The Ash of Life

"Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash."

-- Leonard Cohen

Creating poetry is not the goal of life. Neither is building companies, painting pictures, starting hospitals, or scoring touchdowns. Living well is what life is all about. Living fully, completely, like a hot, blue flame. If you live at this level of intensity, both you and your life are completely consumed in the process. What you leave behind is the ash, the evidence, nothing more.

And yet much of the time we are barely living at simmer. We muddle through luke warm days, not consumed by the passion of living but just trying to make it to the weekend and to that Lazy Boy recliner, or hot bath, that awaits us.

What are we waiting for? What are we saving our energy for?

This is it. No dress rehearsal. The only life we know for sure that we have. Burn, baby, burn!

(As an aside, this quotation from Leonard Cohen is on the cover of the DVD I'm Your Man, a movie about Leonard Cohen. My girlfriend's ex-husband gave it to her for Christmas. She really doesn't know Leonard Cohen from Leonard Nimoy, but I'm a huge Leonard Cohen fan, so, thanks, John, for the thoughtful gift! My point is that though wisdom really is everywhere, you never know where you'll find it-- on a DVD cover or in an ad in the New Yorker, on a restroom wall or in a country western song, on a T-shirt quickly passing you on the street or in a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. Wisdom is not found only in holy books and lectures by famous philosophers. Just by keeping your eyes open and your ears clean, you will indeed find Wisdom Everywhere!)