Part I
My story is not my own. I lived it. God designed it. With his divine architecture he crafted my life, a dream, and a ‘story’, which if you are here you have already read. I felt everything like a clock that had been wound up and released like clockwork. There’s no way I could have done the things I did without the clockwork. My story was not my own.
The best thing I have done second to living out this God dream was to write it down. The long range and depth of melancholy that gave rise to the writing process was part of the story, part of the dream. In fact, the ‘story’ would not have transpired unless I lived to tell the tale, so I was never meant to die even though I tried quite heartily. So, beginning with the first suicide attempt up until the last, I was never meant to die, I was meant to write it down and tell the tale. Otherwise the movie would be over with a decisive, “THE END”, and everyone steps out of the theater and gets some pizza in the shopping center forgetting completely what the movie was about.
Everything I have written since is extra and I can say with pride that most of it came from me, at least it feels like it.
You might be wondering from among all the exorbitant writings when there will be a sequel ‘story 2’? There will be none, at least like the first one, there will certainly not be one about me. There will be one about African people standing up to claim their royal ancestry. It will be about Mexico conquering their colonial past. It will be about Japanese people celebrating their families and working less…etc. Divine architecture? Yes!
We have been wound up like a clock. It is time and it will happen like clockwork once we realize that we are a human family and there are patterns of morality that we need to share or we will be divided into thousands of millions of private tragedies with nothing to bring us together but an eclipse and a dark sun.
You can wait for the movie or you can read ‘story’, whoever and however you got here. I ask something of you and I’ve never asked much of you, but I ask you to share ‘Story’, the story of Peter’s life. Everything else is extra, but it is meant to be shared. This is not just a book you are holding in your hands; it is a life, it is a true world of spirit of writing, activism, and mysticism.
My cousin said, “You remind me of those ancient heroes who had to go to hell as a rite of passage and come back to tell the tale. Except you’re the American version. Sometimes I think you have a great American novel in you and other times I think you are the great American novel.
That you went to hell and survived is an inspiration to anyone who has ever suffered. Of course you can never come back unscathed, but you’re still going and I’m proud of you for that.”
Thank you Cuz! I’m flattered and only take issue that it is specifically American, I like to think it is universal. But yes you are right I went to hell and back and that is my earthly proof. I am so deeply flawed as a human being. As someone who has hit Rock Bottom so many times I understand and feel–not what you are feeling–but how it feels to be broke. I am here to tell you that you are not broken, you are bent.
There are people who don’t believe in God so the idea of clockwork in any fashion is rejected. We have to pray for them because they can’t pray for themselves. They are a little crazy because they think everything is random and absurd. That’s an absurd position to take. Let my story fill you with disbelief about your lack of belief. What’s impossible about the story is that I survived it. What’s impossible is the range of human experience, that I bounced back with excellence. You don’t have to believe in God to know that it is a hell of a story and it deserves to be told.
It’s getting late and it’s not my fault that I was late. I was meant to be late and lost. That’s how you know I did what I did. We are late and we are lost and we can be found even if you feel like shit. Don’t you get it…I am here to warn you from my own experience that we can never do enough and the only thing we can do is to try out being righteous and in service of something greater than oneself…even if it seems absurd it really isn’t, it’s going to fix the world one beautiful mind at a time.
Romance isn’t enough, we need to use our energy in different ways at higher levels with purpose and camaraderie, not all about sex, there are more important things to do. The true romance of ‘story’ is between Peter and God, a love and hate relationship. When I say “hate” you have no idea how deep that goes, what it feels like for a cosmic supreme entity to strongly dislike and doubt the worth of your very existence. What I hope for you is that you form a relationship with Him. He will put you in your place and make you feel bad for not doing enough, but he will provide the most beautiful joy you could ever imagine.
Everything I feel ranges from up top to down low. I try to find a place in between to communicate with you, but it’s hard to know where you are at. If we are to create a 2nd ‘story’, I know that it will not be about me, it will be about you and all of us. The next stage, critical threshold, and moment in time has been wound like a clock. As a human race we will execute like clockwork and fulfill the logic of human destiny.
