The secrets to life are probably in your bathroom.
Imagine you’re walking in the woods and you come upon a cave. Inside there’s a golden box and in it are all the answers to life’s greatest questions — with no mention of death, meaning only the here and now. How to be happy. How to love. How to live. Would you horde them? No, you’d go screaming down the street, spewing definitive answers to the universe. And you’d probably be arrested, immediately. We operate as if that isn’t the case, like all the secrets to life are hidden in the unseen creases of our planet or behind speakeasy doors and our life’s mission is to keep looking no matter what we’ve found. We’re seekers.
The problem with being a seeker, is that it implies a whole lot of looking but no finding. Cynicism is cool. Conspiracies are sexy. I get it, but if you pay attention you may find that the greatest lessons we’ve ever learned are plastered everywhere, always. Even in your bathroom. Or kitchen. Laundry room.
Somewhere in your house there’s likely a sign that has some platitude written in a scribbly, cursive font. It says something akin to “live, laugh, love.” These signs are everywhere and they are meaningless because of their ubiquity. The more we hear “love is all you need” the more our minds erode its value. But that’s because we’re stupid creatures. We prefer to think of the exotic as more authoritative. We’ll fly to India to get a truth from a guru that was written on the wall next to our toilet. The wall we’ve gazed upon ten thousand times but never bothered to read.
Think about it, what if we actually lived life using those stupid, kitschy signs as guideposts. What if we believed in their message, not tacitly accepted it as a truth that can never come to fruition: cause people be stupid yo.
How would life change if you were unencumbered by what you can’t control and lived. If you chose joy every day above all the rot in this world and laughed instead of cried. If you accepted change, always, and loved everyone — not equally, but harbored some affection for your adversaries because despite what the politics will tell you — our race is human. All of us. I can stand on my back deck and hit over a dozen species of tree with a rock but in all of the world there is just one us. What many wonderful and despicable variations are we. How different would everything be if we listened to those stupid little signs?
Take a picture or tell me about the one in your house and tell me how it’s going to change you life — starting now. Please wait until you’re off the toilet to do so.
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I illustrate all my Medium posts. If you steal the images please credit me, in this case it’s just a silly digital toilet but often times it’s real physical art and it’s how people find me so I can make stuff so I can pay my mortgage.
