After my last post, four very nice people disagreed with me regarding having nothing else to say. I guess they are all correct since I spent this morning thinking about the past few days, conversations and an article I read about success.

I watch the old furry dog chase a squirrel up a tree and then she lays down in the sun, tail wagging and content with her life. Finally I am beginning to understand that should be a content life, it is enough. No riches or things or greed or whatever else makes one a success in modern society. Of course, while living inside society's rules, one shouldn't think these thoughts, might be labeled as an outcast or crazy and then some doctor will prescribe pills to make sure that all the thinking stops. If that fails, once in a while life fails as well. I suppose the truly insane sometimes just decide that life's answers are not inside society at all and they abandon it. I moved to a desolate but beautiful place where, while I have virtually nothing, I really do not have to watch people destroy each other based on the power of wealth or the immorality of culture. I have become nobody. Not seen, not noticed. The rest of the world can move along past me down below, where people can continue to impress each other with what they own. I know, I did it for years. It never really worked. At least now my own insecurities have been replaced by a peaceful understanding that the sun coming up over the mountain should be enough.

Something that has surprised me is that there are other crazy people like me, those who also just said no to whatever life had been doing to them and they dropped out of the world to find something else. I spent the past few days wandering around in a small town not far from here, watching the tourists, looking at motorcycles, listening to people, seeing some local residents who I have met over the past year. I noticed that many of the locals are not really so much different from whatever I have become. One old biker, I learned, used to work for a corporation in Colorado. He said he had worked there for years, had the big house and cars and everything that is supposed to denote success. Now he has a Harley and lives in a little camper up in the hills. He said he has never been as relaxed in his life. Another person (yes, another Harley rider as those with bikes and tattoos do tend to stick together) said he was a doctor at a hospital in Denver, but after some years of success, he didn't feel very successful. He lives in an RV now and just rides his bike a lot. He said he's "finally happy."

I must have run into half a dozen of those kinds of people, who had decided to just opt out of their past lives. And this past Sunday a friend showed up who worked for a company for 25 years, rotating shifts in a factory, until one day he'd had enough of night shifts and he retired. He never did get caught up in buying stuff or whatever else money is supposed to provide, he told me once that he just never felt the need for anything besides trying to be a kind and gentle person. I wish I had lived my past with his wisdom. He has always been one that no one really notices, yet he has lived a grand life enjoying all of it. I read this article about what it means to be successful, it sounds like the author has indeed found success while still living within society. For some of us, it has taken a total shift to some remote place, maybe not yet fully understanding what success is but knowing what it was not. Not toys or titles, rather perhaps some greater sense of truth that a few of us seek up in the mountains. I think the old furry dog already knows all about life and success, she waits to see whether I will also learn as well. Then we can both sit under a tree and be content.