That’s why ‘story’ needs to be told. That’s the way we wind up the clock and we can’t do that without something in common. If we are all raring to go we can come together and accomplish anything tomorrow.
Please share this link…
Sharing is urgent, timely, and pressing.
Part II
This is the second part of this essay, not to be confused with a sequel to ‘storyPeter.life’!
OOh awe wow! I am not to be confused with a super hero, I could not be anymore down to earth. In the sense that I am not flying high on my power nor my ability to achieve grandiose worldwide progress. The people who know me, who KNOW me well, could not be fooled into putting me up on a pedestal. They see me as anyone else, a regular guy with a regular attitude and hopefully they think I am pretty nice.
In fact, throughout my journey no one has revered, worshipped, or adored me for being anything more than a cool guy with some powers to forge connections, be brave, and love expansively. What I can say with a little bit of pride is that I help other people to not feel regular, but heroic in their own way. When they realize that, and when they forge a relationship with God, they become as holy as anyone else, and that places them on an even playing field. They become one with others, one with themselves, and always one with God. Everyone has the opportunity, there is a higher power that can empower you to not feel intimidated by anyone, we are all the same with only GOd above, and that is radical equality.
I don’t want to say it, and I know this will piss off a lot of people, but we do not need to kneel down to any human being, including the greatest players who lived the greatest stories and reflected the goodness of GOd in beautiful ways that established the Truth, which inspired and brought us all together. I am not going to name names, but God wound up the clock and the rest was clockwork. Such miraculous brilliance and genius could not emanate from a human being, even one as beautiful as that man who lived 2000 years ago. Let’s all give credit where credit is due…this is bigger than one man.
Your life is a gift from God and if you feel gratitude for this world, then it makes sense to praise God for making it happen. If a truly humble man with special powers walked this earth, he would not want you to worship him, he is too humble for that, he would want to be at the same level as any man or woman. God animated that man with divine inspiration, and his example is meant to inspire, but the origin is GOd and we need to appreciate that because when it comes down to it, that is where everything comes from.
I don’t want to put a dent in your faith. I want to raise you up and help you realize how holy you are at this juncture in history. We need people of God who overcome denominations to establish truths that help us move forward together. You are animated with divine inspiration, and you must act like it, or this world will become lifeless, without spirit, and BORING.
If you find that the words that come out of your mouth to be without substance and not interesting to anyone other than yourself, then you are wasting time. We need real conversations, it starts there, and evolves into real speech, and that becomes real action. It is too exciting a moment in our history to waste it on frivolity. Throwing your hands up at places where things are happening that you do not control is borderline pointless…engage the world around you.
You are animated using animation techniques but this is not a version of the classic ‘fairy tale’. For one, there are no villains in this world, only potential, the potential to be good and do good, which are the same thing. There are no heroes or heroines to elevate and put up on a pedestal. We all have the same capacity for being down to earth, and if someone rises above that, they will quickly be knocked down to size. When we look up to someone for being more than excellent and even sacred, it devalues our own ability to contribute to the world, we follow their example, when we should be setting the example. We do not have to go it alone, we all need to be on a team. That will be more effective than acting alone, but remember that you are on the team and your contribution matters as much as anyone else’s.
Is all of this just a humble brag, where I show how great I am by talking about how small I am? In a way, yes. Sometimes I feel like I am great, or at least have been great in the past. Sometimes I not only feel small, but infinitesimally worthless. I do not say that as a humble brag, I am ashamed to share that with you. Who is this guy I am supposed to be inspired by, he doesn’t even have God’s favor? If God doesn’t like me, why should anyone else? That’s not a humble brag, that is a confession and I am ashamed to share that with you.
So as a trade off…
Don’t hate me in the way that God does sometimes. And if despite that, you find something that I have done to be inspirational, then I am humbled to share that with you, and I thank you for your consideration. Don’t want to be on a pedestal and don’t want to go down there in that hot place. If you find me down to earth on the other hand, that is my greatest hope and the life I most want to fulfill.
Obviously ‘Story’ is about my life, but it goes beyond me. I hope it is transcendental, I hope it captures the essence of the human journey and the inexhaustible creative agency we are capable of as individuals, communities, nations, and as a world. In a timeless eternity that is set before all of us together, we must work to build that world now! and do so at the same time powered by the same God with love that is all for all, no longer will there be ‘they’, now it will just be ‘us’.
