A year ago today, one of my closest friends died unexpectedly. It was the biggest loss of my life, filling me with grief I never knew I could feel. Richard was part of my atmosphere, someone I could count on, and I knew he would always be there for me.

I sobbed for two weeks without stopping when I learned of his death so very far away. I would never see him again or hear his warm voice promising to visit. I would never hear him call me foolish, silly or crazy in that way that should have sparked anger but made me feel loved instead. This was a man whom all should have known. Richard was a passionate rain. I grew because of him. I became the strength he saw in me. And sometimes it feels like he took it with him when he left.

Life is a landscape. When we look outside our window, we see some people as beautiful flowering plants, others, thorny bushes. There are annuals and perennials and too many weeds. Most of these relationships wither with time, replaced by others. A special few continue to blossom, adding beauty to our days. If we’re lucky, two or three big trees punctuate this place, unwavering, constant, throwing their comforting shade across the years. When others leave. we grieve, but time eventually fills up the hole with soft moss or new sprouts and something wonderful eventually grows to heal what was lost. But when one of the big trees gets ripped from our world, nothing ever replaces it and our landscape is changed forever. Richard was one of those big trees, out at the corners my life, strong, powerful, protective.

One day I will join him, wherever he went, and knowing that diminishes my own fear of death. There’s something comforting about knowing someone you loved is waiting, ready to catch you when you fall from life. Maybe that’s why those we love so much sometimes leave too early. Could we have made a deal before birth that this time, he would leave first?

Richard died on this day and tonight I will go to the place we met many years ago and sit and share a martini with his memory. Richard died on this day and maybe if I keep telling myself that, somehow I will believe it and my heart will finally accept those ugly words.

I guess pain is a small price to pay for having him in my life for as long as I did. In some strange way, we are closer than ever before. He now belongs to the invisibles and is with me whenever my thoughts go to him. I feel him laugh at my worries, still share my schemes. And on some lucky nights, he comes to me in dreams and lives again.

For all of you who have lost one of your big trees, I send my blessings. And I send hope that you come to realize that what you lost was worth what you gained in loving them. It doesn’t take away the pain. Nothing ever will. But there are others who love us. We are alive. I can’t think of a better way to honor Richard than living my life fully, passionately, the way he would have.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately. And, wondering if that’s such a good idea. The mind is a cunning suitor, makes me feel brilliant, informs me I’m important and special and right about ohhh so many things. I’m lucky. Mine is exceptionally agile, negotiates curves well, plucks me from dangerous waters, and creatively constructs the pretty future that I expect for myself. When you have a strong mind, it makes you believe you need to do something big with it.

But it’s cold. And has no respect for my time. This restless companion keeps me awake at night, nagging over something I should have done. Or did wrong. It complains about the way I look. It whines that it doesn’t have enough. It never seems to be satisfied. Or it’s so smug…and really loud. Then, just when I’m ready to give up on it, demand it shut up, my mind does something miraculous that makes me fall in love with it all over again. I’ve seen it perform great feats of magic. It’s given me beautiful words to say at the proper time. I’ve harvested diamonds of cultivated knowledge from its fertile soil that I didn’t even know were there. Still, I give it much too much power over me.

I’m not alone. I see many people’s foolish minds choking their spirits. I witness the worry, the fear; the callous lies it whispers to them on street corners and in elevators, or over lattes at Starbucks. The mind summons our fears, incubates them in one of the seven deadly sins, and then sends its newborn disciple out into the world to build monuments to it. Through the mind and its shadow thoughts all the suffering in the world is birthed.

Waiting patiently for me to notice through all of this self-absorbed chatter is my knowing heart. I wish I had the courage to spend more time with this quiet sage. To listen to it’s soft beat of clarity and purpose. My heart knows that I’m perfect. It loves even the cruelest stranger on a rainy winter night. It is happy all the time. It wants for nothing because it understands I have everything I need. And unlike my racing mind, it is content in stillness and the sacred truth within. It never lies. It only loves.

The mind constantly conspires against my heart because it recognizes its death in it. It makes me believe that my heart can’t be trusted; that my worth resides only in its own polished intellect. But experience has taught me otherwise. My heart gives me the courage to make bold leaps across treacherous canyons of fear. And it is in these uncertain leaps, I am given back to myself and born again. I’ve always been happiest following my heart. When I act from this place of light, the crust of others’ expectations crumbles from my being and I remember who I really am.

I like my mind. There’s not another one like it on the planet. And I’m fascinated by other dancing minds for that same reason. But it’s a raucous child, grasping, intent on staying within the narrow walls of its inexperience. My heart is the wise elder, quietly revealing the possibility waiting beyond these walls. So in 2008, I will entertain my mind and love it for all it does for me. But this year, particularly this year, it is my heart that will define me and determine everything I will become.

