m. asks, regarding my strong belief my life is long:
“Isn’t that kind of arrogant? What if you firmly believe in a long life yet you drink and drive. You risk your life. You can’t reason. I mean, I’m questioning.”
m., I agree it seems very arrogant to claim you know the future. However, if this happens to you, then it happens to you. If you wake up one day when you’re ten years old, believing you’re going to be Bob Dylan when you grow up… or a painter, or a poet or an actress or a dictator… or if you’re like me and you just have news in your head that you’re going to live a long time, well what are you supposed to do?
As I stated, it’s very hard to UN-know something like this once you think you know it. So I think the real problem, is it’s not PC. It can be seen as a lack of humility but I don’t think it’s anything of the sort.
But I think I get your question. And I think what is bothering you is the idea a person might be cocky or reckless with the knowledge their life is long. But this is only half the story. Talking Pigs cast a shadow. Every gift is a curse in exact proportion and vice versa!
See, I am going to be stuck in my body a long time!! So what I do to it matters. And last year I had to undergo tests for MS, and then what?
“If I have MS, there is nothing I can do,” I said. “I will just keep living, obviously. And whatever way my body may be compromised is going to be irrelevant to that. It’s going to just have to be whatever it is. It’s not like I have a choice! I’m not dying soon so whatever it is, apparently I will just have to deal with it…”
See what I mean? I’m not getting out!
And someone told me long ago it’s not so fun to get old. Because all your friends die! Do you think it’s fun to be the last one standing? Your peers go, your family is gone and you’re sitting there in your old body thinkin’ what the fuck! Why me?
See what I mean? The vision (Neptune) is a burden (Saturn) as well as a support (Saturn).
If you ask me, you are quite blessed if you think it possible you may die before your lover. Just think about that. I love my man so very, very much. I love him to the bone. And I look at him and I know I am going to lose him. And what do you think that feels like? It’s horrible. I promise you, it is freakishly unspeakable.
And obviously I could be wrong! But obviously, I don’t think so! And maybe you get my point.
I think this is an issue of political correctness. It’s not Kevin Spacey’s fault he grew up feeling he was going to be a famous actor. Or what about the painter who puts all their eggs in this one basket from a very early age… damned the torpedoes, because they feel this is their soul’s direction?
Is this arrogant? I don’t see it. I see a person who is blessed and cursed and that’s just the way it is, like a hard-wired fact.
Read More -> Parenting
“So I think the real problem, is it’s not PC. It can be seen as a lack of humility but I don’t think it’s anything of the sort.”
I agree. And what happens IF the person keeps denying what they know to be true (art/long life/sensitivity), is the good stuff goes underground and festers until it reappears as bad stuff. And eventually the person has to deal with what they know, consciously or unconsciously. No amount of escaping will allow you to escape. Paradoxical paradigms.
The analogy of MS (oh I hope it isn’t true!) — HOW do you know how you will respond to a given situation, when things seem to get worse and worse? You can’t know but you might spend time imagining it. But you can’t really know.
It’s all beautifully obfuscating.
Dude, EVERYBODY who got to be anybody had a talking pig that told him/her so. Or if the pig didn’t talk, they were born knowing it. After all, they weren’t always good at what they did. They weren’t always famous or respected or skilled. Life knocked them down while they were trying to fulfill their destiny and they had their moments of doubt. Their only weapon against failure was to believe what the talking pig said to them. Maybe that IS arrogant but if they didn’t have that little bit of arrogance, many an artist, musician, writer, (etc.) would’ve shot themselves before they achieved the work they were meant to do.
Sylvia – I don’t have MS. They are constantly thinking things are wrong with me and nothing ever is!!
Myself, I hope I die before everyone else I know. I’m selfish and I don’t want to be left alone.
Glad to hear you don’t have MS, Elsa.
Is it bad if my Talking Pig has a name? 😉
I’ve always been ‘odd’ that way… As much as every day I wish could be my last, like you, I *know* I’m gonna live a long life — a very, very long one too. And I’m actually ok with everybody else going first. Kuz see… most (‘normal’) people are devastated by the loss of a loved one. So, I want to spare my loved ones that agony. Hence I want ~them~ to go first. Not out of a sense of martyrdom or anything, but just because 1) there’s nothing I hate more than seeing other people suffer and 2) I can manage my own pain.
Elsa – I used to think that I’d live to be atleast 500 years old. I was about 10 when it happened. I read a book – fantasty – called Silverlock. In the book the oracle or diety or some authority/spiritual figure (it’s been years since I read it) told the main character that man died when he lost his curiosity. It was said that someone had just “choosen to die” because he had lost his curiosity. At the age I was when I read it I couldn’t imagine having my curiosity run out for at least 500 years. (and I didn’t understand why else someone would die) I became SO sure that I’d live to be in my 500’s and was pretty sure of that until I grew up enough to understand the metaphor and the “soul” versus the body that our society speaks to.
Ironically, I find that bit of knowledge to guide me on a daily basis – we die when we loose our curiosity and that yeah… just maybe – I might have been right when I was 10 years old and I thought I’d live that long. But thinking in such a long term, I have to say, has impacted my relationships and behavior in manners unthought of by some of my friends. I do, try, to think of it as a funny story, but it still holds some truth to it …..
Curiosity 🙂
there’s a yiddish saying: You should live if only out of curiosity.
I think it’s quite comon for people to know/have faith about certain future facts in their lives, and it’s not surprising if we think that we were the ones that wrote the script for our lives before we actually incarnated. our minds are aware of EVERYTHING..past, present, future.
I wish I had that much certainty in my life. Or I wish I at least had the _illusion_ of certainty. Either one is fine. The placebo or the real thing. They both work in the end, I guess. Just being at peace with how good, bad or whatnot our lives are.