Short Sleeves Insights

The title of this work will confuse some readers. That's not unusual. Most of the words used to introduce my work don't conform to accepted marketing principles. My titles are the esoteric thought-teasers that push some people to look inside and other people to shake their heads in disbelief. And that's the way we roll, according to actor and artist Jim Carey. Carey claims we should accept and discern rather than stress and worry about pleasing the masses because of the sliding scale of perceptions people experience.

After all, Stoicism, the 3rd-century philosophy created by Zeno of Citium, claimed the road to happiness is when things present themselves to us. The early Stoics believed we should not let fear or the desire for pleasure define us. The early Stoics also thought a person's philosophy is not in what they say but how they act. In order to live a good life, one must understand the laws of nature since nature is free from the ills that people choose to experience.

Through the years, the word stoic became the moniker for a person who doesn't show the pleasure, pain, grief, or the joy human experiences unearth. The ancient Stoics believed virtue is the only good. And wealth, health, and pleasure are not good or bad unless we think they are. All emotions have value because they give us the stage for virtue to act.

You'll read the words consciousness, beliefs, and thoughts a lot in this book. The essays and comments in the book capture the thoughts of poets that lived in earlier centuries. Non-physical energy is the foundation of their poetry. Their poetry comes from their inner personality and from the consciousness where all creativity overflows with awareness.

Bringing different styles of poetry together to express what an aspect of consciousness does not do the action of this non-physical energy justice. The word Consciousness, like the word Zen, has different meanings in the minds of people who have different beliefs.

 In this book, our non-physical consciousness is our old fashioned love song. When our stoic consciousness accepts our inner love song, we realize our reality is just one reality in the action of our creative energy.