Well, I am the world traveler this week in Australia with RSB. It's amazing to think where the blues has taken me.
I remind myself to be thankful to Muddy Waters and Blind Willie Johnson for this life I lead. I am just a student of the music and of the spiritual principles.
I thoroughly enjoy the traveling aspect of this musical career. Especially to foreign and exotic places.
I am also reminded that people are people, no matter where I go.
They are alive and living, working and playing. I travel thousands of miles to some distinctly different part of the world and look immediately for differences. What are they eating?
What are they doing? Where are they going?
I guess I am hoping to find that they are so different, eating crazy foods and living in some abnormal way....but they are not. They are exactly the same as you and I. They are trying to make it all work. Pay their bills and get through life the best they can. They have families and jobs and responsibilities just as we do. Sure, maybe they eat something a little strange or do things a bit odd to me, but its very superficial.
The bottom line is, people are people.
We hope for no harm and generally want to live in peace. I believe this.
I believe that people are all mostly good at their core. I do not believe in evil of any kind. I do believe in mental illness and emotional sickness.
I have been so fortunate to have traveled all over the world In the past 20 years and its all the same.
Sure their are some in the world that want to destroy and harm and steal and conquer, but the majority want to live in peace. We forget this sometimes when we are home in our little world. We watch tv and see only the bad out there and it seems like its all bad!
It's just not true. If you haven't ventured out into the world, you don't know what you're missing.
As soon as I realize that the differences are minimal in my travels, I begin to see the similarities. They are abundant.
This is at the core a huge part of my disease and mental illness. I want to be different form every one else.
I feel the need to be unique.
Although I am unique in certain ways,
I am more like everyone else.
I am not so different. None of us are.
We are the same.
We are connected. My disease wants me to disconnect, and that is ,in my teachings, the root of my self centered, egotistical illness. The sooner I can begin to seek the similarities in others on a daily basis, the sooner I can begin to give myself a break. In return I will begin to give everyone a break.
Because we are all human.
Very flawed. If I can begin to lower the expectations I have on myself, I will lower them on the rest of the world and immediately everything gets more peaceful and serene.
We are all connected, we are all one.
What I do that is good for the whole is what's best for me, because I am part of the whole. What benefits me only, immediately draws a line between us.
I am no expert and these are not my great opinions, these are just the principles that have been taught to me by those that came before me and I am reminding myself each day to re-member.
Peace, Love, Zito