I recently read a brilliant essay called Reasonhood. It’s about the relationship between reason and adulthood and deserves much consideration and accolades for its author, Brandon Peele. Though I have a short attention span and a long to-do list, it caused me to slow down, immerse myself in new ideas and think.

Personally, I believe we are living in an age of unreason. Like the Romans who went mad eating from plates tainted with lead, our societal toxins, technologies and pace have numbed much of our ability to reason. Thus, reason like truth, is easily manipulated these days, even if we reach for it. I wonder if we have been so damaged by our cultural conditionings that as a society we are incapable of knowing what reason is anymore.

In generations past, humans had to become adults earlier. Work, marriage, and children usually entered life during puberty. It’s been our blessed existence for the past fifty years that has allowed people to remain children—emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. (Even aspects of the current New Age movement reflect a spiritual naiveté born from life being relatively easy.)

I guess the definition of adulthood depends on our personal and shared journey and how it shapes our ability to reason. Reason seems grounded, somber, and sober. But, is there also room in reason for joy, spontaneity, fun? Our definition of adulthood is much different than what we thought it was as children. When we were kids, adulthood was our most desired destination, full of freedom and enjoyment. But as we age, adulthood increasingly brings responsibility, struggle, compromise, loss, and we yearn to be children again with all the unconscious bliss it represents. Of course, corporate brands, the media and government are more than happy to oblige the illusion.

Each era defines adulthood. And I believe it’s our era’s unwillingness to truly embrace change that holds us back from accepting adulthood. The precipice into adulthood is scary. We are usually forced through the door, unprepared. If we could forge a new definition of adulthood that transforms our childish follies through reason into a deeper joy of life, we’d have a lot more adults out there.

Brandon stated, “Without reason and the structure it can create, imagination is only escapism and can not become honest self-expression”.

I agree that imagination requires the structure of reason for it to meaningfully manifest in the world. As someone with a dynamic imagination, and maybe not enough reason as structure, I struggle with expressing my imaginative musings in a way that is honest in its clarity. But I am adult enough to realize that old emotional patterns have painted my reasoning abilities and I continue to search for solutions.

The 60’s birthed a new thought form, which unfortunately was not completely understood by its recipients. Like children with a new toy, it was played with, escaped through, but not fully utilized. There seemed to be no apparent reason behind its emergence beyond the moment. New knowledge and truth arose during the chaos of that time which could not be properly applied because we were not mature enough as a culture. Without reason, it became escapism.

We are experiencing a similar time now, where the potential for a major transformation is available to us, but many are merely escaping into technology, busyness and media instead of sex, drugs and rock and roll. If we could restore our reason and the wisdom within it, we could see the opportunity in our current experience. That would be our transcendence into adulthood.

Brandon concluded that, “Reason allows the observation and transcendence of a particular emotional state (e.g. sadness, madness, anxiety, fear, and shame) and the realization that one is experiencing that state and therefore cannot be that state”.

This is an important point. If you can observe yourself having a negative experience, then you cannot be that negative thought. It is simply an experience that is to be felt, reasoned through and learned from. Knowing you are more than an emotional state is critical to the rise of the adult within. And reason is a great tool to manage errant emotions.

By the time we reach what should be adulthood, our emotional patterns are set in place. What we have been taught to believe about ourselves, the emotional charge connected to these beliefs and their external triggers, are well established. Being an adult helps us recognize these patterns when they are occurring. And that’s important. But it is hard not to react, even if it’s only on an unconscious level. (Which many of our patterns have become by the time we are so-called grown-ups). Teaching people how to break out of these orbits once they are able to recognize them would be a tremendous boost to reason, adulthood and humanity.

Brandon’s treatise on emotions should be a book in itself. As a culture, we do not know how to experience or express our emotions, let alone use them as tools for our growth and happiness. We either engage them as feel good drugs, bury them deep within denial, or turn them into weapons. Gratitude might be our most powerful and neglected gift in cultivating a healthier relationship with our emotions.

Brandon argues, “Conditioning, repetition, and perception do not yield an objective reality, only one that is mutually agreed upon.”

But then doesn’t this mutually agreed upon reality become objective? Theoretically, I think he’s right. I want him to be right. Though, if we are the result of our conditionings and we respond accordingly, doesn’t that become our reality? And, if so many others share that same manufactured reality, what about the few who profess to see past it all? Are they seeing into a truer reality, or merely seeking to escape reason? Either way, those escapees often evolve humanity by living outside of it, so something must be going on there.

