I’ve listened to Neil sing that song maybe a thousand times. (Raise your lighters if you know what I’m talking about.) And so, naturally, I thought I understood what it was about. It's a theme song for every soulmate-searcher on the planet, right? It's a lyrical manifesto for every sensitive romantic looking for The One. You know, the search for the glass slipper’s perfect fit, the twin flame, the split-apart, the heart of gold.

Sure, that's part of it. But if you read the quote at the top of the page again, you’ll discover it’s not just a story of the search for true love. We've all done our share of mining. And we've all come up short of our expectations. Is that because we were looking in the wrong places? Or were we looking for the wrong things?

I won’t pretend to have a backstage pass to Neil’s psyche. But I think he was trying to explain that he didn't have to go to Hollywood or to Redwood (or across the ocean) to complete his search. He confessed that he’d been spending too much time in his mind. (It’s such a fine line.) And as everyone knows, no good has ever come from that.

So what’s a determined glass slipper-bearer to do? I'm not going to tell you that you need to make yourself into the kind of person who would be lovable by the kind of person you want to find. Because other people have probably told you that. I'm happy to remind you it's true. But that's not the end of the story.

The crux of the tale, I think, was best told by Sam Phillips: We don't want lives of steel / We don't want hearts that feel / We want to live above it all. At first glance, these two lyrical stories don't appear to cohabitate very well. But if you listen a little closer, they’re both saying the same thing. The hard truth is that you won't find a heart of gold without doing a little work.

If you only want a soulmate so your life will be cushier, well, I've got some bad news. Life's not really like that. If you want a heart that doesn't feel any pain, then you're not going to have a heart of gold. And if you don't have a heart of gold, well, you're not likely to find a heart of gold.

The key is in the first line of Neil's quote, "It's these expressions I never give" that keep him searching. In other words, he needs to get out of his mind and out of his own way. He says he wants to live and he wants to give, but he's not doing the latter, so he can't do the former.

Hearts of gold don't find themselves lined up at the doorstep of those unwilling to give anything of themselves. And I'm not taking about the desperate kind of neediness that disguises itself as having just so much love to "give." I'm talking about being willing to live your own life. About being authentic. And about still being strong enough to share that life, its gifts, and the space it inhabits, with another human being, heart, soul, and sometimes messy fallout.

Real life is not neat and clean. Life is about digging in and getting yourself dirty. Look around at the people who are happiest. You’ll see they aren't worried about mud. Because without a little mud, life is not possible.

Wanting to live above it all means we never even scratch the surface. And while staying on the surface might keep us clean, it isn't all that interesting, is it? One thing’s for sure, we are never going to find any gold just laying around on the surface. That's not where gold likes to hang out.

Gold is a little more secretive than that. Gold is a cat, hiding god knows where until it is ready to be found, snuggling down into its makeshift forts of cardboard and cupboards, bushes and boxes, blankets and pillows. The more layers the better. And there it rests, waiting for our wits to grow sharp enough to find it.

Gold is a playful lover. One who wants you to work a little for it, knowing the payoff will be worth the effort. Yes, gold is kind of like foreplay. And if you think of it more as play than work, you're likely to have a lot more fun.

Hearts, as it turns out, are much the same. Though, from time to time, we've been known to wear them on our sleeves, this is not their preferred location. Hearts prefer to stay deep within our chests, where only those willing to look deep enough will be able to see them.
Hearts of gold are the rarest of metals. And the only way to find a heart of gold is to first transform your own heart. Like attracts like, no matter what you've been told. If you want to live, you've got to give, of yourself, and your heart.

You've got to give to yourself and to others. You've got to use your voice and to make space for other voices. You can't stand above it all, like some heartsick Gatsby peering over the balcony. You've got to walk into the crowd, the river, the mud, this thing called life. Yes, you.
Keep turning over stones. And I'll see you in the river.

-from "Dig Deeper" - one of 66 essays in the Gold Nautilus Award winning collection, Happiness Is an Imaginary Line in the Sand.
​
Available here: https://www.tlqonline.com/happiness-is-an-imaginary-line...

Your minds to what I am about to say.

         I am not here to hand you another overwrought cliché for you to toss into your growing stack of inspirational quotes you'll forget by dinnertime. I'm talking about changing the way you see the world around you. About rethinking your interactions with that world.

