A good life

I've been feeling really good this weekend. I'm working hard. I'm self-disciplined without it feeling forced. I feel loved without feeling dependent on anyone, in particular, for love or support or attention. I'm making peace with the baseness and foolishness and cowardice and otherwise shortcomings of most people, including myself, and just learning to really enjoy those folks who offer or try to offer something in the world that is a bit more profound or decent or useful or important.

I've made peace in the last month with the fact that we will likely lose some of our kids to prison or death or other various fates that they choose or that others choose for them, too often because they fail to choose otherwise. It's a sad reality to come to terms with. But it is likely as long as people choose as foolishly as they do.

In the meantime, I work with some of the most decent people I've ever worked with in my life. Working with kids, many of whom are headed to jail or a really rough life without some kind of intervention, is work that takes an awful lot of heart. A sharp mind doesn't hurt either. But it takes what really matters in life. A big heart. And they have given me more of what I care about in life - freedom - than any other job or situation I've ever been in. And I really appreciate that. It's great when I'm doing well and I need the freedom to excel. But it's most appreciated and needed when I'm doing badly and need the grace of others to offer me the slack to learn how to do better and be the best I can be.

When I think of Brandi, these days, I don't do so with pining or heartache at losing contact. I look at her more honestly, seeing her warts as much as her great qualities, hoping life is good for her, and thanking my lucky stars that I got another chance to find someone who I can share my heart and mind with as freely as I did with her and and perhaps more so.

The great thing about working with the kids I work with is that it is clarifying just how refreshing and fulfilling and gratifying and stimulating it is to work with and spend time with decent, intelligent, kind-hearted, good folks of the world.

I was walking through Walmart, today, and I'm looking at all the girls that might be available. And what was interesting was that despite all the hotties around, and a period in my life when more of them are interested in me than I've ever experienced before, the girl who really caught my eye, today, was this really sweet girl with glasses and a nice smile.

It's still all the qualities that my parents and teachers and every decent impulse in my life told me that mattered that mattered. Despite all of our doubts - and most decent people have a lot of doubts about this, it turns out - it is those impulses that matter most.

I'm looking for a girl with a special insight into people and into life. I'm looking for someone who's got a sweet smile like that girl in Walmart, today. I'm looking for a friend and someone who I want to spend all my time with anyway. But, mostly, I'm just looking with a heart that is content with my life, with all of its challenges, but which seeks fulfillment in sharing that kind of insight with someone who cares enough to seek it.

Brandi was the closest friend, up to this point in my life, to seek it out with me. I have several friends, these days, to share it with. I'd just like that one special friend to share it with as my mind and heart mulls it over.

Stephen Spielberg would be interesting to trade insights with. As would Joe Nye or Francis Fukuyama or David Fromkin or Gordon Wood. Dar Williams would be fun to spend an afteroon with. Or the Dixie Chicks. Or Toby Keith. Or even Bono (though I would give him endless shit about his need to put out an album with the heart and soul of Rattle and Hum or The Joshua Tree, again). Or Jamie Culum. Or Hootie and the Blowfish. Nora Ephron would be interesting to talk with. As would Wes Andersen. Or George Will. Or Mike Myers. I'd love to have a beer with George Bush and discuss the last 8 years with him. And I'd be curious what Barack Obama might have to say. Or even Bill Clinton, once he's done spinning for his wife.

But what I'd really like is someone to share my heart and soul with. I just want to share a life and some kids and a family with someone. And maybe some books and some movies and some deep and interesting and maybe some not so deep and interesting insights into life. I'd like the sharing I do in my life to be with someone with whom I do more than just read or watch or hear about. Ideally, I'd like to be with someone who would also like to do something greater or more meaningful in the world than most folks aspire. But right now, I'd settle for someone who might really challenge me and love me. Someone to teach me me how to love and serve and see greatness in people in ways that I've not seen or know before. I'd settle for that.

In the meantime, I've been living a good life. I've dedicated my life to helping to resolve some of the most pernicious, serious, dangerous, and important problems that humanity and America has faced. And I work with kids who need the help the most for my day-job. Not a bad way to live a life, I don't think.

I've got a good life. It'd be better with someone to love. But it's a good life, nonetheless. For all of the pining and envy and worries I might experience, at times, that someone else out there has it better, a day like today convinces me that perhaps my life is much better than I've given it credit.

A good life is doing good freely because it's the right thing to do, not because you're forced to, and accepting those facts of life that you can't change, today, but with the hope that you might find a way to make them better tomorrow.

As John Quincy Adams says in Stephen Spielberg's brilliant film, Amistad:

"Now gentlemen, I must say that I differ with the keen minds of the South, and with our President who apparently shares their views, offering that the natural state of mankind is instead, and I know this is a controversial idea, is freedom. Is freedom. And the proof is the length to which a man, woman or child will go to regain it once taken. He will break loose his chains. He will decimate his enemies. He will try and try and try, against all odds, against all prejudices, to get home."

I live that life today. That life of freedom as the basis for being and doing good in the world. It doesn't mean that I or anyone does good all the time. The freedom just offers us more real opportunity and space to learn the lessons that are involved with becoming and being a good person and a better person. And I'm prouder of that fact and happier with that life than I've ever been with anything, at this point in my life. Except for perhaps true love. And I'm sure that's well on its way.

Have you ever lived a life you loved? Have you ever lived a life of freedom for higher purpose? That's the life I get to live today.

If you get the chance, I recommend it.

Love,
Ben