CHAPTER 15

Captain Jerk of the
Starship Interference
At Your Dis-Service

   I now see why I couldn't reformat Ashley's Life Disc: I wasn't meant to. It was not my karma nor mission. My frustration was Life's blatant way of blasting its message through my overly helmetted skull:

   REQUESTED ADVISE is a consoling side of friendship.

   UNREQUESTED ADVISE is either the meddle pedal for blind-driving Do-Gooders or the joy shtick of controllers.

   As I see it, an adviser becomes a nagger when others are not hungry to eat what's being force fed.

   Just because we feel the need to don our cosmic cape of ― Tah! Dah! ― Super Scout! Here to defend the American Fray!... so what?

   Is it a nerd? Is it to blame? No! It's Super Dope!

   Who of us can say whether another is wrong or right to own the biggest begonia or simply till the soil? If they should gain or lose weight? Smoke or not? Change or stay at their job? Dump associates? Cut their hair? Whether they are meat-eaters or veggies? What political party they frolic with? Whether they are NYC chic or country casual? Married or single? Gay or “straight” … Or whatever? It’s none of our karma. Not ours to judge.

   We all have our own perception of we believe is right or wrong. Stress and piety emerge when we battle to impose our will on another's contract with their self, their conscience and their individual course of growth activities on this Cosmic College. Basically, there Destiny for this current journey they are traveling.

   Case on point: I was in a print shop once with two other customers. The lady who entered the shop was so heavy she barely squeezed through the door. The man who stood next to me behind the counter was a gentleman I often noticed jogging in the neighborhood. He was in his late 50s, an out-going enthusiast for life and looked in great shape. As he checked his stationary order with the owner he casually lit up a cigarette.

   I don't know if the lady's altering-ego read Mighty Mouth or Righteous Reformer but she immediately struggled to get her stained moo-moo clad self out of the chair she was stuck in. Throughout her laborious one yard trek to the counter, she loudly scolded the fellow for smoking; for what he was doing to his body. I wonder if she would have done that had the fellow been George Burns, but that's another karma.

   Anyway, the jogger, the lady shop owner and I were stunned silent as she heaved her way to the front desk, while embracing a giant donut bag from the nearby bakery, and continued to harass him.

   The owner and I were so flabbergasted with the slo-mo paradox of judgment that we both lit up a cigarette to join the fellow in our back counter awe-dience. As she shrieked her hypothesis of good health, I silently wondered if there ought to be an 11th Commandment:

   As a side note, none of us were judging her weight or her donut bag, we were just stunned by her bitchy anger toward us... and we didn’t even know who she was. Guess everyone needs to feel like a superior warrior over others no matter how lame their weapon may be.

   What is it that makes our specie assume another's need or want for outside altering, besides the ego disguised as Captain Jerk from the Starship Interference?

   Why do people assume they have the right to re-chart the destination of others when they don't know the others’ flight log, let alone their own?

   This thought first developed when I lived with Ashley. Whenever I sought to stop her from navigating nose dives into what I felt were emotional Black Holes, her force shield screamed: "Off Limits!"

   And she was right. That was her privilege. I truly had no authorization to invade her space, except if her course was about to crash into mine. Then I could either fly with the flow, or flee.

   True. We often become captured passengers on another's kamikaze flight, so as a kid, I learned to fly with it, collecting all the educational souvenirs I could, like:

   Through the years, I've met so many people drowning in self-dug grief pools by dwelling on another's lack of response, be it toward their love, advice or passion to be controlled. The futility I observed held a giant message:

   Ergo! If only God can make a tree, a soul and all the stuff we play and work with in this Cosmic College, then possibly, the best way to set ourselves free from pointless stress is by not struggling to impersonate God. And, by ceasing the vain tussle to reformat another's chosen attitude and destiny.

   I felt free when I finally declared:

   "Hey, Life! I've got your secret. I'm not here to change others. Nor make them clones of myself. Nor force them to think as I think. Nor draft them to run on my tracks. Nor cheerlead, nag or drag others into living as I perceive the perfect luving life ought to be lived."

   I quantum leaped when I realized that my success is not about winning others over to my way of thinking. Nor altering others who don't understand or agree with my lifestyle. Nor reforming the heart of anyone who has no desire to love me as-is.

   So too, there's no personal or spiritual gain nor growth in letting others shanghai us into their conceptual arena of who and what they think we ought to be.

   There is no merit in electing ourselves as a mortal savior of another because no mortal can play savior. We're too close to our own picture to see all the colors and designs of the greater puzzle.

   Even the news tells us that mortal truths constantly fluctuate. Today's manna is tomorrow's toxin, and vice versa. Today's absolute is tomorrow's obsolete. There is no one ideal answer nor direction for everyone except what our conscience tells us is true for ourselves.

   Heck! If people can't even agree on the best ice cream flavor, how can we dictate what constitutes the immaculate lifestyle for all souls?

Copyright © 2004 by Krystiahn