It's not just about your heart.

         Sure, being open requires an open heart. And I promise I'll get to that. But first we need to talk about the mind. We all live such a ridiculous amount of time there that the mind is the first door we need to get through.

         It would be easy to blame our modern habits. How, increasingly, every spare second of waking life is spent in a frenzy of multi-task-driven dysphoria. And so I will, a little. But it isn’t technology’s fault. It’s what we do with it. It’s how we do what we do with it.

         While our technological abilities are growing like a virus on, well, virus steroids, our minds are being numbed into submission. Our minds are constantly opening to new ways to use technology, and steadily closing to almost everything else.

         The mind and technology have one primary thing in common. They both are meant to work for us. Instead, we end up working for them. To be open means that sometimes we have to stop. We have to put down our electronic addictions and rethink every thing in our lives we have put on autopilot.

Though your heart is essential.

         What can be said about the heart that hasn’t already been said? Plenty, I’m sure. Because the heart knows everything the mind has ever learned and forgotten. And so much more. The heart has a stash of secrets so large it has taken thousands of years of poets just to reveal a tiny few.

         Yes, it is counter-intuitive.

         Because everywhere, all day long, there are reasons to close down. To protect yourself. From the naysayers and the nit-pickers, the needy and the ne’er-do-wells. What you cannot see with your heart slammed shut is that everywhere, all day long, there are millions of reasons to stay open.

         And I’m not just talking about the birds and the butterflies, the sexy storms and the saturation of colors under Sierra clouds. But when you open a door for yourself, you open a door for others.

Find your door to freedom.

         Because that is the only way. Because until we are open, we are not free. While we are vigilantly patrolling the borders of our egos, our comfort zone, our I-don’t-want-others-to-know-I’m-human, we are missing out on real life.

         The battle between open and closed is not new. Its roots are ancient and are still deeply embedded in the modern world. From the oppression of religious theocracies to the free love and new age movements, this tension between open and close remains a central theme of life.

         I get it. The world can be a scary place. But the secret to freedom is the same as the secret to conquering dream monsters. You must turn and look them in the face. Though you’re afraid of whatever may be on the other side of the door, you must open it anyway.

         This is the only way to freedom. You must open doors. Everywhere, every day, all the time. Open the door to smiling at strangers. Open the door to asking him out. Open the door to admitting mistakes. Open the door to saying you’re sorry. Open the door to letting more go.

And then open a little more.

         I'm talking about standing on desks. About challenging your thoughts, your feelings, your fears, your ideas, your knowings, your ways.

         You may think you’re already there. You’re already open and out there. But I'll bet you a beer you’re not. I'll bet that you could add a million tiny freedoms to your life that take no time or money.

         Open to the idea of rain, to the possibilities of flowers. Open to the rush of your real life lived, not simply imagined. Open your skin to the touch of a lover. Open your arms to your friends. Open your wallet to a stranger. Open your chakras, your mantras, and your ideas of yourself.

         There will always be naysayers. Open the door and let them go. Let go of all your collected thoughts of you. And make room for the joy that will flood itself in as soon as you unclutter your you.

Swim naked.

         Because really, is there anything better? Then do it in everything you do. Strip off the layers of closed-door clothes and dive in. Feel the silky caress down the length of your life. And live all the secrets of you.

         Let yourself unfold like all the flowers of spring. Give yourself and your beauty to the world. And then let the world shine it right back on you.

-from the Gold Nautilus Award winning collection, Happiness Is an Imaginary Line in the Sand. Available here: https://www.tlqonline.com/happiness-is-an-imaginary-line

​Doubt everything. Find your own light.
- Buddha

Socrates made his students answer their own questions. Galileo dared to doubt the church. And Darwin later took up his legacy. The Buddha described his own path, but wanted people to find their own way. Even Jesus was a man of doubt. If not for the doubters, we’d all still be in Plato’s cave.

From Rumi to Rimbaud, the great poets have always been doubters. From Da Vinci to Descartes, our great thinkers have looked through the lens of doubt and reimagined the world.

Bad things happen whenever we excuse doubt from the table at decision time. Without courage to doubt the President, we get a ten-year, two trillion-dollar war. Without courage to doubt our bankers, we see the collapse of a world economy.

