An Inspired Life

It is easy, when faced with the perverse challenges of raising children with no money and few prospects, to begin to doubt everything that I am doing. Maybe if I hadn't done this or that thing, of maybe if we lived in another town, or maybe if I hadn't married you, or maybe if we only had one child, or maybe if...

This fear is bottomless, unending, and undeniable. It pervades every aspect of our lives. It paints itself with dollar signs. It smells of dental work and prepackaged food. It gathers dust in the corner, then spills over onto the floor, where we trip over it, cursing.

An inspired life is one that draws its strength from Spirit. In-Spiration. But so often we question a meaning greater than ourselves. So often we think that, if only we could just rework the numbers, maybe we'd get ahead.

But ahead of what? Our consumption patterns? Our debts? What are we trying to get ahead of? Each other? Our own physical destruction?

No. Enough of this getting ahead. Therein lies true madness. Therein lies the death that calls itself a life and raises two dead children, beholden to the tax collector and to the rapacious monstrosity that is this cancer-culture, this self-devouring miasm of greed and unsustainability, soul-less, without Spirit.

If we lose the Spirit, we're already dead, and the Spirit, however we may define it, is not a function of our rational, egoic mind.

That is why I paint. That is why I write. I do these things because they sustain my Spirit. I do these things in the hope that others might likewise be inspired. Hey, if Tyler can do it, then maybe I can, too. Maybe I can stop fearing. Maybe I can learn to breathe again.

I have felt the consequences of fear-based decisions. I will make choices based on courage, not fear. I will seek the inspiration in all that I do. I will not give in to the soul-less world. I will accept what comes, knowing that, in the end, I lived deep down in my soul, in my heart, in these fragile, breakable bones.

And I will teach my children to do the same.