welcome to the real world

"Whether or not we realize it each of us has within us the ability to set some kind of example for people. Knowing this would you rather be the one known for being the one who encouraged others, or the one who inadvertently discouraged those around you?" - Josh Hinds, Syndicated Columnist 

The beginning of the year and I see much reflection and rumination of the last year and its lessons learned everywhere online and off. I don't spend much time reflecting on the past. Like Story Waters I "have a healthy disrespect of the past". The more I can do that type of attention and witnessing and observation in real-time as it's happening (or close on its heels), the better all around.

So if I had to share a "lesson" that was underscored for me over and over in 2007 it is exactly as John Mayer croons: "I just found out there's no such thing as the real world, Just a lie you've got to rise above." In these lyrics, the popular young singer-songwriter pens his own life story.

As typical, there's always folks bickering about any artist's works (you see it with companies like Apple too) - both detractors and fans tearing it apart or vociferously defending.

One YouTube commenter writes the greatest testament on Mayer's Say video: "He does what comes to mind and probably doesn't give a crap about what any of us are saying." Amen to that.

So when anyone tells you to stay inside the lines, now you can think of John Mayer's story, and you can just smile.

"No Such Thing" (Extended Live Version)
by John Mayer

Freshman year,
Mom asks "What do you want to do
when you get out of here?"
I said, "Well, gee, I'm only 13,
but I think I'd like to play my guitar...
be a star."
"Well," she said, "that's NICE,
you got time to go.
Good sense will kick in anytime, you know.
I'm not worried, I'm not worried."

Sophomore year,
she asked the same old thing,
my answer had remained unchanged.
I saw her fidget with her thumbs.
She said, "You like computers, John,
you like computers, don't you?
Yeah, I USED TO always see you with a computer...
you like computers
maybe you could do something with computers.
Yeah, wouldn't that be nice?"

Junior year,
It's a little more intense,
She says, "What do you want to do with your life?"
I'm not on the fence, I know exactly what I AM to be,
and I'm only 17.
She said, "Well, all I ask, is that you pay attention in class,
so if you happen to change your mind in time,
you can still go somewhere reputable...
do us proud."
So I went downstairs,
and I played guitar loud.

Yeah, senior year,
Same old question,
She said, "What do you want to do?"
I said, "Play my guitar and sing."
BUT She said, "There's no such thing."
She said, "There's no such thing..."
(GUITAR SOLO)
(speaking: I love you Mom)

"Welcome to the real world", she said to me
Condescendingly
Take a seat, take your life
Plot it out in black and white
Well, I never lived the dreams of the prom kings
And the drama queens
I'd like to think the best of me
Is still hiding
Up my sleeve

They love to tell you
Stay inside the lines
But something's better
On the other side

I wanna run through the halls of my high school
I wanna scream at the top of my lungs
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world
Just a lie you've got to rise above

So the good boys and girls take the so called right track
Faded white hats
Grabbing credits and
Maybe transfers
They read all the books, but they can't find the answers
And all of our parents
They're getting older
I wonder if they've wished for anything better
While in their memories
Tiny tragedies

They love to tell you
Stay inside the lines
Well, well something's better
On the other side

I wanna run through the halls of my high school
I wanna scream at the top of my lungs
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world
Just a lie you got to rise above

I am invincible..
You are invincible.. (yeah you are)
We are invincible..
As long as we're alive

I wanna run through the halls of my high school
I wanna scream at the top of my lungs
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world
Just a lie you've got to rise above

I just can't wait til my 10 year reunion
I'm gonna bust down the double doors
And when I stand on these tables before you
You will know what all this time was for

Art credits Neverland by dianux (prints available);  Neverland by lejahn; obviously Neverland was stirring in my I-Magi-Nation tonight. And yes, I adore the movie, Finding Neverland.

