Do you ever feel that way? All the cheeseburgers are in Paradise and you're a falafel in Schenectady? It's that sense of separateness, and that boundary between you and what you so desire is some unfair, arbitrary and artificial stricture. You're filled with healthy, bountiful goodness to impart but alas, there's no line at the lemonade stand of your heart but the MegaMart is packed. It makes you want to take down your sign, go home, and suck on a lemon. I'm learning (the hard way, as always) that it doesn't always have to be that way.

I'm presently faced with a vast expanse of teeter-totter gray area. I'd like to think that they're called gray areas for a reason; instability and vacuous lack of definitive answers make us use more gray matter than any pondering of the absolute. It's the lack of surety that ultimately drives us to make peace by reconciling our lives with the unknown. Each day is a little reconciliation with chaos. Some days we're browbeaten by that whirlwind, others we've sliced through and used it's force to make our own graceful loops and whirls, like a kite. Looking out into the week ahead, where I could remain in my job, lose it, or gain permanency (I'll probably know for sure tomorrow), I can't help but to feel a bit awkward. I'm temporarily separated from what I desire, resolution, by an arbitrary barrier. Until I know for sure, and perhaps after, I'm a square peg walking in a round hole world. My place is not yet secure.

Alan Watts wrote in his wonderful book, The Wisdom of Insecurity: "We can hardly begin to consider this problem unless it is clear that the craving for security is itself a pain and a contradiction, and that the more we pursue it, the more painful it becomes. This is true in whatever form security may be conceived." This is the kernel at the center of the hard way of learning. I've been bleeding for knowledge and understanding of my position, not just in terms of employment, but in life terms. This madcap and hellbent lust for understanding has made the process painful, depressive, and confusing. In this life at crazy times, I've longed secretly to be meat in the meatmarket, rather than the tofu that I AM. Not that I craved conformity, I craved an equal chance to be who I am, despite or inspite of qualitative differences. I screamed into am empty night "where is my place in this world?!" and what responded was just wind through the branches and a truck barreling down the highway. At some point in the past few days, I've stopped screaming, and rather affirmed that this is my place in the world with the wind through the branches and a truck barreling down the highway. The further afield we consider our lives, the less secure it becomes. Reduce it to this one point in the expanse of gray area, where I don't yet know about this or that, what ultimately matters the most becomes more apparent than any job or romance or sale at MegaMart. It's the wind. It's the night. It's the tofu. Consider H.L. Mencken: "We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine."

Consider, too, the vagaries of chance. Perhaps it is best that I am tofu in a meatmarket. Someone may just be wandering the aisles with that bloated feeling, and amid the prime rib and chitterlings, and happens upon something a little lighter. "A-ha, this might just do the trick," the shopper says, and takes me home in a state of surprise and relief. The wildly extended family of humans I love are all rather motley gaggles of sore thumbs, square pegs, pink ducks and odd birds. We're all struggling, even those of us that look polished and preened. But, often in the fulcrum of that struggle, we forget that we aren't the only bozo on the bus. My recent depression was quite severe, and one of the paralyzing factors of depression is that you cannot see out of the murky fishbowl your life has become for that moment. Depression, like any other disease, will either run it's course or kill you. Thankfully, the latter is extremely rare. As the murk clears, you see that yes, you are indeed in a fishbowl, but you're on a shelf with a thousand others in the same predicament. Yet none of us in exactly the same state as you. That's the nature of consciousness; we share it at times but it's also uniquely our own to experience. So, you may as well have fun in your fishbowl while you're there, for it won't be long until a net comes to swoop you off into mystery. Or vying for a window seat on the bus. Or tossed into a wok with teriyaki and snap peas. Or whatever metaphor you like.

We are singular beings living in a multidimensional, hyper-faceted complex array of variable states. Or, we contain Whitman's multitudes living in a singular world gone bonkers trying to interpret itself. Or we can simply be who we are in whatever this is. The modalities of existence are as endless as the imagination. What we desire will can prod us into suffering if we believe we are separated from it, rather than actively nursing its seed, its potentiality, within us. Further, if we find enjoyment out of self-kicking in the ass for being tofu in the meatmarket, we need a new hobby. Our individuality, for better or worse, is the primary defining quality of our soul. We'd better get used to it. For as trying as it can be to be at the mercy of gray areas and not knowing, we are more keen to manufacture isolation rather than utilization. There's a trend worth reversing. Utilization and proactive acceptance are absolutely key. For, in the wisdom of the Moody Blues: "There you go, man... keep as cool as you can... Face piles of trials with smiles. It riles them to believe that you perceive the web they weave... And keep on thinking free."

Chick peas and Schenectady ain't all that bad, really. Love your lemons and don't buy into the MegaMart psyche out of fear or want. Ride the bus into the gray area, just keep the headlights on for safety. Make a square hole for yourself. Dare to find bliss in the fishbowl. The night is what it is and you have the stars to guide you. You live in and are the product of mystery; be the tofu.