If you would be a real seeker after truth,
it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt,
as far as possible, all things.
- Descartes
 
If faith is the vehicle to carry one's vision to fruition, then doubt is the bridge upon which it travels. Blind faith is as destructive a force as self-doubt. Both are out of balance and misplaced.

A certain measure of faith is necessary and constructive. We must believe in ourselves, our purposes, our relationships with each other and with the universe, in order to be whole. This faith cannot exist in a vacuum, though, or it becomes a senseless and destructive force that is counter to its essence.

Faith in the unknown, the invisible, the passion which moves us is as essential as oxygen to the human experience. Indeed a full human life is not possible without it. Still faith must know its split-apart doubt, in order to serve us.

Faith keeps many doubts in her pay.
If I could not doubt, I should not believe.
-Henry David Thoreau
 
Yes, doubt has its place. We are supposed to question, it makes our faith authentic. Those who are afraid to question their beliefs tacitly admit the weakness of them. Those unwilling to acknowledge the possible validity of truths beyond their own, become rigid to the natural flows of life. 

If we were to peek behind the flimsy curtain, instead of strength, we'd see fragility. If we were to read between the lines of these manifestos, the ink would reveal dogmas, not truths. A building that is too inflexible will crumble when the Earth shifts her weight. A tree that cannot bend will break into pieces in the wind. 

So is the mind like these things. When we travel the same thought paths too often, it creates ruts of thought, action, belief. Soon we are limited by where we can go, because the wheels of our brain cannot escape these ruts. Just as we do yoga to keep our bodies flexible, so we need to bend our brains to keep them useful.
 
Perfect confidence is granted
to the less talented as a consolation prize.
- Robert Hughes
 
I doubt any of us were put on this earth to accept someone else's story without a question. We were not given such wonderful brains only to follow instructions. We were not built with an innate sense of our own path, to follow a broken compass someone else gave us. We were not handed a blank piece of paper to color in someone else's lines.

If life is a daring adventure, as Ms. Keller told us, then we must not squander the chance to explore. I would rather doubt and be wrong than blindly accept and be right. At least the misjudgment would be my own.
The aphorisms of the ages are filled with encouragement to step to the beat of your own drummer. There has never been anything memorable written about following convention. No soul was ever inspired by lines teaching that life is about following orders.

You are never dedicated to something
you have complete confidence in.
No one is fanatically shouting
that the sun is going to rise tomorrow.
- Robert M. Pirsig
 
Part of the magic of life exists in the balance of many forces that appear, falsely, to be opposites: beauty and decay, love and hate, fear and courage, light and dark, life and death. This is part of the great illusion.
We must believe and doubt in balance or else neither has value. If we are to build the new world, then like an old married couple who've lost their rhythm, faith and doubt must learn to dance again. Let’s commit ourselves in the coming days and weeks to learn some new steps.
​
And to never lose our faith in the power of doubt.

Go on. Wrestle that angel.

Lean into her with your whole self. Wrap your arms around and press your torso to hers. Dig in with your heels and feel her weight pressing back. Hold on tight to her arms, her ribs, the curve of her hips, anywhere you can find purchase. Feel her electric pulse course through you. Don't give up. Don't give in. Don't let go too soon.

Our struggles are not curses. They are not mythical demons or punishments for our sins. They are not troubles to be wished away, not obstacles to avoid. There is not another, safer path we should have taken. They are gifts. The trouble is we are conditioned to believe that gifts are only things that come in boxes with wrapping paper and bows. (Or these days, in the last-minute three-dollar bag with colored tissue paper stuffed in the top.)

We're not used to gifts looking like a dark room with furniture we can’t see. Let alone a gift looking like our own darkness. Hell, we’re not even used to acknowledging our own darkness. Other people’s, sure. We’re like forest rangers with binoculars on lookout towers when it comes to spotting (and calling out) anyone else’s shadow. With any hint of our own shadows tucked up neat and tidy underneath us as we lounge in the brightness of our perpetual high noon. Only rainbows, unicorns, and smiley faces here.
 
Whatever.