Comments

[Amit C]

Hello Evelyn,

If you liked DeMello, I would also recommend "Unconventional Strategies to Achieving Personal Mastery in Business and Life" by Srikumar S. Rao
http://www.amazon.com/Unconventional-Strategies-Achieving-Personal-Business/dp/1401301932/

Regards
Amit

[jen_chan, writer SureFireWealth.com]

Life can be so contradicting at times. People encourage us to follow our dreams and then discourage us when said dreams are not exactly up to their standards. The song is amazing. I have never really listened to the lyrics so reading it here now has a greater effect on me.

[donna]

A friend of mine from high school went to Hollywood to be a star, ended up doing manicures and became the "manicurist to the stars". Now she does many of the manicures for the cover shoots of the big magazines, has her own nail products line, and has recorded two CDs of her songs - finally, getting back to playing the star again.

Sometimes those dreams take a bit longer to come to fruition and are not quite what we think they will be. For all the Mayers, there are many more just as talented who never got out of the wings.

My parents never discouraged me from pursuing my music and singing, but I saw so many talented singers and actors pushed to the sidelines. I became an engineer like my dad and married another engineer like my dad, and live well in a different way. I have friends who are still struggling actors in New York. One friend did well on the soaps for many years and still acts, another married and stopped singing for a while, but is back at it. Others simply never pursued their dream and seem a bit bitter and detached from themselves these days.

There are a lot of paths out there. If you are discouraged from one, or give up its pursuit, there is always another to take up. And any of them might be your true path. You don't know until you look back, and are either pleased with where you have been and are going, or not. And if you are not pleased, you change direction. It is never too late to do that.

Lessons are learned in our lives and we can grow and change from them whether we are "successful" or "following our dreams"or not. It is our choice to learn and develop within from whatever circumstances we may find ourselves in. The "real world" is what we find reflected within ourselves and how we choose to feel about it, and what we choose to pursue or change in that world.

"A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving".

"If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are going".

Mayer's mom was not attempting to discourage him -- she was providing him with the grounding from his spirit world to the outer world, giving him the material for this particular song, which is about the soul's job of linking us between the spirit and real world. We cannot live in the spirit world, but by bringing it into the "real" world, we give our lives meaning and value. And that can be true whether one is a singer, a plumber, a doctor, an artist, or an engineer. Any task can be done with love and with spirit.

Before enlightenment, chop water, carry wood. After enlightenment, chop water, carry wood. It seems the same, but is not.

Namaste.....

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Thanks Donna,
I've always loved the Taoist adage: A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.

The "real world" doesn't exist as we know it is another layer of meaning to the song. Neither is it so solid - so fixed plans help navigate such a fluid fluxing dynamic anyhow.

I think John Mayer - okay I don't know what exactly HE was trying to convey - let's say I was trying to say no one else really knows our soul's journey for US - not even those that claim to have your best interests at heart. They just don't know how you will unfold towards your divine infinity.

Many people project their OWN fears and defense mechanisms onto another's path.

For instance, just recently my mother vehemently tried to get me to book an airline ticket at last minute from LA back to Bay Area so I'd cancel a Craigslist rideshare. (Yes, grew up pounded with "don't trust strangers".) I felt guided to go on the Craigslist ride and did so despite protestations. It turned out to be one of those flowing, easy, soul-kin type of conversations...and we wouldn't have met if I allowed everyone ELSE's views of what my path is to sway me. When another's suggestions come from a deep place of trust, love, abundance, flow, beauty heart rather than defenses, fear, contraction, worry it's quite easy to discern and hear the difference - then they are speaking to you soul-to-soul and that guidance may change you and your path yet again.

Some people actually pursue music because of the glamor, glory, riches, fame - seeking approval from others foremost - rather than simply because music is what moves them at the present moment to be free and flowing and share that sensibility with the world. So this is not about pursuing a career/vocation at all, even an artistic one, more than following (and trusting) your heart moment to moment instinctually despite appearances that it "might" not work out and despite what They say you ought to do.

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Ooops, I meant fixed plans DON'T help one navigate a fluid fluxing dynamic.

[arkieology]

Happy Epiphany. Real in Spanish means royal, and that is a good road to follow. Three very wise men took the road a long time ago, and they didn't know where they were going, just following a star.

