Looking out the bedroom window, I see the trees and the blue sky and an orange breasted bird hopping in the grass looking for a bug or seed to eat. I look at my hands and see perfect potential – the hands are only good if you use them. They are action. When you’re not using your hands you are idle and lost in the thought world, which turns out to be nothing.

            The Gift is this life, this place to play in, that somehow you are afforded for 80 years. As a child, you just play – everything is action. Feeling loved means being embraced, having fun means playing with others. Being upset means crying and kicking. In time we have all that beaten out of us, expected to Act like Adults, who stop acting, and all their actions become mental acts, obsessive mental images and aspirations, all in the span of a moment, all while idling in a chair for hours. Sometimes we let the Media Screen act for us and we watch, as if we’re doing anything, but it’s just more mental images as our hands lie beside our bodies face up on our laps. In time the muscles and blood begin to thin, their capacity diminished from their own nature by disuse. Finally the body says, OK. FUCK YOU, I’M DYING. If you don’t want to use the gift we’re leaving.

            I need to act. Any action is an accomplishment, and in our late years we don’t remember the millions of minutes absorbed in thought, we remember what we’ve accomplished actively. The Gift is the playground and the ABILITY to play in it – NOT think about playing in it. You’re life is in the action, NOT the thought. Thought is only relevant when it turns into action, and you play in the world.

            When you play in the world you realize you can Modify this world to your liking. You are the creator now of your world. The basics remain intact for everyone, but you can decorate the stage and make your world something you love to play in.

            Yes, it is that simple. Every action modifies your world. Where once you had an empty room it now sings with music every night, the walls flourish with volumes you read repeatedly, papers dangle from every crevice begging to be sorted and filed – all your own writing, all actions that impress your world. Outdoors you construct in your plot a basketball hoop, and on sunny days you bounce and throw a ball in competition with yourself.

On a bigger whim you go to the basement, wrap your hands around a cold steel bar, crouching, and unfurl upward, heaving the bar, leveraging it with your back and shoulders until you press it above your head. Then lay it down. This single action sets off a deliberate habit, and in time you grow stronger. So at 60 you work to find a senior softball league, and you drive down, sign up come home and begin to run up and down the park across the street, and on a Thursday nite months from now you’re sitting at 3^rd base, a little frightened that a liner will kill you, or that the throw to first will sail horribly above the only real athlete on the team covering the bag at first.

            Or you can sit in that chair and simply stare out the window at the Playworld that exists mysteriously for you, stare at it like it’s a painting, like nothing can be done with it, and watch the millions of thoughts cascade through your mind for hours until you act to crawl into bed, thinking yourself tired from the day’s thoughts, maybe drowning your anxiety with too much bourbon.

            Your Choice to use the Gift of Being Alive in this World.

            You’ll remember the vacations you took, the dinners you cooked, learning clarinet, being a baseball star, playing with your children, making love to all the women, being in NYC, walking and jostling the dog, retraining yourself to make 10 free throws in a row, boxing again with the heavy bag, losing the weight at 60, beginning to run as habit and lift weights to see if the body comes back, you’ll remember asking that girl out in college then marrying her, building a shed by yourself in the back, finding and buying a home, going out with friend, jumping off roofs as a kid, climbing the highest tree, fighting, playing in a band in practice and especially on stage. You’ll remember youthful action then and now. Youth is defined by action. Few young people sit in a chair and stare out a window for long.

            Will you remember a decade from now sitting in deep thought for a day? Never. What effect did you have on the world? How did you affect the world? How did you use the interaction of muscle and earth to create something, Creator?

            This is the prime lesson. Share it.