Stay hungry.  Stay foolish.

It's Leg One of my post-employed existence, and I'm in Boston for the next 5 days.  Not that I have any real interest in the guy, but this morning I'm reading Steve Jobs' biography (which Maryann's millionaire boss was given, had no interest in, and gave to her.) (For some reason people were constantly sending him free shit).  And while I'd heard Bill Maher mention after Jobs died that he'd been a hippie, etc., I guess I didn't realize to what extent he had been, at least his early/mid 70's self.  Lived in India for 7 months?  Rarely bathed and didn't believe in deodorant?  Not just a vegetarian but constantly experimented with fasts (sometimes as long as a week) and extreme diets (eating only apples and carrots until he turned a slight orange tinge, literally).  Meditated, had gurus and swamis.  Worked at a farm-commune.  Walked around carrying a copy of Be Here Now.  Developed a deep belief in intuition vs intellect, which he continued to tout til his death, as he did LSD.  (Ha!  I just mistakenly typed 'LDS' - Latter Day Saints.)

So unsurprisingly he becomes a devotee of the Whole Earth Catalog.  Quoting Jobs: "On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road.  The kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous.  Beneath it were the words 'Stay Hungry.  Stay Foolish'."

Which struck me pretty hard just now.  There's a lot of wisdom, and beauty in that.  It's just a matter of getting ourselves off the treadmill of mundanities, mentally and otherwise.  Ie., we are all gonna die, man, and sometimes we need a reminder of that.  We just do.  More than sometimes.

What it's essentially saying is, stay young.  What a tragedy and a waste the way the world is set up, that it forces us to lose sight and lose touch with life and living and risk taking, because of the need to be focused on paying the goddamn rent, continually turning over that precious, ever fleeting thing - time - to 'the man'.  Damn.

I will try to bear this in mind in the coming weeks, how fortunate I am to act as a bit of an explorer for a while, on my own with no set agenda.