What Would You Be, What Would You Do? - Akira the Don

If you’re feeling heroic and you want to do something for the world

And you want to expand what you understand

You poke your head through what you know and you take a look at the,

at whatever structure is out there

And to me this is a re-creation of the Daoist Yin-Yang symbol

You know, with the white paisley here and that’s what you know the dark paisley

serpent’s there and the right place to be is right on the line between them

Put one foot where you understand, that gives you security, but it’s kinda dull

because hey you know everything that’s going on there and that isn’t what

people are like, they don’t want just security

Dostoyevsky said, I love this, if you gave people everything they wanted,

they had nothing to eat but cake and nothing to do but sit in warm pools and

busy themselves with the continuation of the species

The first thing they would do, well maybe after the first week, was go kind of

half insane and smash everything up just so that something that they didn’t

expect would happen

So that they’d have something interesting to do

And it’s so right because the utopian notion that if you just had all the

material stuff you wanted that you

You’d be

What would you be?

What would you do?

Well what would you be?

What would you do?

You’d just sit on the couch and watch TV

I mean you’d be, I don’t know what

You’d be cutting yourself just for entertainment in no time flat

You know, and that’s the sort of thing that people do

So we’re not adapted for security and utopia

We’re adapted for a certain amount of security

Because you know we are vulnerable

But mostly we want to have one foot out where we don’t know what the hell is

going on

Because that’s where you’re alert and alive and tense and with it

I believe this and I believe it actually has something to do with the

hemispheric structure of the physiology of your brain

The right hemisphere looks roughly adapted to what you don’t know and the left

hemisphere is adapted to the world that you do know

And the right place for you to be is halfway between them

You can tell that, that’s what’s so cool

What would you be?

What would you do?

We’re not adapted for security and utopia

Well what would you be?

What would you do?

Mostly we want to have one foot out where we don’t know what the hell is going

on

What would you be?

And you want to be out there in the unknown enough so that you keep updating

yourself

Well what would you be?

What would you do?

That’s where you’re alert and alive

This tells you that this is actually reality that’s manifesting itself to you

You know that sense of active engagement you have in the world when things are

working well for you

You know, where you’re where you should be at the right time

You’re alert and on top of things and engaged and you don’t have much of a

sense of time and the sense of the tragedy of life sort of recedes

That’s when you’ve got one foot where it’s secure and one foot out in the

unknown

And your brain signals to you that you’re in the right place by making what

you’re doing meaningful

That sense of meaning is actually a neurophysiological signal that you’ve got

the forces of the cosmos properly balanced in your being at that moment

And that’s why it feels so good

What else could it possibly be?

What would you be?

What would you do?

We’re not adapted for security and utopia

Well what would you be?

What would you do?

Mostly we want to have one foot out where we don’t know what the hell is going

on

What would you be?

And you want to be out there in the unknown enough so that you keep updating

yourself

Well what would you be?

What would you do?

That’s where you’re alert and alive

You know that because that’s where you are when you’re having a really

interesting conversation with someone

Or you’re gripped by a book

Or you’re really into a movie

Or maybe something that you do

As a, you know apart from your work

Or maybe even in your work

You’re into it and that’s because you are in the right place at the right time

and your whole nervous system is signalling that to you

And I would say that’s the sort of place that you should be all the time

That’s the recreation of paradise on earth

It’s something like it

Because you are in the right place at the right time when that is happening