Wait, How Old Are You???

The twenty year old dude behind the counter at Starbucks couldn’t believe I just turned forty-two.

That makes both of us.

Thankfully, he thought I was younger.

But the truth is, there’s only one thing I give a shit about when it comes to growing older. And it’s not my gray hair, nor people thinking I should be further along by now, and not the fact that I can’t score college chicks anymore.

The passage of time and subsequent birthdays are significant for this reason alone: the end is getting closer.

And that scares me man. It really scares me.

I have so much lighthearted nothingness yet to accomplish.

I better get moving.

Oh, and by the way, even in college I couldn’t score college chicks.

I think I would have done well in the psychedelic 60’s though.

Free love and flower power.

— www.DoYouNeedAMiracle.com —

“In Live Like a Fruit Fly, Gabe Berman shares his recipe for living a more joyful, worthwhile, and abundant life in every way. A witty, entertaining, and insightful read.” — Deepak Chopra, Author, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success

What’s The Point Of Being Here?

A women I often see in Starbucks told another woman I often see in Starbucks about my book.

Wow, that sentence really sucks.

Take two: Two women I see often in Starbucks were talking about my book.

One of them just asked me….wait…now it seems like I walked into Starbucks and these two chicks were sitting there with espressos, chatting about my book. Which isn’t what happened, but, whatever.

Oh, by the way, it’s “espresso”. Do you see a goddamn “x” in that word? No. You don’t. So, for the love of all things holy, stop saying expresso. Thank you.

Anyway…One of them just asked me, “So, what’s the purpose of fruit flies?”

She wasn’t inquiring about why my book exists. For that, I would have smacked her right in the teeth.

She actually wanted to know about fruit flies in general. As in: if they die so quickly, what’s the point?

It’s really a great question if you think about it.

And the only answer that seemed adequate at the time was, “When I figure out what my purpose is, I’ll get to the fruit flies next.”

But now that I write this, I realize I already know what my purpose is.

My purpose is to live. Live until I no longer live.

Hence, it’s the same for good old fruit flies.

I’m just trying to live as gracefully as they do.

And as you know, it ain’t always easy.

I’m trying though. I’m really trying.

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This Is For You (yes, you)

The Big Bang, forming galaxies, Earth cooling, your great grandparents falling in love, this video.

Please, don’t allow yourself to be too busy to watch it. It’s intended precisely for you.

Thank you:

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You’re Gorgeous! (And ugly too)

A trifecta of high school chicks are sitting in front of me in Starbucks right now.

They’re cute and they know it. Confident as a mafia hit squad. iPhones out, ripped jeans, and a blatant disregard for calories.

If I were in high school, or even in college, I’d be scared shitless from these three.

Shitless.

But, I’m a goddamn Jedi now. And their bitch faces melted like candles thrown into a volcano when I got up to take a leak and said, “Hey, can you guys do me a favor and kick the crap out of anyone who tries to touch my iPad?”

Everyone else walking by gets a solid dose of the world famous Long Island Stink-Eye.

They look at their clothes, whisper their reviews, and smirk in disgust.

And I’m almost as guilty.

When I was a kid, I’d also cut on people behind their backs to my friends. And as an adult, my mind judges everyone and everything. My thoughts are on autopilot unless I’m already abiding in a transcendental space.

And this is bad.

Very, very bad.

Because kids, all over the world, grow up thinking it’s okay to fuck over people to get ahead. Greed is the golden rule. The environment? Slaughterhouses? That’s someone else’s problem.

Sounds like I’m stretching here?

Well, I’m not. Go look out the window. Open a history book. Switch on TV. Look inside your own head and heart. We’ve made a living hell for ourselves.

All is not lost however.

Everything can be cured in just a few generations.

What’s the cure?

Oneness.

“We are all one. Everyone you see, is actually you. They look different, but it’s you.”

This needs to be taught along with the abc’s. Along with the times tables. With science, history religion and art.

It will become as natural as learning to keep little hands away from a hot stove.

The survival of our species depends on this. Just this.

And it can start with you.

Today.

The separation you feel between you and others is an illusion.

According to mystics and now physics, there’s only one of us.

Thank you for reading,
gabe

— please check out and support my new site www.DoYouNeedAMiracle.com thank you —

“I Will Make You Fishers Of Men”

Forty-two years ago today, my dad woke up and decided to go fishing.

My mom said, “I don’t think so.”

They went to the hospital instead and came home with me.

And just a few years later, he took me fishing.

And to soccer games. And to car shows and to boat shows and to pizza places. And when my sister’s kids were born, more pizza places.

We fought too. A lot.

I miss him a little bit more today than I usually do.

It’s bizarrely warm out now for the middle of October, so my mom and I are sitting on a bench on the boardwalk in Long Beach.

I need to be more forgiving with her. We’re all headed to the same place.

On the drive over here, I was listening to the Blues Brothers soundtrack. It was one of my dad’s top favorites and mine too of course. He labeled the blank CD after burning the album from me on his super-slow laptop many years ago.

I stared at his handwriting before pulling out of the driveway today.

As I was parking by the beach, the live version of Everybody Needs Somebody To Love started playing. It opens up with Elwood Blues saying, “…please remember people, that no matter who you are and what you do to live, thrive and survive, there’re still some things that makes us all the same. You, me, them, everybody.”

