Fake Steak Sucks

Sometimes I think of how nice it must feel to believe that one of the two major parties is actually on your side, fighting for issues that matter to you. To believe it arrogance to think that the future might ever depend upon anything you will ever think, believe, say, or do. To believe that the future we all need will be ushered in by individuals born to lead and to rule, people we need only give our approval to. To sit on the sideline and shout our encouragement to those who battle it out in the arena for our benefit. 

But I have experienced that delusion, and I know that it has never made me happy. Because while I can lie to my conscious self, I know that I can never lie to my true self, my real self, my soul. While I tell my thinking mind that everything is okay and a certain breed of supermen and superwomen are shaping humanity's destiny as God or destiny instructs them, some part of me knows it is merely a story I tell myself in order to avoid speaking up, acting up, rising up. Holding on to such illusions has only ever caused me pain.

I am reminded of the traitor from The Matrix, the one who regrets having been awakened to the truth and is willing to betray all his friends and comrades in order to retreat to the security and small pleasures to be found in the illusion of the matrix. But I know, as one who used to eat fake food in the matrix, that it is better to experience all the horrors reality can inflict upon us for a brief taste of something real.

Awakened, I taste the fruits that I have raised in my meager little garden, recognizing them for the little miracles they are. I cherish each genuine connection that I have with other humans, recognizing them as part of the miracle of existence. I drink in the poems and prose, the lyrics and the music, the paintings and the movies made by those in touch with something beyond the matrix—and in turn I am in touch with the miraculous. And I realize that what I call miracles are merely those moments where I am face to face with reality, the matrix no longer standing between me and the awesome universe. Once one has experienced miracles—which is to say, once one has opened oneself up to miracles, to reality—one need never again fear gazing into truth. And once one has done that, the matrix no longer has appeal, offers no joy, no temptation. Having stepped outside the illusions, life is nothing but miracles.