I realize that the whole point of my book is that people can change and there is a solution for addiction, which is true. Oh, about the solution, please don’t tell me that you’ve done AA or the Twelve Steps and they didn’t work. That’s like someone saying they put the key in the car but the car didn’t go. Yeah, that’s because you didn’t drive it. At any rate, life has successfully dissolved an idea that was pumped into me as a child in school, the notion that everybody is born good. Since then, I have opened my eyes and I now understand that both good and evil do indeed exist… and it is quite the epic battle, to be sure. It is just a myth that everybody is born good or has a good nature. Sure some of us are kind, loving angels, but others are evil, narcissistic psychopaths.

     I’ve also learned that there isn’t too much anyone can do about it. We can only influence those of us who are wired to listen and who on some level already know what they are looking for. When we read or listen to someone, we tend to hear what we want to hear or what we agree with while the rest goes by the wayside. So there seems to be little point in arguing with others, especially with those who seem to be sort of programmed or brainwashed. And there is freedom is being able to let go and accept the world as it is. Yet there is also freedom in standing up for what’s right and sane and trying to stop the lunatic/s currently in power from destroying the country and the rest of the world.

     Sure I try to help others and change things but the truth is that doing so helps me and keeps me sane, so I suppose it is all categorically selfish when push comes to shove. Perhaps pure altruism doesn’t exist. Does that mean we stop helping others? No, of course not. Why? For one, we have to deal with the law of cause and effect. The more I give and the better I am, the better my life becomes, and the more success I create for myself. So even if we are all just selfish beings, let’s be the best kind of selfishness as opposed to the worst kind.

     It’s amazing that the same person can be capable of such love and generosity as well as such hatred and rot and filth. I sometimes cry about human sentiment and affection and then other times find myself in utter disgust for the human race. In fact, I loathe others at times, although that may just be the fact that I live in Massachusetts. I observe both the brainwashed collectivist academics as well as the white trash filth down at Stop & Shop abusing their children and can’t help but feel as though we should be wiped out purely as an exercise in garbage removal. But then I look at my son and he jumps on me and giggles and says ‘I love you’, and my soul is filled and fed with such light and love and purity. I see him trying to form a sentence or clapping to a song or cuddling a stuffed animal and my heart melts into pieces.

     Why the simultaneous loathing and loving?

     Well, you see, both the disgust and the love I feel is the disgust and love I have towards myself. All of this, and I mean EVERYTHING, is but a reflection of how I feel about myself. All the judgments and feelings we have are merely symbolic of how we see and how we feel about ourselves. So I both loathe myself and love myself. I have both truly good parts and truly bad parts, and I suppose that’s just what the way it is. Perhaps this condition of light and dark etc. is actually what makes the world go around, as for each thing there exists its opposite.

     And if all this is true, then why fight it? Why fight anything? Why try to change anything when the more we try to fight and change, the more everything really just stays the same. We’ll never be able to stop these natural cycles, ebbs and flows. We’ll never be able to control the way things are. We’ll never be able to eliminate evil, for without evil there is no good, or rather, without evil there is nothing to oppose it.

     Maybe the point of our lives is just to be, to live, to do what we are. Then again, maybe not. Maybe we are called on to effect some sort of change, either within or without. I am a musician, an actor and I write songs and poems and stories and yet I’ve done none of these things in years. But I also do a bunch of other things. And these days all I do is manage our business, raise our son, prepare for our little girl coming in November, pay our bills and do chore after chore until I collapse into bed each night. But this is good for me. I’m sure when God wants me to do something else, He’ll let me know.

     Radio show maybe?