El Camino Real, truly the Real road, a beautiful road indeed.

Que le vaya bien.

We're you really born in New Ark?

[Bram Larrick]

I appreciate where you're coming from... intending to stay as much as possible in the eternal present. It's been really interesting lately to see many points of perception, mine and other's, and know that's all they are is fluid points of view. One of my teachers, Candice O'Denver calls all the thoughts and passing ideas the "luster of awareness."

I love the John Meyer line you mentioned, "just a lie to rise above." It is all a lie, isn't it, that which we perceive as the good and the bad. It's thrilling to witness the emrgence of this deep understanding in many of those I am coming in contact with these days...

[donna]

Heh. More on high school....

http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

If I could go back and give my thirteen year old self some advice, the main thing I'd tell him would be to stick his head up and look around. I didn't really grasp it at the time, but the whole world we lived in was as fake as a Twinkie. Not just school, but the entire town. Why do people move to suburbia? To have kids! So no wonder it seemed boring and sterile. The whole place was a giant nursery, an artificial town created explicitly for the purpose of breeding children.

Where I grew up, it felt as if there was nowhere to go, and nothing to do. This was no accident. Suburbs are deliberately designed to exclude the outside world, because it contains things that could endanger children.

And as for the schools, they were just holding pens within this fake world. Officially the purpose of schools is to teach kids. In fact their primary purpose is to keep kids locked up in one place for a big chunk of the day so adults can get things done. And I have no problem with this: in a specialized industrial society, it would be a disaster to have kids running around loose.

What bothers me is not that the kids are kept in prisons, but that (a) they aren't told about it, and (b) the prisons are run mostly by the inmates. Kids are sent off to spend six years memorizing meaningless facts in a world ruled by a caste of giants who run after an oblong brown ball, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. And if they balk at this surreal cocktail, they're called misfits.

[OLE_SHIP]

OLE_SHIP COMMENT PART 1 of 2 or 3
I saw a film last night, "The Devil Wears Prada" , http://www.foxuk.com/trailers/the_devil_wears_prada-11375/212/
The co-star's first job out of college, was trying to navigate a world she's only glimpsed in print...

Some, searching through my own tags of the "ole_ship" often bring results absorbing many tangents of "the ole ship of zion"... and as i read todays blog of reality's "Welcome To The Real World" http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com/crossroads_dispatches/

SO.., I comment in some face of knowing my return here today stemmed from a search ("evelyn rodriguez" king arthur) keyworded to some imaginary concept or storys.
It was a Merlin biography where I read that "imagination is part environment or the current day, and also part "heritage or geneology".

So formed is now a tangent in the knead, of that, I write this here today; though it may be beter placed somewhere of a blog of my own; at least i began to write this in a draft:
Dear Evelyn Rodriguez, i may have should have sent this by mail...
It truly is as I have seen before on this blog, posts that so often are of reflections of those things that fill the seams of the current; that is of the past, and looking forward of "the now".. I made some attempt at a draft to send, till I just scrolled down to the end of the main post of the day where I caught yesterdays (http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com/crossroads_dispatches/2008/01/what-shall-you.html january 1, 2008 as the last blogged); manifestations, which had no influence to my comment here today, though if I read it more thoroughly, it may seam.

[OLE_SHIP]

