The End Is A Beginning

A friend and comrade, animation's gentle giant Dwayne McDuffie (Static Shock, Ben 10) , has passed away. We all deal with grief in our own way. I do it by committing to giving as much, loving as much, fulfilling as many of my dreams as possible. Making the world a better place than I found it.

So...no ads today. No talking about anything trivial. The core of this stuff is to live your life so that both the youngest/most passionate and optimistic and the oldest/wisest most practical parts of your personality agree with your actions and associations.

To have the little child you once were look at you and smile. And have the eldest you, watching from your deathbed, also smile. To live every day as if it is your last, but study and learn as if you will live forever.

To live your life in alignment with your deepest values, your truest Self. This requires constant digging, constant cleaning of the perceptual lens. To strive to be adult and awake. To balance fear and love within your heart. To work with joy, and daily refine your energy. To be intellectually alive, emotionally whole, and animalistically alive...our goals, values, actions and beliefs all working in alignment. To strive to be 1% more aligned and coherent every week. Just 1%. To live in awareness that life ends, and let that knowledge sweeten every day, every association, every action.

To waste no slightest drop of this precious life we've been given.

Dwayne was one of the good guys. Period. I thought I was going to be seeing him today, at a comic store signing. I was going to introduce him to my wife. Tell him again how much I admired and appreciated him. It is too late, dammit. It is too late.

Thank God I'd already said those things. But when your loved ones and friends and associates pass on, it never feels like enough.

Steve