The Adventure of Life itself

I want you to watch this video, it's only 3 1/2 minutes.  But I can't make you watch it.  So I'll just tell you a few things about Maya Angelou.  

Dr. Maya Angelou lived her life as an adventure.  That's why I immediately thought of her to find a video for this post.  At age 3 or 4, she, and her slightly older brother, were put on a train, and sent across the country, by themselves, to live with her grandmother in Arkansas.  She was raised in the harsh and financially poor reality of the deep south in the late 1920's and early 1930's.  

Living with her mom a few years later, she was raped by her mom's boyfriend at age 8.  The man was found beaten to death a couple days after she told her family what happened.  She stopped talking, thinking her voice, saying she be had been raped, caused his death, not his horrific act.  She lived as a mute for 4 years, and was sent back to Arkansas.  A woman there introduced the studious young Maya to poetry.  But the woman made Maya read the poetry out loud, to hear the beauty and rhythm that words could have.  Young Maya found her voice, again.

Dr. Maya Angelou is now best remembered as a poet, America's Poet Laureate, in fact.  Her life was far from "normal," whatever that is.  It's the great adventure that made her a great poet and a woman known for writing several memoirs, the most famous being I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.  It's also the adventure of her life that gives her such a quiet confidence, and wisdom, in her later years, evident in the short clip above.  

Emerging out of my own crazy childhood, as a young man, I interviewed BMXers and skateboarders for my zine, always asking them, "What is the meaning of life?"  My family was more dysfuctional than most, and less dysfunctional than some.  I was a fucking trainwreck at 18 or 19.  I didn't ask people for the meaning of life to sound philosophical.  I really wanted to know.  Life seemed to be mostly pain to me then.  What was the point of living in pain?  Why bother living when things seemed so miserable most of the time?  I needed to find the reason we were alive. 

By the way, the best answer I got to that question back then, came from then 19-year-old skateboarder Rodney Mullen.  When I asked him for the meaning of life, he simply said, "Kittens playing with yarn."  I thought that was the dumbest answer I ever heard when he said it.  But you know what, it's the only answer to the "meaning of life" question I remember.  You can find my short interview with Rodney in the December 1986 issue of FREESTYLIN' magazine, if you look here.

I spent the first 19 years of my life getting screwed up by a crazy family, one member in particular.  I spent the next 29 years of my life working through my own personal issues.  I finally found the answer I was looking for, about 5 years ago.  And that made all the difference.  It was a complete change of perspective.  I had to go through a fair amount of Hell to get there.  But, ultimately, the answer was worth it. 

Now, I see our lives on Earth, as an adventure our soul, our spiritual self, takes, to learn what it can in these heavy human bodies, on this planet governed by the laws of three dimensions.  My understanding now is basically what the wise people have said throughout the ages.  Our spirits, our individual souls, "sign up" for an adventure on Earth, much the way we might sign up for an adventure race, like a mud run, or a Spartan race.  People sign up for those races to see if they're tough enough, if they're up to the challenge presented.  It's the same for life itself.  We want to see if we're tough enough for the challenge of a life here on Earth.  But it's not just a race, there are incredible obstacles that will be set in front of us.  There are all kinds of stupid people to deal with.  There are also amazing people who help us along the way.  The obstacles of life are not just physical obstacles, but mental, and spiritual obstacles as well.

Imagine signing up for an adventure race where you had to run, and trek up steep hills, and crawl through mud, and climb over obstacles, but you also had to solve mental puzzles, and paint a painting, and play a musical instrument, and help other people get through the race.  All of those things counted as part of your placement at the end.  Then, and here's the kicker, as soon as you start the race, your memory is erased.  You drink a little cup of liquid at the start of this crazy adventure race, and it makes you forget that you actually chose to sign up for this race in the first place.  The next thing you know you're in this crazy race, with all these other people, facing tough obstacles, and you don't remember why you're there.

That's the adventure of life, as I see it.  Each of our souls signed up for an adventure, but by the time we are born into this world, we've forgotten we did this on purpose.  We find ourselves in this crazy, often painful and brutal world, and we forgot it's an adventure we signed up for.  Part of the adventure, is to get to the point that we remember... that's it's an adventure.  We signed up to see if we could make it through a series of challenges, and each person signed up for different challenges.  Everyone has their own unique path, and we have free will.  As we make choices, the adventures ahead shift and change, to force us to deal with certain issues, until we understand.

We are drawn to certain people at certain times, because this is part of our adventure.  They have something to teach us, and we have something to teach them, just by interacting with them.  This, as I see it now, is why we're alive and here on Earth. 

In this blog, I'll chronicle some little adventures I have, with words, photos, and maybe video, eventually.  I'll also write posts about some of the crazy adventures I've had along the way.  And I'll write a post every now and then about the Big Adventure, that of life itself, just to remind myself, and anyone reading, that's why we're here. 

Enjoy. 
Now go find a little adventure of your own, to have today.  Or maybe even a big one.