Where's the Blue Pill?

Introduction

Everyone always seemed to tell me that my life would be better off if I would just do it their way. Fall in line like the rest of us. They’d say. So, I had faith. I had faith in what people would have me be. Even when it came down to scrubbing out a nasty grease trap for minimum wage, selling drugs on the street, fighting that big bad bully, loving selflessly, and acting like I didn’t know my ass from a hole in the ground. All the while I would be feeling that I was born for more, yes, even more than they had told me that I could be.

It would be a long road before I would run into someone who actually had some advice that I could build from. That someone didn’t show themselves to me until after I reached rock bottom. I had literally ‘taken the red pill’ so to speak, and found myself at the bottom of the rabbit hole. The advice came to me in the form of a conversation with my spiritual advisor whom I like to call Karma.

Back then, I chose the Red Pill over the Blue. Knowledge is so enticing! Knowledge is power right?! But I know the blue pill will present itself to me again, it is only a matter of time. Things have a way of revolving and I am in desperate need of some blissful ignorance! How do I know it will come back to me, you ask? Because that is exactly what Karma does ‘it returns to you’.

Chapter One

So here I am. A living, breathing, true to life example of Neo from the Matrix. The Red Pill shows you how deep the rabbit hole goes, the Blue Pill helps you to forget all you’ve learned.

The first time I took the little red cough medicine pills by the handful was right around the year 2000. I was young, of good family, stable mind and body, but none of that would withstand the pure power of peer pressure. I say peer pressure because it is a concept you all are familiar with, but really what was so hard about saying, NO was my yearning to be loved. Not that I was, in any way, devoid of a loving family in my past, I wasn’t, but the longing for a different kind of love. The kind of love that said, I believe in you.

Granted, if you beg your parents to believe in the fact that you will grow up to be a ninja, it is their sole responsibility to change your one-track mind. Finding anyone to stand up to my standards of belief was going to be the hardest journey I ever set out on. That journey would lead me on a path that wound it’s way through the deepest caverns of fear and around the highest peaks of hope, eventually landing me in a spine tingling, hair-raising, freezing cold mud puddle of truth. That truth took the form of my first book ‘I Took The Red Pill’ which ended my journey down the rabbit hole and broke my addiction to the drug.

I took my first blue Xanax pill years ago, little did I know it would end up being exactly what the doctor would prescribe for my anxiety after breaking my addiction! I can’t help but wonder why it is that we must keep ourselves medicated, one way or another, in order to fit in with the day to day workforce! I guess the thing about working a minimum wage job is that workers are expected to be used and abused, which is totally fine, but they’re are also expected to mess up. If you’re not one of those people who mess up every time then you’ve got to have something (like a drug) to degrade your intellect enough to fit in with everyone else around you.

Why must a JOB consist of activities that leave you Just-Over-Broke? Why is it that, we are obligated to see work as the worst place on Earth? It’s like, if it’s not a chore, then it must be worthless, literally! Kinda like when the kid in the movie Bad Santa hands Billy Bob the wooden pickle as a gift that’s covered in blood from where he had cut himself making it for him. It made old Bob Thornton stop, and think a second, realizing that he may actually relate with this kid and the way that he was feeling… namely, like shit. The same goes for relationships I have observed as of late. If it’s not difficult enough, forget it. Even, just last year, I was dumped for being ‘too nice’. When your fuse gets short and the last card has been dealt you finally decide to just let go, and let God.

About a year ago, I would sit and converse with my buddy Karma on-line late into the night about how bad life really treated us. What I liked about talking with Karma was the fact that he always seemed to have just as bad of luck as I and laugh about it twice as much. We really got into some deep conversations at times. There came a point when I would sign in on-line and if that little flashing light wasn’t present confirming that Karma was there, then I would just start complaining without him. Though he wasn’t on, through some form of communication his responses would appear before me on the screen. In the end a complete volume of information would emerge from the dialogue.

