Anesthesia please

Addicts are we. All of us. I find none immune. It's in our very nature to quell the rise of our spirits with the opiate of our choice. And there lies the most important choice we can make. What will you use to fill the void of an enduring life? The options are plenty. Some are bare faced and troublesome...drugs and alcohol. Some lie behind a heavy curtain, dark obsessions and the like. Some are healthy for the body and mind, exercise and study. Some are social, religion and politics, work and education. What a spectrum to explore, our activities. How do we keep them from becoming obsessions? Must we always maintain balance or is the occasional obsession a chance to become an expert in one area or another? Shall we learn to strip away all of these needs and isolate the soul from any influence? Yes, we must be obsessive, we must be quiet, we must be balanced and well rounded. This is our chance to know life from many perspectives, to know the joy and satisfaction of intense study and interaction in a field, to know the beauty, clarity and completeness of a moment without influence. Our dreams and hopes are just pretty pictures that live and die at our finger tips. Actions are the tilled soil of a plan in motion. And what a crop to be harvested if we continue our action. Our own action is the reward or punishment we are ever creating for ourselves. Passion is our commuter lane in the traffic jam of life, our double shot of espresso on the Monday morning of our discontent. A dangerous and wonderful propellant that is both right and riddled with the pitfalls of excess. Shall we not embrace it? Or should we ignore it? The very meaning to our lives is attached to it, but it pulls and rips at our self-control. It launches our pride into the stratosphere if we let it, sometimes we need that, sometimes it destroys us and causes us to fall. Nevertheless, our lives are empty without it. So we need a check valve, a way to control the flow. We need to keep ourselves in check and seek honesty and reality. We must be humble and full of passion and in this way we are whole and balanced.