So, as I was playing with this post, I began to realize that Alan Watts is really the one wizard whose ultimate philosophy spell is cast with these words;
The whole purpose of being alive is…
Simply to be ALIVE. -Alan Watts, wiseguy wizard
I have been shouting into the stormwinds of late because… well, because I don’t have very much longer to live. Don’t get me wrong. I am not suddenly diagnosed with cancer and doomed to die next Thursday at 3 o’clock. But I am old. I have had arthritis for 48 years, diagnosed when I was 18. I have had diabetes for 23 years, diagnosed in Spring of 2000. I have four other relatively serious incurable diseases and conditions not even counting the fact that I survived cancer in 1983, malignant melanoma. Every morning I wake up alive now is a significant effort to get up and going, as well as being a miraculous escape from the clutches of the inevitable.
Well, far be it for me to question Master Alan Watts. But even though I am suffering daily, I am living in the here and now, making plans to look forward to, letting go any anger and blame I have against anyone for injustices against me in the past (Don’t worry. I don’t mean I have forgiven Don Cheetoh Trumpalonely.) And I am enjoying life in spite of the pain and difficulty. It is a Nietzschean appreciation for how the dark parts and the hard parts make the sunshine sweeter.
I live my life, I play with my toys, I enjoy my crayons and colored pencils (the crayons are particularly chewy, but the red ones don’t taste like cherries,) and I remember childhood by reliving it a second time.
“I am not dead yet,” said the 66-year-old little boy with the red crayon in his mouth.
Catch a Falling Star 