Jeff Coleman's Blog: Jeff Coleman Writes, page 30

What is Time?

For the first few years of childhood, we exist in a bubble. Inside this bubble, the world is in stasis. We know our place in the universe, and consequently the universe doesn’t seem to be all that scary a place. Then something curious happens.

The world begins to change.

At first, it only seems to change in small ways. We notice the cycles in the sky. We begin to track the passing of the seasons. But the things that really matter, the people we love and the security we find in the bosom of t...

How Can I Rejoice In Failure?

Oh, boy. You’ve done it now. You’ve failed. Absolutely spectacularly failed. You want to die.

How will you go on? You’re afraid. You might make another mistake. You might be misunderstood. People might even laugh at you. There’s no point. You should give up, cut your losses now while you still have some face left to save.

Sound familiar? Anyone who’s failed at something (in other words, all of us) has gone through a similar thought process. We imagine failure to be the worst possible outcome...

3 Ways Love is Like Magic

1. Love is elemental.

Like Magic, Love is irreducible. Its existence transcends reason. It must be accepted without proof. Love is to the soul what Magic is to the physical universe, a fundamental force of the heart that breathes life into all of humanity.

2. Love transforms.

Like Magic, Love begets change. It has its genesis in the human heart, where it transforms the mind and the soul so that their chief concern becomes the health and welfare of others. Love blossoms, seeds and propagates,...

Showdown

Fear. It surrounds me.

I awoke this morning to discover that dangers and perils of every kind had gathered around me during the night, intent to do me harm. I look each in the eye. I swallow.

A showdown.

How did this happen? I cast my mind into the distant past, try to pinpoint the exact moment the trajectory of my life turned in this direction. I fail.

I shutter my eyes against the inevitable. “Take me,” I whisper, “I won’t be afraid anymore.”

I wait.

Slowly, I open my eyes. They haven’t go...

One Life Ends and Another Begins

“To live will be an awfully big adventure.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

On August 14, 2015, one chapter of my life will close in Los Angeles, CA, and another will open halfway across the world in Manila. I’ll step off my plane after fifteen and a half hours of non-stop flying with nothing but my passport, some cash and the few remnants of my former life from the States that will fit into two Samsonite Spinners on wheels, and I won’t be coming home.

How did this happen?

The short explanation is...

The Walking Dead

The magic is gone.

I’m not sure when I noticed. It didn’t go all at once. It lingered, even as it slowly leached away, until the universe had been sucked dry, a desiccated husk.

I wander a broken world denuded, a disinherited prince. There are no sorrows, no joys. Just a dull flat aching despair, my soul’s pleading cry, a desire to live once again. But the spark is gone now; there is no life within me.

I am the walking dead.

Filed under: Personal

Age and the Loss of Innocence

There are those exceptional moments in life when you experience crystal clarity in thought and purpose, when all is as it should be, when all is right and good with the world. But those moments are rare, are few and far between, and they almost always occur when you’re young. As a child, you didn’t have time to formulate your own beliefs; instead, your world view hinged on the beliefs of others. The innocence of youth is a wonderful carefree time in which the mind and the heart are free from...

Your Core Beliefs Have Disintegrated. What Do You Do?

You’d always stood firm in your beliefs. You never had reason to question them, never thought you could be persuaded to the contrary. You were a rock, solid and firm amidst the torrential currents of human affairs. Then the unthinkable happened.

Perhaps it started with a question, humble and unassuming at first, but like a trojan horse it slowly and methodically wrapped around the contours of your mind like choking vines. Perhaps someone raised an objection you hadn’t hitherto considered. Pe...

Can I Live More Than Once?

Life is a garden of experience. There are so many places to see, so many people to meet, so many things to try. Like children, we’re inebriated with life and want to have it all. But our days on Earth are so short, and if you’re like most of us, your available time is further constrained by the dictates of a nine-to-five work day, along with all the other obligations that ensure you’ll only experience an infinitesimal fraction of all the things you so boldly aspired to accomplish when you we...

My Mission Statement

I’ve spent the past few years thinking a lot about who I am and what I was made to do. It’s been a long journey, fraught with anxiety, self-doubt and confusion. I’ve traversed the desert of darkness and despair, have had to question whether or not I have a purpose, if I was meant to be a writer or if my art is just the accidental by-product of genes, passed on through countless generations, heralds of random chance and a fundamentally chaotic universe.

By attempting to comprehend my existenc...