The years went by...

Things have changed. I believe they have changed for the better as well. My life has gone from a whirlwind of dreams and hallucinations to something much more, well, adult. My dreams of grandeur are slowly fading away, and a small part of me is sad to see them go. However, they are being replaced with tangible ideas and thoughts, things that I can work on, get dirty doing, and actually accomplish. My brother once told me that you won't know 99% of things until you are on your own, and I think he was right. The things that were once of such vast importance to me no longer take up any mental space, and new things have replaced them. I don't dream as much anymore, instead, I use my imagination to think of creative solutions to the events in my daily life. (Kind of like the tactics used in "The Secret") As I drive my Hyundai Getz around town, I see myself behind the wheel of a sleek Maserati, with 450 hp at my beck and call.

I guess being 25(26 in two weeks) comes with a good amount of life experience, and I've honestly had my share of love, heartache, and the like up until now. I think I'll settle down a bit, and see how that feels.

An interesting mantra to try. Imagine how you would act if you were in the presence of a great figure from history. For example, the other night I imagined I was sitting next to Buddha, and a great peace came over me, and then I began to sing.

Much love,
ZMP

Caring

I am really sick of caring about everything. Not to say that caring is a bad thing, because it isn't, just that caring, when spread thin, loses it's meaning.

When I care about something, I pay attention to it, I look after it, I look out for it's best interests. It is nearly impossible to care about everything, and so I have resigned to caring about those people and things that I love.

I'm not sure why events in my life seem to always be of such dire circumstance, I'm sure it has something to do with my need to find something more to this mortal life that we live, and yet in all my searching, I still feel empty. A bit wiser perhaps, having loved, experienced, studied and so on, but when I seem to have grasped a great concept of life, that is the exact moment it dissipates and no longer holds the weight of a moment before.

Maybe this is the constant searching necessary to make happiness an enduring feeling. It is not good enough to find one way of living, and then rest on your laurels, happiness does not wait for people who are content with their lives. Happiness comes to those who wake up every morning and find it.

There are so many things I want to work on, so many things I yearn to do, and yet I have only been able to find the strength to do a few of them every day. My new goal in life is to find the endurance necessary to accomplish the goals I have already set out for myself. Write my book, set up a new website, learn how to paint, get singing lessons, and yet all these things must remain a second priority to my job of playing basketball.

And so, my focus must be on my work, and basketball breathes a new light in me now that it is my profession. I see things on the court in slow motion, as if the game itself were a canvas, and every motion the stroke of a brush. People laugh when sports are mentioned alongside art, I would argue it's the greatest art of all, the ability to control one's body.

The bottom line is art and beauty are everywhere, and if I truly wanted to explore these others venues to their fullest, I would have to make them part of my life's work, and perhaps some day I will. For now, I am fulfilled by becoming the best basketball player that I capable of.

Much love,
ZMP