Rhythm means that though you're moving forward, you are also coming back to that first beat...

This is almost 2 years old, but it still resonates with me.

It's like...

Musically speaking... imagine a sheet of music, in say, 4/4 time, see the staves, see the notes. It's like coming to the next bar, hitting the 1st beat again, but holding a whole note, moving into the second beat, rather than a quick 1/4 note and at a higher key cuz you're in a different mood at this point in the piece.

Like if you're doing laps around a track, on the second lap, instead of sprinting the straightaways and jogging the curves, you switch it up. Reaching the same place, but doing something different because YOU are different.

So I read the following dusty old blog, and see I am different in some ways from the person I was when I wrote it, but I am still hitting that same beat, touching that same place.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007
9:58 PM

What is it that we want out of life? You know “we,” we as a people, we as a society, we as individuals that share some innate need to …

I think the real question that I AM asking is: what is it that I want out of life. And to find that answer, I look out to the world, to “WE,” to those who live in it, who have lived in it, the people that I encounter in books and television: such fantastic, remarkable characters and monumental historical figures, these people are.

I also observe with a keen eye: the common folk you see out in restaurants, grocery stores, movie theaters, at the park, at the beach, at the gym, at gas stations, on the street, sitting next to you on an airplane, driving in cars on the freeway. I try to imagine where these people have been, what lives have THEY live(d), AND I wonder if it might be something I want to experience in MY life.

Then I think I should look inside myself to understand what it is that I want out of my life.

It is a loaded question, really it is. What do you want out of life?

So I struggle with myself and find some half-ass answer and leave it at that; I travel on, move forward. So time passes and months later, I roll the question around in my mind again. And the thing is, I always find myself going back where I started, contemplative and asking the question. And I know THAT is the answer. THAT is what I want out of life, to move back and forth between ideas, movement, MOVEMENT.

But I always find myself wanting a more definite, concrete answer. I always want more. Chalk it up to humanity, the need to explore and find out more, to go further, challenge the establishment, to make things new, to create something, to make life more than a definition... So naturally a declaration like: what we want out of life is to simply to ask the question again and again and again. THAT is not enough, but maybe I’ll learn that IT IS enough.

And maybe rather than changing the answer, I will change MYSELF.

And as someone new, the answer will be different for the new person I become.

Who knows what we really want?

I scratch my head with a puzzled look of happiness and am content that I am simply able to experience this journey, to climb into darkness.

And the beat hits gain.