So, here I present the second volume of that dialogue. Typing into space, waiting for an answer. Will some answer come through me like before? I suppose, first I need a question. If you don’t ask you don’t get right?

Wrong.

What? I was about to ask a question.

You just did.

I did?

Yes. Look back. You said, If you don’t ask you don’t get right? Is that not a question?

I suppose it is. I don’t even know why I asked it.

You wanted an answer, and I gave it to you. Even if you never ask, you will get.

I will get what? If I don’t ask for anything, what will I get?

Anything.

You are confusing me again! I simply want to know how I can get something I never asked for!

Have you never received a gift from anyone? Have you never been asked, what would you like? and responded with, I don’t need anything! then got a gift anyhow?

Of course I have!

Well, there you go.

No, no, no. You’re not fooling me! What is this whole business about? Okay, so I have been given gifts that I didn’t ask for, what does that have to do with anything?

You said to me, If I don’t ask for anything? What will I get?

Yeah! And so?!

So it is like this; Before Christmas, the father approaches the son and asks, What would you wish for Christmas? The son thinks and thinks then he replies, his vivid imagination, full of ‘roars’ of a choo-choo and cherry red paint, he wants a train! The father purchases this train, or delivers this train to Santa’s ears but the daughter is not so easy! As he asks her, What would you wish for Christmas? She thinks, and thinks but can’t decide. The moment passes….

Wait a minute! I see what you are saying here. You are telling me, that whether we like it or not, we have been given a gift. A gift of life.

I am simply portraying to you your own nature. You didn’t ask for something in particular, in the beginning, so just be thankful that you got something extraordinary! It is still a gift! You can not escape the action of giving! It is in your very soul. In fact, giving is the greatest part of you. Giving is the single most important aspect of humanity, of creation, of life, or the universe. For when you give, you produce. When you take you reduce. In the end, the last of us will give. Unless they don’t, and in their case they will receive and empower yet another who gives. If they do not find the meaning in their lives they will but inspire another to find meaning in their own.

Am I going to be one of those people? Will I never find my own meaning? Does this mean God is going to literally ruin my life?!

It was your title! [How God Ruined My Life is the title of the mainstream book]

Well, I thought it would entice the Christian community to pick it up and investigate it.

It is controversial, that’s for sure. Besides, what is a good book without a good ending?

I suppose the end of one story is but the beginning of another.

Okay then. Let’s not worry about it. We’ll cross that bridge if it comes.

I know I shouldn’t worry. I should just have faith that all will be well, but I can’t help worrying about leaving loose ends.

Ain’t gonna happen. You’re inherently productive remember?

I try and keep it in mind. Speaking of ‘loose ends’, you know I used to have this girlfriend that loved to have a few fingers shoved up her a……….

Whoa! Don’ t even go there. Don’t say it!

Hey, I couldn’t stop you from making me tell the vegetable joke in my first book!

True. Go ahead then, tell the story.

Okay. I call this story, The Shocker

The Shocker

Here I was working 80 hours a week plus. Half my time was spent teaching martial art classes for this Jewish guy Itamar which, by the way, I was only getting paid 100 bucks a week for. I say Jewish and I mean, from Israel, not stereotypically Jewish as in cheap, but go figure. The other half of my time was spent at O’Brien’s Pub cooking to survive. Grant it, I was getting paid decently for the cooking gig, but cooking at an Irish pub is not something that you set your sites on, or for that matter get a PHD in college for! I still was unclear about my goal in life at the time but was reasonably sure that it had something to do with Ninjutsu and helping people. Teaching martial arts, though not my personal style, seemed to be a pretty good stepping stone in the right direction.

The trouble with the whole situation came in two parts. The first was keeping a positive attitude at the 100 dollar per week job, that may or may not help me achieve my goal of teaching Ninjutsu, after working 10 hours a night at a slave driving poor excuse for a restaurant. The second would take the form of a girl, who happened to be my favorite student’s mother.

Work was all in all okay, as long as I had a box of cough medicine to keep my mind off of all the demeaning and