Confucius, the paragon of Chinese wisdom, said:
There is no difference between virtue and right living.
He must have been on to something, because two thousand years later The Honeydogs said:
Living right is easy. What goes wrong, you’re causing it.
[ed: Dean pointed out this quote is actually from Son Volt.]
So the wise from then and now agree. The only question seems to be: what does it mean, exactly?
The right process for doing something often bears little resemblance to the ways people normally do it. You can only read so fast before it’s just eyeball exercise and a waste of time. You can only think so much about something before you’re just re-visiting old geography and beating yourself into stasis. Sharing an address and a bed do not make a marriage. None of these are right living.
Right living is harder than it seems. And there are hazards.
This morning I was writing in my favorite cafe. I felt good, felt alive, was awash in creativity when I had to use the bathroom. I was standing at the urinal, just getting the process underway, when I realized something terrible was happening: instead of directing the urine stream in front of me (which is where long experience had taught me it would go) my traitorous cock decided to somehow squirt it backwards, and to the side, and every which way, so that my hand and forearm and shirt and pants were covered with piss.
Don’t ask me to explain this because I can’t. All I can say is that it must have something to do with the absence of right living. I returned to my table a shamed man, but determined that it wouldn’t be for naught.
I hope this story can be a lesson to some of you.