Quotidian

It means 'daily' or 'everyday-ishness". Not that anything I say or do from day to day has much importance to anyone, including me but it makes sense to think about each day and this precious human life which could end so very suddenly -- maybe today.

I haven't taken very good care of my life, to tell you the truth. Quotidian accountability has never really been my strong suit. I haven't really lived by the principle of cause and effect. I think it was more effect and cause to tell you the truth. I experienced most of my life as an effect which caused me to behave, talk, think in ways which were reactive but not consciously causal.

You'd think it would be the most simple thing in the world to realize that the way I lived my life would determine the way my life would go. Seems simple enough but it isn't. It's so very basic but somehow the idea that I actually was causing my life to go the way it was going seemed so unreasonable. In fact, it seemed so faithless, so predictable, so boring. It was that God thing. I seemed to have no choices in life. My sexuality was chosen for me. My thinking seemed to be out of my control. The only thing I could really seem to do was exert a little control on the outcome of what seemed to be predetermined events based on who I was predetermined to be.

Again, instead of 'cause and effect' I was embracing 'effect and cause'. I believed that the effects of the universe and everyone in it and in my own private one was causing me to make the decisions that I was making. I know, I know. What a magical little way of thinking. How completely ignorant I was!

I think of dreaming and the power we have to surprise ourselves with the dream scenarios that we create in the night. The plots, subplots, characters, and continuing stories that make up our dreams come from our own selves. We have the power to scare the shit out of ourselves, confuse ourselves, retaliate, invigorate, seduce all within the scope of the nighttime life we live from our beds. We create the dream.

The same is true for the lives we live on the street in our waking hours. We write the plots, create the characters by our decisions on whom to engage, execute retaliation, seduce the beloved and so on. We all seem so surprised by the decisions that we make -- as if they came from somewhere outside of ourselves.

Stepping out of ignorance and into personal responsibility is a painful event. Insult after insult must be quietly suffered; insults from our own realizations of just how painfully ignorant and asleep we have been.

The quotidian quotient is easy to forget as we make hundreds of seemingly unimportant decisions which make the 'way down' so easy to take and which make the 'way up' so difficult to maneuver. It's hard to stay awake. It's hard to not make the point of our daily lives to seduce the world with our charm and inner beauty. We want so badly to be noticed and appreciated and we really don't care who it is that notices or appreciates us; neither for what reasons they do so.

The magical thinking of 'effect and cause' has led me to some ignorant and very important decisions which caused great suffering not only for me but for others who bought into my assertions about who I was, who they are and what the world is.

I hope that this effort to stay awake, to abide with myself will be the pinch I need for a daily, a quotidian, snapping out of ignorance and the deep sleep of ignorance. We'll see won't we?