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Scenes From A Dinner With Grandma

“Instead of using that fake butter stuff, can you cook with olive oil?” I asked.

“I never heard of making scrambled eggs with olive oil,” my grandma answered.

“Me neither, but I’m sure it will taste fine,” I said.

It tasted fine.

I didn’t even want to stay for dinner. But I was there already, and dinner time snuck up on me, and if I split then, she’d have to eat alone. As she does every night. So, I took one for the team.

Halfway through the meal she says, “I never heard of anyone using olive oil to make eggs.”

I took a deep, meditative breath and said, “I usually make eggs with coconut oil.”

Silence.

“Is that olive oil?” she asked after taking a huge, gross bite of her turkey sandwich.

Bewildered I said, “What do you mean? It’s coconut oil.”

Silence.

More silence.

More turkey chewing.

“So, it’s not olive oil?” she asked.

“Holy fuck, what the fuck is your problem?? Coconut oil is from coconuts and olive oil is from fucking olives!”

I didn’t say that but I sure as shit wanted to.

But she’s ninety-two and obviously born before logic was invented, so I let it go.

She rode the elevator down the seven floors to the lobby with me. I noticed some white stuff on her lip so I said, “You have some white shmutz on your lip.”

She brushed her cheek clean.

Jeez man, your lip.

I said, “Remember Goldie (my other grandma, my dad’s mom, who died last year) always had Tums hanging out in the corners of her mouth?”

She nodded “Yes” and we both smiled.

She said, “I miss her sometimes.”

“Me too, me too.”

But I was really talking about my dad.

Slowly, my grandma turned to face the elevator doors. As they opened she, as if Scorsese was directing, delivered her lines with precision, “None of us live forever. We all die.”

I would love to live my life as if beauty is the only thing that mattered. Because the truth is, it is.

At least to me.

I guess I’ll really have to try harder to stop letting everything else get in the way.

Try harder to be a fruit fly.

Maybe you should too.

— please check out and support my new site www.DoYouNeedAMiracle.com thank you —

Why Are We Here?

I was asked today, “Why are we here? It seems to have nothing to do with what I’ve been told. And believed.”

I suddenly remembered my Socrates, “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”

So I typed back, “The answer might be found in a Billy Joel lyric: I don’t know what it is but maybe there doesn’t have to be a reason anyway.”

I continued, “If anyone claims to have the reason, if anyone says they know for sure, they’re dead wrong. Or, they’re right but got lucky. And we we still may never know.

With that said, it’s up to you, if you want, to give your life a reason.

And if you don’t, that’s okay too.

Because the “reality” we perceive is only an illusion.”

But as Einstein admits, it’s a very persistent one.

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Beauty For The Sake Of Itself

I’ve quit, completely cold turkey, many times.

I’d be in the shower or maybe in Starbucks and out of nowhere I’d say to myself, “That’s it, I quit. I’m never writing again.”

Why should I even bother anymore?

I thought I’d be a bestseller by now. But the cold truth is, hardly anyone reads my stuff. Even when I give it away for free.

So, what’s the point?

The point is this: I can’t let myself be a goddamn hypocrite. The world is full of them and I’m sure as hell not going to add to the murky mess.

Discouraged authors and artists often ask me, “Why should I continue trying?”

I always respond with a strong dose of, “If you can add beauty to the world, do so. Even if no one will ever see it.”

Because beauty, for the sake of beauty, is important. Important as anything else or maybe even more so.

And imagine if you reach just one person. I mean, really reach them. Deep down in their soul.

A women in Sweden read through my blog today. The one, statistically speaking, you’re probably not reading right now.

She sent me an email saying, “Im smiling and I’m thankful for your writing and I feel honored to read it. If you knew my story you will see how magical i feel this is… Me sitting here reading your words. And how much they mean to me and truly speak to my innermost essence…it’s a miracle.”

That surely doesn’t pay my bills. Shit, it doesn’t even pay for this cup of coffee I’ve been nursing.

But it justifies my writing. It justifies my entire existence.

I was able to make someone glow who lives halfway around the world. Just by doing what I knew I needed to do.

Maybe I’ll never be a bestseller. And maybe you’ll never play for the Yankees or have your work hang in the Louvre or teach penguins how to play parcheesi.

Regardless, people who aren’t aware that they’re counting on you, are counting on you.

If you’ve been given gifts, share them.

And please check out and support my new site: www.DoYouNeedAMiracle.com

Thank you…

Extrapolate

Bananas ripen. All by themselves.

Isn’t that amazing?

You leave a bunch of those greenish, stiff looking, unfit for consumption badboys on the kitchen counter next to the pile of unopened mail, and in the morning, they’re all nice and yellow and ready to go.

It’s goddamn miracle.

No really, it’s a miracle.

Bananas aren’t plugged into anything. They don’t run on batteries. They’re basically just little babies. All alone in the world. And yet, the massively condensed universe inside pushes them to perfection.

They don’t have to do anything for this. They don’t have to toil and strive.

They just let it be.

The same massively condensed universe can also be found in… (you know exactly where)

“In Live Like a Fruit Fly, Gabe Berman shares his recipe for living a more joyful, worthwhile, and abundant life in every way. A witty, entertaining, and insightful read.” — Deepak Chopra, Author, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success

www.LiveLikeAFruitFly.com

www.WeightLossCoffeeMiracle.com

www.whereisgodwhenourlovedonesgetsick.com