Meditation for April 1st
April Fools
Today is the day that people pull practical jokes on each other and try to make people believe in something that isn’t real. Today is a day we can’t chance believing anything is real. Every statement is a lie, every corner a possible prank. Some people call today the day of the Fool’s Errand, the quest for something that cannot be obtained.
Most of us spend our entire lives on Fool’s errands. We want riches, power, prestige, knowledge, health, and other unattainable grails. Either we believe we need these things because of society, or we have that drive inside of us. We find ourselves in an uphill fight to achieve what we want, only to slide back down because of health, debt, or other unforeseen circumstances.
In our sadness, we change our goals to fit our actions.
So April Fools ‘ Day is a great day to meditate on how much time you waste on things that don’t matter.
Is that video game really going to make your life richer? You just wasted half an hour trying to beat that level, and that is half an hour that you will never have again. Is that episode of that TV show really going to enrich your life? Nope, the five episodes you watched in a row are five episodes worth of time that wasn’t yours. The TV show owned your time. That is time that is forever gone, never to be replaced.
Do you even have goals? Do you really think that if you work hard enough, you can achieve any of your dreams? Won’t you be distracted by Facebook and Amazon Prime? Do you have lists that are never fulfilled? Are you suddenly old, still at the same bars listening to the same music, hanging with the same folks, still dreaming of that big dream? You are letting time take it away from you. Goals are great to have if you take action to achieve them, but goals without action are just dreams, and dreams don’t come true.
Maybe you have the ambition to try to achieve a goal. Is the goal actually achievable, or is it so lofty that you are just kidding yourself? Do you really believe that if you work hard enough, you can accomplish anything? These are the naive beliefs of a child. Only those with a leg up will achieve these goals; you will find out that life isn’t fair and that dreams are for the privileged.
Maybe you’re the exception to the rule . . . April Fool’s Day! You aren’t special!
Look at your goals and see which ones are Fool’s Errands and stop trying to achieve the unachievable. You just aren’t good enough.
Prayer
Leonardo Da Vinci,
I have a lot of good ideas.
I have at least three or four things a day.
One of these days, I’ll try to bring one of my ideas to life.
I wanted to have a cold cereal cart.
I wanted to make lamps out of old wine bottles.
I had a great idea for a book.
I have been thinking about a concept album I want to write.
I have this sketchbook of comics I need to clean up and publish.
I have this coffee shop I’ve wanted to open since I was 16.
I have stories I need to write down.
I have opinions to share.
Do you have ideas?
I will listen,
And then I will change your ideas with a lot of my ideas,
Even though it was your idea,
But I love my ideas so much that I will take the skeleton of your idea
And flesh it out so it looks or sounds nothing like your original idea.
When I go into new businesses,
I always share everything the owner should do to run a better business.
I will take offense when I notice the owner not heeding my advice.
Amen.
Craft
You need a goal board. This is a giant corkboard that you will put pictures from magazines on to represent your goals.
Place your top goals towards the top of the board, while your lesser goals towards the bottom.
Take a color string and some thumb tacks, and put lines of string through goals to goals in the order you need to do them.
Put up news articles about one cop who always seems to bust the bad guys, but maybe uses some untraditional tactics.
Come up with an evil plan in which the cop has to break the law to protect his own family.
Watch him fail and then kill his family.
Watch him become the Punisher.
Goal
You waste a lot of time chasing unattainable goals. You waste a lot of time not chasing the goals you can attain. Cut the bullshit out of your life. Can only a young body achieve a goal? Scratch it. Will this put your ethics and values to the test, because all paths that lead to more money are morally corrupt? Kick it. Are you only doing this to get laid? FART NOISE! Is there a possibility that you will fail? Stop right there.
The holy grail doesn’t exist, so stop chasing it.