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There once was a horse Thoroughbred trainer in New York, that when anyone asked him how he was doing, he’d answer, “It’s such an easy game!” After I had may accident and started seeing and hearing dead people and didn’t tell a soul. I didn’t tell my family, closest friends and only after dating my wife for a year did I tell her, thinking it might be a deal breaker. I got married and 40 and that is when my real education started. I dropped out of three different colleges after high school and worked at the racetrack for 15 years. I got a real education starting at the Quarter Horse bush tracks with the gamblers, drug dealers, pimps, corrupt racing officials and later working in bars as a bouncer and bartender at some of the biggest honky-tonks in Oklahoma. It got better when I worked for three different Hall of Fame trainers and lived in such cites as Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, New York, Louisville, Minneapolis, etc. Although I was still running in the “Fast buck” crowd, they just spoke better and wore better clothes. I never worshiped money but was around and worked for the people who did. Money itself is not evil. But, you can sure do a lot of bad thinks with it. When I was a kid, I was raised in a nice middle class family. I went to church and school with the richest and poorest kids in the country being raised in the oil town of Midland, Texas. The poor kids always had the most fun. The rich kids had the coolest and nicest toys and later electronics and cars. The poor kids still had the most fun. I hung out with the poor kids. I didn’t care that they wore dirty t-shirts and had a million patches on their jeans. They liked me for me. We weren’t rich but I had a lot of things they didn’t have. As I grew older I hung out with the people that had the most life experiences. Good and bad, legal and criminal. If you lived it and could talk about it, you had my attention. It is all about the relationship. You respect me and I’ll respect me. Don’t bullshit me and I won’t bullshit you. You overlook my scars and mistakes and I overlook yours. Nobody’s perfect and if you pretend to be, you’re a bald faced liar! That being said I’d like to hear your story… So after my accident, my guide’s angels and hundreds of dead souls started my real schooling. 40-yrs-old and I’m entering soul kindergarten! I’m not the oldest person in kindergarten either. Some people start as teenagers, others after college. Others like me start after you’ve lived three or four lifetimes in the same body and still haven’t figured out the game. The rules to the game are simple and have been out there for a few thousand years. “Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you,” is how Jesus put it. My street thug friends would say, “You respect my shit and I’ll respect yours.” No mention about love. Why did it take so freakin’ long to figure out it is all about love! I wished I’d learned that as a 20-yer-old. I had so many great role models; I just never picked up the concept. I never gave a shit about money. I was always for the underdog, maybe because I was just a sickly skinny kid with add, dyslexia, asthma and low self-esteem. I got bigger and learned to fight and still pull for the underdog. I don’t give a damn about what anybody thinks about me, except for children five years and under and old ladies 70 years and older. They make up my biggest fan club! Turns out the rules of the game are simple! So freakin’ simple. It kills me to think about how simple the game of life is. I must have been a real stupid son of a bitch to miss it. But I’m not the only one. I wasn’t religious, matter of fact before my accident I was an atheist. How could God allow so many tragic events to happen to people? I mean really! It’s all about relationships. It’s so simple. It’s all about relationships. Hell, I don’t believe in the death penalty anymore and I’m from Texas! I’ll love you and respect your shit and you don’t even have to return the favor, because you might not know any better. Just like I didn’t know any better for forty freakin’ years. I forgive all of you son of a bitches that made my life miserable! In the next life you can forgive me, and you may have to until I figure out the game again. I’ll open the supermarket door for a little old lady carrying a handful of groceries, and on the same karmic level, I earned the same amount of karmic points as Bill Gates donating $75 million dollars to AIDS research. It’s that easy. I didn’t want the old lady to drop anything. If she did, I’d help her pick it up. This little old lady might be the worst person in the world and beat her kids like red-headed stepchildren, but it’s the right thing to do. I don’t expect anything in return or some type of reward. I’m giving that old lady a fresh start with me. I’m paying it forward in hopes it makes me a better person. It’s such an easy game! Think about the bad things in your life. Think about the bad things you’ve done! Now forget it. I forgive you. For everybody you treated like crap, I forgive you. It’s spilled milk. It’s never going back into the bottle. Get over it. Forgive yourself and we’re starting from scratch this instant. If you say I’m born again or anything religious I’ll punch you in the nose! Think about how many deaths and wars were fought over religion. Love one another, period. That’s my new religion. Music is my religion. A smiling dog wagging its tail is my new religion. Watching my granddaughter fall down and pick herself up is my new religion. I love to read about Jesus, Buddha and Crazy Horse, but I’m not them. I won’t ever even be near their game! All that I can be is the best me I can be. Get it. Transcend religion, Jesus did, Buddha did! Be the best you can be with what you got. So you can’t sing or dance? Neither can I. But I won’t judge you if you try and fail. We’ll have a laugh and talk about the good times. You just have to make good times! Didn’t say it’s going to be easy. But, it is such an easy game. You don’t knock over my blocks and I won’t knock over yours. Better yet, if you knock over my blocks, I’ll forgive you. Forgive yourself and then start forgiving others. That’s what it’s all about. It is called unconditional love. I don’t know you but I respect and love you. No matter how you screw up its ok! That’s why we came down here, because you can’t screw up in heaven. You get it. You feel bad now so you can feel better later. You feel really bad now, so you can feel really good later. You can’t experience that shit in heaven! Think about it. You came down here to screw your life up and get your act back together. How long will it take you? Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years? It doesn’t matter. Am I jealous of the son of bitches that learned this a hell of a lot earlier than me? Hell yes! But they forgive me. I’ve got nobody to blame but myself and I forgive myself. You get it now! No, that’s alright. I forgive you and will continue to forgive you until you get it right. When you do get it right, we’ll sit down with a beer and talk about all the shit we screwed up and forgive ourselves. Then we’ll talk about all of the sorry son of bitches that treated us like shit and gave up on us, and we’ll forgive them. Someone down the bar will ask us what we’re laughing about and we’ll replay, “It’s such an easy game!” Peace Out!