That the world wobbled on its axis and, if just for a moment, came to a standstill. United in our grief, shock, and disbelief that John, Jesus & Buddha were dead, we came together. And while I know that I will not be the only one to write about today and where we were 30 years ago today when we heard the news, I can only tell it from my perspective. 8 December 1980 changed my life drastically, and not at all for the good.
I was 17 at the time, 3 months from turning 18 and becoming an “adult”. But that was the day I truly grew up. All at once, even though I had already faced other indignities and minor injustices and would throughout the course of my life face many more, this one event did more to cement my fate than any other. For years after wards I spiraled down into a self destructive hate of the world, railed against “The Man” and of humanity itself, reinforced over and over again daily by the violence I perpetuated upon myself and that the people of the world inflicted on each other. What the fuck was there to believe in, after all? I was one pissed off, angry, motherfucking camper. There truly was no making sense of anything in the world anymore; I was shattered, directionless, and devastated beyond words. Then after another equally devastating personal loss in my life when I was 19, I spent the next 20 some years in abusive relationships, drinking, drugging, not caring if I lived or died, and looking for love in all the proverbial wrong places.
I never publicly grieved for you John. I held it all in, feeling foolish for crying over someone I had never actually met. It has taken me all of these years to realize that I DID know you, for you knew us. You knew all of our hearts and what lie within them at their very core – peace and love. That’s all you ever wanted, through all the chaos, and that’s all WE want too.
I staged my own “bed-in” today – let my hair grow, turned off my phone, didn’t look at a clock. I stopped my own world, if just for a day, and reflected on the more important things in life. I kept candles burning, prayed, chanted, burned incense, and flipped through some books about you, John. I came away thinking not that I had wasted the day, but how I wished all my days could be like this, where WE possess our lives, not the everyday things that we allow to enslave us. No one seems to have any time anymore for anything – our kids, our relationships, our houses, our bodies, our neighbors. There’s the same amount of time in a day as there has always been, but we squander it on TV, Facebook, Twitter, our smart phones, drinking, sports, porn. Ugh. It’s enough to make me want to chuck it all and go live like a bum on a beach somewhere. How did we get here people?
Above all, I have learned that life is good. Yeah, we don't get it right everyday and I continue to not have a decent job and I'm poor, but that is all just "so what". Let us not turn our fear into hate against our fellow man, our children, our spouses, ourselves. I am still trying, after all these years, to let my light out and shine for the world to see. Maybe someday I’ll make it, maybe I won’t. But I know we can’t give up. Complacency is the devil, along with ignorance, isolation, indifference, apathy, and fear.
The fact that John left this world on 8 December, which is also Rohatsu, the day that Buddha attained enlightenment, is to me no coincidence or accident. It is divine and proper and the way it should be. We love you John and everything you stood for - and we always will. Imagine that.