Language. I don’t think there’s a more important concept in his essay than language. We cannot become what we have no words for. Like a ship in the fog, we might feel something coming, and evolution via chaos will always generate new things to consider. But how can emerging thought become mass reality without proper languaging that resonates with the idea? Language reflects consciousness. The word computer didn’t exist (I don’t’ think) before computers did. The technology revolution arose from a bunch of strange people, living on the outskirts of reality and reason, using fledging languages, both verbal and digital, to create a new world. It wasn’t until the complete language arose which expressed these alien concepts that the masses were able to slowly understand and accept them. That’s when this new technological thought form hit its tipping point and transformed humanity.

The consciousness movement with its emerging “programming” of social responsibility, sustainability and wellness, among others, is analogous to that first wave of technology. But it is still seeking the right languaging for mass engagement. Much of the current vocabulary stems from the movement’s infancy, and is stale, mistrusted or no longer reflective of the current state of these trends. Once we discover the relevant language, communicate on a level all can understand, the consciousness movement, which in effect is the next generation of transformative technology, will have its tipping point and again the world will be changed forever.

Brandon says, “An adult will never fully believe what he says is true, only go forth the best way he knows”.

It took me a long time of thinking I knew it all before realizing I knew nothing and maybe never would. Being satisfied with that uncertain reality and understanding its power was probably the most adult moment I’ve had in my life. Everything you believe can change tomorrow. The adult in us knows this and is able to thrive within it. Now I move forward with my second set of eyes wide open, knowing what I know, accepting what I don’t.

Although I applaud Brandon’s Aids to Reason, I wonder how realistic they are. Most people are unwittingly addicted to each of his Barriers to Adulthood, (Media, Chemical Dependency, Emotional Dependency, Frenzy and Social Contract). So, the first and maybe most profound step towards Reasonhood would be the recognition of these unconscious addictions. External guidance and wisdom should then be available to people who truly want to become adults but need support in doing so. That’s where the government, media and corporate brands can make a difference. Most of us need help growing up.

I believe there are many closeted adults out there, waiting for the opportunity to come out when they aren’t so afraid. Along with his great suggestions to assist in this growth, experiences that force the illumination of our cultural programming, there are various other practices and tools that could serve to awaken the sleeping adult within us. We just need to make them acceptable, and available through multiple platforms.

Brandon’s essay was a guided mediation in its own right. I have been hovering around the edges of beginning a letter. I want to create a new corporate position that would engage and apply many of the principles he expressed to increase both company morale and productivity internally, and reputation and revenue externally. This position and its progressive concepts don’t currently exist in the corporate mind-set, so I have to take myself down that rabbit hole and search for the language that will lift people beyond what they believe to be true, a little further into their knowing adult who might have the wisdom to listen. Reasonhood helped bring my focus into that magical space between imagination and reason.

I’m interested in where it brings you.

Surely, there is wonder. And many will come and fall and rise again with chins held high. Quietly the world will turn and thought will follow them and become them. So what of the fearful ones who wait in the corners and along the edges? Who will come for them? Or will they spend eternity waiting for the moment that became another and another too soon? The conscious cosmic mutt scratches at the door of unknown certainties, howls at a moon soaked in spirit, dripping its silver sweat onto earth.

It is not as others but is of others with its snout in the ground, ears to the stars, listening to ancient ones, yelping the word of god. The tree understands and the waters and the turtle resting in the shadow of that tree. The man does not and wails for his pain but leaves not his place at the top of the hill with his foot caught in an old trap of his own making. He clutches his truth, hiding from choice.

The buttercups have died under tired weight, yet tiny blossoms beg from beneath the dirt, forgiving. Sanguine sunsets seduce barely noticed. You are not alone. The man does not believe and cries, surrounded by love that cannot touch him for his heart is not willing, captive of a mind torched by lies. But still the patriot sun rises yet again and warms his hard face and holds to its promise.

There is nothing beneath your skin that does not yearn to be with the other. No fear is too great. No action too strong. No time too enduring. Yet you sit invisible to all you know. To the secrets excreted in dreams, in sadness and in joy, in the detail of leaves passed unseen. Peep from one eye then the other lest the windows stay shut and dust gathers so deep in corners you cannot breathe. How bright those corners can be!

Three crows gather on a mountain behind the sun, ready to take you back to the place forgotten by life. We will be there as you please, when you have remembered the wonder and what you have been here. These sorry trials will be your victory though old misers deny their worth. To have lived! And what was done through the years to know it? Do not listen but to cherry blossoms birthing in spring and perfect snow falling on darkened lakes and all that is of life and its goodness. You are as you should be, holding the key tight.

You have not been forgotten. It is but for you to remember.