It’s happening again – Who wants to hear it! My poor self-indulgent, self-analytical garbage! But like a mantra it lends me the space to sort things out, to look logically at things.

            I can’t stop driving myself to achieve what I NEED to before I die. But I never really put the time into one thing. I’m obsessed with getting it done but I can’t sit consistently and do it – because when I obsess the object has to become my whole active life – you achieve exactly what you put into it proportionately. 20 hours of writing might produce one publishable article. 40 straight hours of uninterrupted marketing might produce “x” amount of sales, or one gig.

            There are 168 hours per week, 56 slept, 40 working “for the man”, leaving 72 for family, self, obsession. Sounds like a lot? But family includes Driving, Playing, Baseball, School Functions, Neurosis.

            But even if I write only ONE hour per day shouldn’t I eventually find success? Do the math. But I’m saved by the knowledge that if it really does become an obsession (writing), if I can convince myself that it’s what I was put on earth to do, after fatherhood, it will become an organic drive, like eating, and it will grow.

            And living, organically growing, it takes on the cycles of an organism, and begins life of its own.

            By concentrating on one subject you bring life to it. As long as your attention is rapt with the process, and it IS a process – not simply a stagnant object of your interest – you have the ability to set the process on a course where eventually it will proceed on its own. If you work, say, a business through the initial phases and nurture it, it will soon run on its own, reach whatever peak it will, age and die. It takes on the qualities of Life. Same happens with any art or sport – the process begins when you pick up an instrument, then grows as long as it’s nurture with attention. But in its time the fingers become frail, and the ability ages.

            We know the process by raising a human…

1) Infancy – An infant needs unconditional love and attention to survive the horrific first year. It’s survival is absolutely dependant on your attention and drive to keep it alive (this, fortunately for all animals, is ingrained in our souls. To find something synonymous that you truly love in life – writing, singing, business – is a true gift we all can possess, and once realized, we nurture this gift with as much love as we do our child).

            Pick up your horn once a month and the intent will die. Great musicians nurture their gifts like mothers. Their eyes are never off their instruments; and their impulses to nurture the music grow stronger in time. Such effused love and attention will one day enable the infant  to walk and think on its own, feed itself and survive separate from the mother.

2) Adulthood – The human now finds conflict as its needs are met without thought. The musician can now burst through scales that once sounded (to him) miraculous, but he is ever bored with stagnation. If the searching and nurturing continues his music will become almost divine. If he stops, he will never be able to move past the scales, and will be defined musically by that point in time.

            We see this everywhere in humanity. There comes a point when many humans cease to grow intellectually or emotionally, and they are defined by that (“They are ‘That’ kind of person.”).

            Once an organism finishes its growth, the natural process is that it begins to die, already having been “defined” as the highest point achieved in the process. It is natural and completely implicit in Life.

            Your gifts will grow as long as they are nurtured. An unnurtured gift will not grow (how many adults wander the earth stuck in some stage of childhood or adolescence?). You are naturally a mother to that which you love. If you choose to ignore the object of your love, if you instead concentrate on life’s petty objects, your gift will be arrested and die unformed.

            You create life, Dr. Frankenstein, but you have to dig for that which is buried inside of you. The conditioned banalities of living are the dirt you have to dig through. Find that which you love. For Human parents of a human child it’s easy. For someone searching for his purpose it’s monumentally difficult at times, but you have no choice. There is an infant inside you that must be nurtured – it is your duty as a mother/father. Figure out what you love on this earth and do it – nurture it and make sure it’s healthy. That is your purpose for being here.