July 31, 1999

And so it begins...

Something can be there in your entire life. Be it a food, a friend, a book, a thought, or a love, you see it everyday and not notice it. It might appear when you are age two, age thirteen and many months, or near the end of January in the evening, and suddenly, it is there. You eat pizza for the first time, and you love it and nosh upon the italian-american treat whenever you can. You hear a song and hum upon waking up its melodies. You see a friend in a new light and lose your heart. Things change.

How do we deal with these changes. Sometimes, it's rather easy to integrate them in. You like pizza... make it a Friday night dinner tradition. Like a song... buy the cd. However, love is where it gets tricky. The idea that friendship can grow into love is the most fruitful notion of humanity. It is also the deadliest. The aromas of hope and mental unimality focus our minds to the subject. We become totally certain in a heads over heels manner.

To approach life and love in this manner is wrong. It's easy to say that and hard to live. If you have these feelings, the other person will not. They did not discover pizza or music or whatnot at that same epiphananic moment as you did. To say everything out right will only lead to grief on your part and guilt on the other's. But you still need to say it. Don't make it a conviction or a statement billing out the future. Just say let's explore this and hope the other person will do the same and feel eventually the aura of awareness you did.

This is how life should be lived. Diogenes was not looking for an honest man ever with a lamp on a sunny day. That story is most likely myth. His point was the imbecility in his search method made it evident to be a cynical lost cause. The old codger probably didn't realize he also made a wise point to live by. No lamp gleams off anyone on a sunny day by physics. No one is totally honest as well. We lie when we must; we hold back to protect. We are frank to help people change; we speak our minds to be part of the changing world. Good old Diogenes was right all along.

This list began eleven months ago with the notion of total honesty. It could not be done without hurting people. This list has never had many readers (only forty at the moment, but one always optimistically hopes at the beginning for the massive horde of readers). At first, many were friends and people I knew. Then, the audience began to blur and become faceless. Strangers from around the globe joined in, and I kept writing as I was. People joined and left without whim or reason, and if I had focused on why, I could have never kept writing. It was hard to face my friends at times after some mailings, but I did. I apologized a lot, though many would say that was needless.

I say one final sorry now. I'm sorry I must end this and that it does end. Speaking my thoughts and hopes and fears and dreams and regrets and jokes and laughs and sorrows and manias and smiles and insights and questions and everything is something I never expected to be so personal. I can't give the reins away to anyone. I encourage you, if you so desire, to start your own list and I will do my best to tell everyone about it. However, it won't be this Diogenes. It won't be me.

I have the rare chance to transplant myself somewhere else and live and learn anew while thinking outside the box as to what is important. I have a second chance and maybe it's time I do what it's right and of value rather than talking about it. I have wounds to heal and hopes to fulfill.

Those of you who have been here this long found something you marveled at in these mailings. Thank you. You have let me find many wondrous things in mine as well. Thank you.

This is it. My website will soon have all the messages archived so that you may enjoy them if you wish. I've made my point and not spoken about everything, but nevertheless, it is done. Folks, Diogenes died millenia ago and so it begins...

THE END