What motivates you?

Pay attention to the weight of time.  The increase in weight is imperceptible at first, but it builds, and if you fail to notice, it will crush you.

A flutter of panic in the heart when the heart realizes its beats are finite.  The agonizing regret of misused moments that add up to hours, days, weeks, months, years that could have been used.  Pairing the crush of time with tired bones, fear of pain, and dread of failure makes each day less likely to be "the one" where it all changes for the better.

Motivation should have started when there was what seemed to be an eternity of time, but eternity breeds procrastination.  Wisdom would say that even now there is an eternity of time compared to the weight that will be added in another ten, twenty, or thirty years.  My age could double, and yet now it feels too late.

Fear crushes motivation.  Action crushes fear.  Doubt crushes action.  Doubt and fear build upon each other.  Action builds motivation.  Analysis: act.  Even if you're wrong, act.  Be wrong.  Be disappointed.  Be reprimanded.  Lose a job.  Lose your money.  Catch a cold.  Fight for change and be thwarted.  Whatever you do, though, ACT.  Be excited for the failure so you can banish the fear.  If success comes, be delighted, but delight in the disappointment, too.  Act to banish fear and doubt.  Act to boost motivation, and motivation will boost your action.  Time will lift from your heart and the ache will lift from your bones and you, in thirty years, will look back and you can say that every moment was used to its fullest.

What is one mistake made by the current generation that you would like to make sure that your generation does not repeat?

Only a few days before she died, my grandmother described to me the sound of crickets.  The idea of them, however, terrified me, and my mother scolded my grandmother for telling me stories.  Grandma was Buddha, and smiled, knowing.  I knew, too.

How can you be the change you want to see in the world?

Start with a dream list: what would be the ideal world?  Yes, you can even say, "World peace!"  Try to make a list of at least ten dream items; for example:

1. Ensure clean water for every human
2. Eliminate hunger
3. Eliminate homelessness
4. Convert to renewable energy
5. Stabilize and reverse human overpopulation
6. Discontinue deforestation and begin reforestation
7. Provide opportunities for every human in every occupation
8. Expand space exploration
9. Reform treatment of prisoners and mentally ill
10. Reform and implement free education
11. Reform and implement free healthcare
12. Encourage collaboration and innovation for the benefit of all humankind

I did say at least ten.

Is it odd that my dream world looks like humanity in the age of Star Trek?  It is a worthy goal, and achievable, if humans weren't each so self-centered.  It is rare the person who does not work only to his or her own benefit.  Even those deeply religious are not exempt because while they do work to help others, it is often with the goal of converting other, and/or getting into Heaven, which is still a selfish goal.

Can humankind overcome the desire for power, money, prestige, land, and "being right"?  Not all of us, but some.  Abandon borders (with the goal to abandon nationalism.)  Abandon religious righteousness.  Abandon money.  Abandon power over things, animals, and other people.

There are small ways to begin.  Ways that don't cost any money, but that will show you how far we need to come.  Try this: pick up all garbage, wherever you go.  Catch yourself when you say, "Some jerk just dropped this here!" or "Why should I pick this up when these people don't care about how they live?"  Pick up all garbage, wherever you go, with the goal of making the world a better place.  Acknowledge how difficult it is, how easy it is to become angry and bitter, and how this small act can really change the world, if it can only change the way you see it.

Tell me something about yourself that we probably don’t know.

The first famous man I fell in love with was Danny Kaye.  I was probably in fifth grade when I saw The Court Jester, and that was it.  Love.  Then came Dan Akyroyd and Chevy Chase when I was staying up too late to watch Saturday Night Live reruns.  Love.  Then Harry Anderson once he was on Night Court in the 80s.  Love.  It wasn't until I was much older that I sensed the pattern, and it wasn't until I was older than that when I realized the real connection between all the odd choices for a young teenager's obsessive love.  I didn't want to love them; I wanted to be them.  Tall and cool and smooth and talented and funny and confident and famous.  Does everyone fall in love with the kind of person they want to be, or was it just me?

179

Life is repetition.  Breathing.  Eating.  Sleeping.  Wake, eat, work, eat, work, eat, sleep.  Again!  The scenery is the same.  The view from your face is the same.  Life feels the same under your fingertips.  Under your feet.  In your bones.  The sun comes up, clouds, moon, dark, stars.  All are variations of the same.  Same.  Same.  Soon you can hear the ticking of time, repeating each second, marking the forward progression.  Next.  Next.  Next.  Same.  Same.  Same.

Many people believe that wisdom is knowing how others will react, but it is, rather, recognizing the sameness in yourself.  I will say this in this situation.  I will feel this when I do that.  I can predict how my body and brain will respond.

There is another level of this wisdom that hardly anyone can achieve, and that is being able to change the sameness.

174

Halfway in to my first year of being forty.  My knee and shoulder have developed a random ache.  A portion of my vision in my left eye is obscured by a dark dot that skitters around like a bug on the water.  My upper back gets a kink in it unless I set my pillow carefully before I go to sleep.  When I push on my skin, I can see what it will look like when I'm ninety.  I have an age spot; no, wait, I have two age spots.  Wispy hairs circle my face and stick up from my part.  My joints have always been knobby, though.  I still sit on the floor.  I still sleep too long.  I still do stupid things, but not quite as often.  I recognize wisdom, even if I don't always have it.

140

The story of Adam and Eve in Genesis is not a true story of how life on Earth began, but rather a story for children that teaches them how they grow and learn. Those who take the Bible for truth will most certainly have their own thoughts (and they will be sure to share them on crumpled paper rubber banded onto to rocks and flung through my picture window,) but it is nonetheless obvious for anyone who chooses to truly look.

"Eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" is what we all eventually must do, though it is a bitter fruit, indeed. Recall the first time you realized that some aspect of your life was not as it at first seemed. Recall the horror you felt. Recall the tilting of your world beneath your feet. See the thick, black line drawn between "before" and "after" this realization. Think of your wish never to have had that realization. Witness your own futile attempts to forget. See every day the new truth you wish you never learned.

Congratulations. You have eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

I ate of the Tree when a man in a Winnebago cut me off when I was only sixteen and flipped me the finger. I realized, with a shock and a quick application of brakes, that not all adults are kind.