I don’t want to be a shameless self-promoter, but I also don’t want to have done it all for nothing. Be a participant in the process of popularizing WalkforWorld and helping this to go global as soon as possible. We need to get to work…
Share x4…empower
share x16…empowering
share x64…empowered
share x256…soon to be: togetherworld
Part III
I want to talk about how great I am. No humble brag, just straight up brag. I have risked my life in more ways than one, and over and over again. Sometimes I sacrificed for stupid reasons for stupid people, putting myself on the line just to deliver a message or make a statement. I sacrifice one brilliant line a day. Burning for others, putting out their flames, rescuing them from a burning building, with no sense of personal danger. I risk my life for people I do not like and who don’t deserve anyone better. I empathize with the lost and estranged and go so far that I feel the pain that they feel. I sacrifice for an abstraction, for the good of the world. I don’t even know what I am doing half the time, I just know my life is at stake, and there is no option, no way of avoiding the imperative to act, not acting is sacrilegious and we all know where that goes.
I feel a lot of love, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get enough to fill that deep canyon in my soul. Okay, now we have self-pity. I don’t deserve it, everything I have felt, I don’t deserve to hit the lows that I have hit. Presumably I hit them for your sake, I hit those lows because it is meant to inspire something greater between us as people. I grudgingly move forward with a slight pang of resentment for having to deliver again and again, striking pain or the threat of it–most of the time–but it seems like always.
You may think I’m important, but I also deserve your pity, I am damaged. I ask you to go out into the world and do something magnificent with your life, run away from me, and define who you are and what you love. I now ask you to run towards me and shower me with love and affection, I don’t think I will ever heal in any other way.
I ask of you to be selfless. Selflessness hurts like a bitch. You’re dragging your feet waiting for the world to begin so you can jump in when everything is already in place. It has already happened, the world has begun, and there are no games, this is not the Olympics, this is your moment, gold, silver, bronze, it doesn’t matter as long as you try. There will be no countries to represent, everyone is participating for the world as a whole. One sport is as good as another even if some events are painstakingly boring. Will the Olympics be boring without fierce competition between nations? It will be even more beautiful.
Share widely. This needs to go global and it needs to transcend boundaries and reach everyone in every crack of the world. This is beyond nationalism, which means it goes beyond the imagined communities that correspond to nation-states. Like I said before this spans difference, and it is not American, it is universal.
The reality is there are not going to be many Indians who speak English or Spanish or any other language but their own unique form of communication, their own diverse indigenous cultures and languages. We have to read it for them and dig deep and do whatever we can to represent them honestly and truly. Maybe it’s not worth translating, maybe action is more powerful than words, giving those indigenous people rights and giving them their own land back.
WalkforWorld is not for everybody. It is not for atheists. It is not for zealots. It is not for the practical. It is not for purists. It is not for the superficial. It is not for philosophers. It is not sacred. It is not profane. It is not easy, but it is not hard.
But it was hard for me. It is not easy being me. Sometimes I feel good about going to hell and back and offering some hard earned wisdom that I can share with you. Other times it feels pointless. I guess I am waiting for the world to begin, I exert no further influence on the outcome of coming together as a human race. I have my words, but cannot imagine sacrificing in a serious way ever again.
I have shared my story with only the people I love the most, not many people, but hopefully enough that it will start the ball rolling. Roughly 16 people, and if each of those people share it with 16 more, and so on, we will gain traction and this will go global. The acceleration and momentum depend on you. I’ll provide the link again in my hopes that you will consider mustering up the courage to share something that is very strange and may reflect badly on you–you might be worried about that, and that’s okay. But right now we need eyes on the page, and it is a desperate circumstance if we don’t get that. This is urgent/timely/ and pressing. Couldn’t be more so.
So here it is to do what you want with…this is my story, our story, and God’s story.
And if you want to go to the source and share WalkforWorld that would be great. You can find my LittleFreeLibrary at walkfor.world. Please take a book, and give it to someone else when you’re done!
*INSIDE THE CARNIVAL.ME* 