OLE_SHIP Part 2 of 2 or 3

Winging this somwhat Now i add
From Kingdom Nuggets:
It is the glory of God to conceal a thing:
but the honour of kings is to search out a matter
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atlantis/3074/kinnug32.html
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atlantis/3074/kn02.html
In Genesis 7:11, the FLOOD CAME when Noah was 600 years old, which would make Methuselah 369 + 600 = 969 . . . and he died and ‘IT’ , the flood, happened!!!
?The 65th. day of the Hebrew year was the Day of Pentecost. Enoch’s history is a shadow of our own personal Pentecost when we experience the first evidence of God’s ‘many-membered man’ who is to live out a full day of the Lord. Enoch did not see death . . . he lived after he had Methuselah 300 years giving a total of 365 years. He experienced complete deliverance (300 - see later) and ‘finished his course’ of 365 .and experienced resurrection-life.
The 187th. year of Methuselah’s life also holds special significance: the 187th. day of the Hebrew Religious year is ‘the Day of Atonement’ of the Feast of Tabernacles. Methuselah brought forth the father of Noah who, according to Luke 17, is our pattern in these last days. This parable promotes Methuselah as the timetable and plan of God, Lamech, a small picture of the forerunner Jesus and Noah — types of God’s ‘many-membered man’ for whom the plan was made. Note that both Lamech and Jesus were born in the Feast of Tabernacles. As the Day of Atonement comes to fulfilment at the beginning of the 7th. Day, we are to come fully into the awareness of God’s will. In this way we shall experience the New Heavens and the new earth as Noah did.

A LATER SEARCH RESULT From Beaux Desarts liveJournal
http://beauxdesarts.livejournal.com/
da · vinci · journals ; explorations of the arts;
Beaux Desarts wrote of Robert Graves and links to Crossroads Dispatches:
...A Lady in a Green Wood Stood Confronting in Hersself With Age...
...Three weeks later, I had written a seventy-thousand-word book, called The Roebuck in the Thicket." Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985) was an English poet, scholar, and novelist.
(LINK PROVIDED THERE:
http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com/crossroads_dispatches/2007/02/index.html )
*~ with this, my poem...
*A Grave Matter
"His wound wore nine inches long in yearning
His wound toll nine long years borne without healing
ached longer than the crescent moon with feeling
who's timbre was much less than appealing" ~ Luke (the poet) 10:11-07

[OLE_SHIP]

OLE_SHIP PART 3 Of 2 or 3.

AND MY LAST TANGENT TO SEARCH RESULT i ADD and HOPE For an "allow me" to bring mention of "manifestations of inward sin":
An analogy by Wayne Blank http://www.keyway.ca/htm2005/20050405.htm
Wayne's:
Having an "evil eye" is not about how the eye appears, it's about the thoughts and attitudes that control how one looks upon the people and things around them.
Wealth becomes evil when it is obtained or used with evil intent, with an evil eye.
"Labour not to be rich: cease from thine own wisdom. Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven. Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye, neither desire thou his dainty meats: For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee." (Proverbs 23:4-7 KJV)
"Evil eye" is just one of the manifestations of inward sin.
"For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man." (Mark 7:21-23 KJV)
Jesus' parable of "the last shall be first, and the first last" (see The Parable of The Labourers), apart from being about the great conversions to Christianity that are coming, is also about not being covetous with one's own righteousness - being jealous of new converts who will receive the same salvation as those who have "labored" far longer.
"Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good? So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen." (Matthew 20:15-16 KJV)
Having an "evil eye" is a term used by the King James Version to translate original Hebrew and Greek words for covetousness, looking upon something with evil intent. Other translations commonly use "covetous," "miserly" or "stingy" where the Authorized Version used "evil eye" e.g. from Proverbs 28:22

WELCOME TO THE REAL,,,
I SEE THIS ALLTOGETHER AS within the lines of the topic, yet how everyday people cling to work for one world that so strongly imagined.

oH,
Sifting through many temptations of tangent here to write, my study will further go today to KEYWORD "a mysterious 'Battle of the Trees', fought in pre-historic Britain", and my mind ran... "
SOME GATHERING HUH? Of the 04/11\2008 's post to today's (01/11\2008); from
CROSSROADS DISPATCHES Title: "two ways to travel this Journey"
http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com/crossroads_dispatches/2007/04/two_ways_to_tra.html
He looks at the energy involved and the appropriateness of its being that way and he just goes.

I hope this is appropriate.
But very tough to read and hard to untangle on A real World First Annual, today, the first "National Day Of Human Trafficing Awareness".

[Laney]

I've had the quote in my head for a week....thank you for sharing that.....I want to be the one who encourages. I read it a week ago and needed to let you know I needed it and appreciated the pep talk!