Resurrection

Throughout history, human beings have tried to formulate a visual model for life's big concepts. Usually, these models come to us as myths or stories, contrived from many different parallel and historic events.

The Christian resurrection myth (Easter) is one of these stories. The phoenix myth, which appears in several cultures, is another. The human mind is still trying to cope with an understanding of death's finality, as science narrows the probability of conscious, personality-based life after death.

As a person who accepts the finality of death, the eventual and inevitable end of my personal being, I tend to seek resurrection as a hopeful process in my ongoing life. I try new things. I attempt to make new friends. I tackle learning curves. I turn from the old to the new. I let go and reach out. These activities and choices inspire resurrection of my energy and spirit, so easily dulled by age and experience.

Time spent worrying about an afterlife seems wasted to me. There is so much to learn now. There are so many new lives to be had within this present life. Each moment is an opportunity to let the negative in us die. Each moment is an opportunity to live a new, more positive life. Perhaps this is a key element of all practice for personal evolution.

Taxes

This year, paying taxes will seem more painful to many people. It is obvious that government has let people down all over the planet. Here in the US, government has mismanaged the nation's financial regulatory system with disasterous results for the majority of American citizens and taxpayers.

Complacency among the electorate is just as much to fault as the greedy manipulations of financial mathematicians, who played a shell game with themselves and brought down the capitalist system. From the Madoffs to the Greenspans, the lack of foresight and oversight will have implications for years to come.

Paying taxes without being involved with government as an active observer and critic is simply stupid. It is like handing money to a drunk or a compulsive gambler without conditions.

I consider it part of my life practice to stay informed, to correspond with representatives and to voice criticisms and kudos equally. As a person who believes that life is simply what it is, bettering my life and those of other human beings is a matter of each daily decision and action. Right action, for me, entails being a responsible citizen and taxpayer.