Life Stream

Life Stream

Its called progress, the pace and complexity of life.

The inter-personality of it also seems to increase unrelentingly.

It would seem that you must either get into the moving life stream and cope,

or you drop out of real living.

In retreating, you can live out your life,

if you can call it living, trying to confront feelings

of loneliness, fragmentation, and isolation.

In doing so, you might also accept the prevailing pessimism

and possibly allow that there isn't the remotest possibility

that you're ever doing anything significant.

The world is, after all, a place of chaotic mismanagement,

and who are you to change it.

It's far better to hide.

If you aren't overpaid for it, then it isn't worth doing.

Responsibility is a trap you will avoid.

Aren’t you smart?

You have learned to say "I want".

Better still you have learned to say "No".

And in doing so, you may avoid ever achieving a balance

between the complexity of it all and your conscience,

if you still have one.

Yet in refusing to retreat,

You are accepting that to serve

might be a privilege.

You might accept further and find

that voluntary work is

one of the best ways

for an someone to find a balance.

Finally you can accept that the value of service

is both social and personal.

The 'why' of serving may escape you initially,

you may enter into an action

with a personal, or even ulterior motive.

Inadvertently,

you may start off putting on a show

and end up being of real service.

There is, after all, no stereotype to altruism.

Everyone can contribute ideas, opinions, interests and abilities.

And it is this action

that finally puts you into the moving life stream.

You find that in serving you not only supply a need,

you are also promoting and protecting

that which you now value.

Longfellow had it before you;

"Give what you have to someone, it may be better than you dare to think"

Taking part in life seems better after all, than just living.

You are actually doing something in earnest, and it feels good.

Your desirable impulses and qualities are no longer repressed by not doing.

You have replaced that sense of pessimism, of uselessness.

Instead, you blaze a small trail, stimulate a fellow human being,

make a contribution toward a better balance.

You learn that all that talk achieves nothing as compared to one small action.

You have stemmed the feeling of futility,

by action.

Now you have the pace,

you belong.

You have found the foundation of humanity.

You have achieved the balance

You, are in the moving life stream.