I don’t think that the interplanetary monkey has anything to do with this post.

It just sounded so darn catchy that I couldn’t resist.

I think about “right livelihood” all the time.

From what I understand, it’s a Buddhist term…where occupation lines up with conviction…where abilities are perfectly matched to the task at hand.

It’s a good thing.

I think about it all the time…or at least some of the time…because I don’t think that I’ve figured out how to arrive at that destination. I don’t know what it means. The phrase could be some kind of cryptic zen koan as far as I’m concerned.

I don’t think that driving the mail around is what I was put on Earth to do, though.

Whoa…suck it up, you freaking whiner…it’s a good job….get off the “meeeeeeeeeee” track and bloom….enjoy what you have while you have it….BREATHE.

Just breathe…and enjoy the life around you.

Now that I’ve convinced myself that I’ve busted through the “right livelihood” conundrum momentarily…or just pushed it back into it’s own dark corner for a while…I can hit up something else that I just started thinking about again this morning.

OK…check this out….here’s a term that I’ve never heard anyone use….

How about….” RIGHT LIKELIHOOD”?

How about that? That’s pretty clever of me….”right likelihood“.

See what I did? Changed the word?!

I shouldn’t brag, though…forget that I said anything about “clever”. It’s not so clever…I just have too much time on my hands and a full pot of coffee in front of me.

So I obsess over reaching the nirvana of “right livelihood”….always. I’m always mulling that over. It colors my worldview.

How about I obsess over figuring out how to expect “right likelihood”?

From the definition that I’ll make up on the fly for “right likelihood”…. right now…I suppose that it’s the ingrained expectation that things are working in a way that supports a favorable outcome. “Right likelihood” might also be the willingness to understand that outcomes, even if they aren’t exactly following the plan I laid out at the onset, can be “right”.

“Ingrained expectation” is the key part of that phrase for me. I can force optimism…I can override my occasional pessimism and try and replace it with an optimistic worldview…I can battle my demons of doubt…but I’m not to the point yet where my optimistic viewpoint is “ingrained”.

I vacillate. I guess that I vacillate…sometimes. I’m a changeable man…nothing is constantly consistent. I guess that sometimes I can vacillate…some.

“Vacillate” is an interesting word. I wonder what I look like when I’m “vacillating”? Is it something visible to the “naked eye”?

Sorry…I digress.

I guess that what I’m trying to say is that, like trying to approach “right livelihood”, approaching “right likelihood” has to become more than just some weird theory that I pay lip service to and never get any closer to attaining.

I have to get to the point where I believe…deep down in the marrow of my spirit…that good things are the predominant (or eventual) outcome of everything that happens to me and to the people around me.

I need to pursue the concept of “right likelihood” like my life depended on it.

And…I need to find this “interplanetary monkey” sometime soon.

That fascinates me.

Look at his little monkey space face…he’s so trusting and optimistic.