I was talking to a good friend the other day about life and love and all that stuff.
He recommended I read this book call Care for the Soul by Thomas Moore , as he felt it might help me. Over the weekend I started to read it and I am about half way through it but I am finding it, like any book like this, has some good qualities and some bad. For one I think this book needs to come with a primer on Greek and Roman myths as the author mentions a few in ways that he assumes we have read them in great detail. But this is not a book review.
However I have already found a few things in the book that I like and have thought about. I think that in this post I will talk about one and later posts will talk about others,
Look at older art, anything that one might not call Modern Art. Focus on the art that is not landscapes but is about people. Now focus on the pieces that are not portraits. What do you see?
You see people laughing and dancing and getting drunk and having a good old time. You see people walking in the park. You see people that are not always thin. You see love and life and happiness, and passion and lust.
Now look at Modern Art, the more recent the better. What do you see?
You see angles, and shapes and people smashing cars apart(as now art has become evn interactive or video), you see people ar in many cases not seen in the piece.
Many years ago an Italian poet, I think he was a poet and frankly it has been so long since I heard this that I forget his name. talked about that your everday "excercise" should be walking amoung lovly flowers that are fragrant and where you can hear nature and the sounds of life.
Today excercise is doing certain movements for a certain amount of time to get a certain heart rate so that we can then make our bodies live longer.
We have made our bodies into machines, heck, if a part of us breaks down we replace it many times with a piece of metal or a machine.
Our brain is a computer, not where thoughts and imagination lie
Our hearts are pumps that need to pump as perfect as possible, not where we store that great human emotion of love. In the Wizard of Oz the Tin Man says he knows he has a heart because he can feel it breaking, as Dorothy leaves. Today we could say he had angina !
I am not saying that we should abuse our bodies, but maybe we have taken the soul out of life. We are so making sure that we have "good numbers" in terms of heart rate and bloodwork, that we forget that we need to feed the other parts of us, the soul, and maybe that sometime we need to feed the soul in ways that do not really help the body sort term.
One of my favorite people in the world died 26 years ago this month, another of my favorite people died 12 years ago next month. I never met either of them, and both abused their bodies something bad. But in many ways both lived life in ways that fed their souls and made them happy.
I would also admit that in both cases that these two men were in many ways sad in that their excesses that killed them, grew out of a need to find happiness in things that were not good for them, and so some might argue that they were ever happy. But I think that John Belushi and Sam Kinison were people that saw their souls as most important, not their bodies. Again both died too young, or did they? Maybe they sucked the marrow out of life so hard that there was no more left.
Would I love to have both of them still here? You bet
But maybe not
Take Belushi for example. He had a partner Dan Aykroyd who was in many ways as good as he was. But look at Dan now. He does good work and you can not stay that wild man forever, or you become a joke, but has he mellowed too much and maybe that would have happened had John lived too.
Maybe not
But I am off track here, except to say that maybe we need to decide to live today, feed the soul today, enjoy life, and not maybe live as long but live better.
All I am saying is that maybe in 2008, while I am not saying we go back to the 1970's where everyone sat around studynging their belly button and we came up with all kinds of wacky stuff that was to lead to self actualization, I am saying that maybe we need to start having fun again, feed out souls again.
Drink good wine and do not worry that it may kill a brain cell or two
Eat good rich food, and do not worry it will clog your arteries or add to the waist line...and good food, not McDonalds or stuff like that
See a good play or watch a good movie or look at art in a museum instead of going to the gym
Listen to classical music one day instead of the stock reports
Go laugh with a friend
Go feed your soul and don't worry if it adds a few pounds, I think it might be worth it
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