Here’s the thing. We’re humans. We’re not angels, seraphim, or saints. We’re not even ascended beings. (If you are actually an ascended being, my apologies.) Which means we don’t generally spend our days floating around on clouds, wrapped in unearthly light, singing with voices like gelato (real Italian gelato, I mean), possessing all divine knowledge, and carrying tiny messages of truth to the besotted masses.

As humans, we’re possessed of just enough wit to want to know what the angels are talking about, but not quite enough to actually understand them. (You can see why we’d want to wrestle them. They piss us off.) If it feels like this is an unfair situation, that’s because it is. And if you think about it, no one promised us anything about life being fair. (Seriously, look on the back of your ticket if you don’t believe me.) Life is an enter-at-your-own-risk event.

So, how again are these things supposed to be gifts? Let me explain a different way. Recently there was a single mobile game app from Japan that grossed up to $75 million a month. The worldwide video game industry grossed over $93 billion the same year. What this means is that, while we complain constantly about the riddles of our real lives, we are perfectly willing to spend hard earned cash, and lots of it, to solve make-believe problems. Or at least to blow them up.
 
Let me say that another way.

You know how, whenever you are part of any given organization -- be it your job, your math club, or your cult -- someone will eventually decide the thing that will make this group more cohesive is a ropes course? Before it became kind of a cliché, a ropes course was actually a good idea. It allows people to face their fears and to transcend them, generally with the support and encouragement of other humans who are there to face their own demons. The challenges are physical and emotional. And overcoming them provides self-assurance and an opportunity to bond with others.

Life’s kind of like that. We don’t think of it that way, because life is something we do every day all day, not just once, or once every few years. Whenever I have traveled in my life, I wake up every morning excited to face the unknown adventures that await me. When I am back to my daily routines, I strive to remember that I can greet every day just like this. I don’t have to be in another city or country to find adventure or to be excited about my day.

Whether we admit it or not, we like puzzles. We like to be challenged. And not just on the screen. If you think about it, life would probably not be worth living if all the streets were flat, the weather was always perfect, our kids were always well behaved, our thoughts were never troubled, and we had all the money we could ever spend. Wait a second, that actually sounds pretty damn good. Forget all that other stuff I said.

Just kidding.

While it’s tempting to think that a life of nothing but ease would be nothing but grand, this is flawed thinking. The only reason we know anything about ourselves is because we’ve had to figure it out. Stop me if I’ve said this before, but how many of us have known trustafarians who are pretty screwed up. Probably everyone. Though it may sound like a good idea, saving your children from certain hardships, setting them up so they’ll never have to work to make a place for themselves in the world is not really doing them any favors.

So give yourself permission to grapple. It’s okay that we don’t have everything figured out. It’s okay that we walk around daily bearing the weight of these small worlds. That our minds are constantly working on these puzzles in the background. That these angels we wrestle make guest appearances in our dreams, our work lives, our arguments with friends and lovers, our endless conversations with ourselves.
​
We were born to wrestle. It’s part of our DNA. And history tells us the angels know how to lose. So go on. Lean in.

​Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists.
- A Course in Miracles

​Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible. 
- Richard Feynman

         In other words, be like a child again. Not childish, as almost all adults can be -- which is far more annoying than it is endearing -- but childlike. A child is endlessly curious. Though a child does not really need to know the answers. A child just needs to question, to investigate, to dig, and to root, and to turn over stones. Then to keep on digging, building, adding, and tearing down. And starting over with new questions and ideas.
​
         The finding of things is fun, too. But it is not the most essential thing. The discovery of anything will do. Children are masters of serendipity. Their innate impulse is to question, and to go about looking for new things, whether they are water bugs or woozles. The important thing is the adventure, which really never ends. And which is only occasionally interrupted by the silliness of adults making them stop to eat, or to brush their teeth and put on jammies.

         For children, the world is stuffed full of magic things. This is because, well, the world is actually stuffed full of magic things. Our prejudices are learned. We are not born with our narrow approaches to life and its inhabitants. Our natural inclination is to seek out and to celebrate the magic. Every day, all day long. I think this is why children annoy some adults and delight others. The annoyed ones don’t want to be reminded of all that they’ve left behind. The delighted ones either still carry a healthy dose of magic with them, or they at least know where to find it.

        Certainty is an illusion.

