It's all the same everywhere

Kris and I, a couple years ago, were having a discussion of such rapid layered epiphany that we pulled into a strange Microsoft building to get a room with a whiteboard. The realizations built and built, growing and tumbling, until finally, wide-eyed, she blurted, "Oh my gosh -- it's all connected."

That has stayed with me as a moment, and definition, of enlightenment.

It really is all connected.

My epiphany for today is -- "It's all the same everywhere."

I subscribe to a newsletter for international living. It typically lists places to live all over the world. Today's issue featured a report on how to fund yourself, since naturally, most countries prefer that you have an income.

After more than a year of fantasizing about living in Poland, Wales, Denmark, Russia -- each a "there" which seems more spiritual, windy, and truthful than "here" -- it occurs to me that they are all exactly the same. I will need to earn money there or here. I will walk among the flowering trees, and drink tea. I will seek out exponential friendships, fierce-joy-truth conversations that realign my bones. I will create performances and revel in the mystery. I will talk with my family.

If I can solve it here, I can solve it there. I can solve it anywhere. (I sound like the Cat In The Hat.) More precisely, I can solve it here FOR there -- for anywhere.

The problem with epiphanies is that they sound like stuff everyone has already known for a long time.

a fractal truth solves
everything at once, placing
one point correctly

the chinese symbol
for buddha looks like a thin
man and a fat one

We alone are re-
sponsible for our lives, says
Heart of the Buddha

a particle and
a wave are myths to explain
complexity's dance

In Tibet, scholar
and practitioner were
equally respected

My mother wants to
buy a ring I once gave to
her, that she gave back

It is not a ring
but a tanzanite myth -- a
particular wave