Agreement

My dear bride gave me a copy of a best seller called The Four Agreements “a practical guide to personal freedom”. She remembered someone talking to me about it at a party, and I apparently showed considerable interest (those neural connections have since subsided in my own brain). She meant well, of course, but it turns out to be a book of pure drivel. “Based on ancient Toltec wisdom…in the tradition of Casteneda” – well, the Toltecs are generally agreed to be part of Aztec mythology, as Casteneda recognized. First we have the gibberish sentences that I suppose are supposed to be spiritual enlightenment (literally):

“he heard his own voice say ‘I am made of light; I am made of stars’. He looked at the stars again and realized it is not the stars that create light, but rather light that creates the stars. ‘Everything is made of light’ he said…Then he realized…he was made of stars…”

“What you are seeing and hearing right now is nothing but a dream…You are dreaming with the brain awake.”

Then there’s the false:
“let’s understand what it really means to sin. A sin is anything that you do which goes against yourself…you go against yourself when you judge or blame yourself for anything”. We should run that one by the Pope.

Then there’s the nonsense (which I swear I am not making up):

“if I see you on the street and I say ‘Hey, you are so stupid’, without knowing you, it’s not about you; it’s about me. If you take it personally, then perhaps you believe you are stupid.” …in which case, yes, you’d actually be pretty stupid. And my personal favorite:

“Even if someone got a gun and shot you in the head, it was nothing personal”

Let’s agree this is utter garbage and instead try to forge a real philosophy, one that’s based on the wisdom of actual thinkers, some actual thought of our own, and perhaps even a little speculation. That’s what I’ll try to build up over time in these pages. It won’t be deep, probably, or spiritual or even uplifting. But if I end up writing the kind of Miguel Ruiz piffle that passes for “wisdom”, just shoot me – I won’t take it personally.