       If there is evil in the world, which is at least debatable, the root of it most certainty lies in the desire for certainty. The older we get the more we realize how few absolutes there are in the world. But one of the absolutes we’re all pretty sure about is change. Everything is on its way to somewhere else all the time. There is no standing still. There are no forever answers.

        And so how could there really be certainty about anything. When we are young, we think that the answer to the question of who we are is answerable. If we are really precocious, we may even think we know who we are. Or maybe we think, it’ll just take a little more examination, a little more life experience. The older we get, the more we understand that there could never be an answer to this question. And even if there were, it would be outdated as soon as we uttered it. In fact, we can’t even answer the question of what we mean by the word “me.”

      As I’ve said before, it’s okay to be uncertain. In fact, it is preferred. Imagine a world without uncertainty. We’d be bored out of our heads. In fact, there wouldn’t be much point to it at all. The corporate, governmental, and religious institutions of modern society and their radical counterparts rely upon our deep-seated fear of uncertainty and our absolute unwillingness to admit this fear. Without our fear, they are nothing. They know that we desperately want someone else to tell us what the fuck is going on.

         Don’t give in.

      We’re so addicted to certainty that we create and obsess over our daily routines. Even though they create the very boredom we complain about. Even though it is these routines, along with our fear of uncertainty, that are the hands that secure the blinders in place on our heads. And those things make it really hard to fully experience life. Don’t buy in. Don’t sell yourself out. The big lie is that you need to give up your curiosity, your creativity, your desire to cut your own path through life, in the name of becoming an adult. Your curiosity is not the enemy. Any more than terrorism is the enemy. To paraphrase Edward Snowden, bathtubs and police officers kill more people than terrorism, yet we’ve been told to give up our fundamental rights to protect ourselves. It’s a lie, just like the lie that it’s time to grow up and kill your dreams.

       We do not need to cast away our curiosity in order to be fully evolved adults. In fact, it’s just the opposite. All of the greatest spirits who have walked the planet have been possessed of fiercely curious minds and hearts. If you are paying attention, there is never a reason to be bored. Wake up. That’s it, really. If we are awake, we cannot help but be curious. Because what is curiosity, really, except the tendency to be awake. And to be looking for more stones to turn over.

         To be like a child again.

​Alchemists were able to turn base metals into gold. Or so the legend goes. The alchemist must undergo their own transformation. As inside, so outside.
 
So it is with writing. And the alchemy of words.
 
You have all probably read writers who have the ability to turn words into gold. But to do so, they must allow themselves to be changed in the process.
 
Here’s an example of words being turned into gold.
 
I am honored to share with you that my recent collection of words -- Happiness is an Imaginary Line in the Sand  -- has received a Gold Nautilus Award.
 
Which is certainly enough, all by itself. (I mean, I thought only people like Barbara Kingsolver and Gary Zukav won Gold Nautilus Awards.)
 
But Nautilus also named the book the Best of Small Press.

These two honors certainly go beyond my expectations. And I find myself a tiny bit at odds as to what to do with this information.
 
Of course, I want to celebrate the news with you. And I also know that social media has made us all a little weary of all the self-promotion.
 
Maybe it is just that the world is filled with bad news right now. And I thought I’d share a little glimmer of good news with you.
 
It is like the book’s titular essay explains. A big part of being happy is deciding to be happy. Creating a little alchemy of your own out of the circumstances of your life. And bringing forth a little gold from inside to light your way.
 
I hope you are well. And that you are finding reasons, big and small, to celebrate your own lives.
 
Take care of yourselves.
 
TQ

P.S. If you haven't pick up a copy yet, Happiness Is an Imaginary Line in the Sand is available here.
And my friend and fellow Landmark Prize winner Kip Greenthal also won a Nautilus Award this year. You can find her award-winning novel Shoal Water here.

Trust. As if you didn’t know better.
While we walk around guarding ourselves against every conceivable threat from the outside, most of us betray ourselves in small and big ways all day, everyday. Mostly it’s the little voice that we carry around inside us. The one that nags, criticizes, and unnecessarily narrates our lives all day long. (And all night for those insomniacs among us.) Once we turn on the light of awareness, we realize that all this listening we do to this sociopathic voice in our heads is exhausting.
* * *

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