cognitive dissonance when I leave my home and meet the world every day. I ask myself why do I let others impede my happiness? Why do I consider such circumstances, and why is my mind so prone to think about such pestiferous subjects? Am I arrogant in thinking that I do not take part in such behaviors that I find myself criticizing? I know I cannot expect the world to change its present course, but I can change my ability to cope with it. I can find the fortitude to compel myself to change my beliefs about those that I struggle to find peace with. I think I must have been disposed to finding such events by the way my mind works. It is a curse to me at times as I pontificate the matter at hand.

Finding my salvation lies within the power of my creation. I remember some years back as I progressed through higher levels of managerial positions; I took a battery of expensive psychological exams testing various attributes of my personality for my employer. Out of that experience I scored in the top 10 percentile of my company, and was told in my results evaluation that “I care for people!” Oddly I sometimes think this is a burden on me to this day, due to the amount of time I spend on how others feel, think, and rightly so since the current dominant mindset is to think only about one’s own best interests, or for that matter the company’s interests: the company’s should supersede the individuals. They may intend to do the right things, but often they politicize the handling of the communications to the employee’s, and the overall practice by the leadership through-out many companies do not show the values they subscribe.
The core values I have adopted contradict the thinking that we should infringe upon others, and I cannot find myself to render it with any credibility. I for one believe we have a moral obligation to one another. What those obligations are can be and are debated by many, but in my conviction, I have a long road ahead of me before I can find a resolution to this position.

How we are remembered is telling of how we led our lives, how we influenced and effected others, and how many people would miss us on our departure. I hope to be remembered in good light with my family and friends. I hope they do not remember me for my nutty verbalization about like dialogs, but more for that of the essence in my character. The ripples we create often cross great distances and have profound effects on those at times we least suspect. The ripples we create can and do have an impact on some of our closest unsuspecting family members, friends, and acquaintances. In the process of discovering my peeves to ignorance, I too send my ripples out to the world….One page at a time!

Co-Exist

This is a song about Co-dependence
Unfortunately the audio quality is not very good, but this was the first time we attempted to play this song in my band “Intoxicated” inside the studio some years ago.

1996
Co-Exist

I never thought I’d turn out quite like this
we turn ourselves around it’s hit and miss
no promise I make gives you any bliss
don’t look to me for comfort and a kiss

I wake up next to you but you’re not there
the distance we feel shows we’re aware
must we suffer and live our lives like this
depend we must for we must co-exist

I wonder if you’ll ever pay the price
I think you’ve taken all the wrong advise
It’s hard enough to advance in this life
then to burden one with another’s strife

solo

I know the tale it sometimes goes like this
be happy in the end with just a kiss
we ask ourselves why doesn’t this hold true
believing in the fiction won’t always do

I wonder if you’ll ever pay the price
I think you’ve taken all the wrong advise
It’s hard enough to advance in this life
the to burden one with another’s strife