Why Tao, Now?

Its been a long journey for me to get here. I always was here and knew it as a little boy, I just didn't know what to do with it.
  I'm a little boy 3 or 4 years old. My pet Budgie Peter fly's out of an open window. I cry - I loved that bird - Gone. 'Up up and away' plays on the radio. 'What is life all about?' I think.
  I lived in a street called 'Brewery Terrace'. You can take the boy out of the Brewery But, you can't take the Brewery out of the boy.
  I'm 18. I pick up the bottle and don't put it down.
 Always questioning life, all the time, all of the time. Never getting it right, never fitting in and yet always interesting and interested. People found me odd - still do -, pleasant, easy, friendly, good, ok, kind. Some people found me to be the opposite of all those niceties. Thats what alcoholism does, it puts people off you, turns them away. I spend all my adult life drinking. Puzzled, confused. Never wanting what I was or what I had. I needed more. I knew there was more and all the time it was always there and I just didn't realize. The best things in life are the hardest to see.
  Peter was gone. I'm crying. Sad. A cross roads. Do I keep crying for the things that have gone? or, do I embrace the spiritual essence of life, stop crying and feel the connectedness of all things and understand that actually nothing comes and nothing goes and all is one, no beginning, no end.
 No! Spiritual comprehension was far too simple to embrace. Thats why we aren't taught it at school, by our family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, TV, Radio, Newspapers, all that media, all the encounters, people, strangers, because very few people even know what it is.
 And, so no. The little boy cries for the great loss of his friend and he keeps crying.
 Crying was the answer, thats how to deal with loss, wanting, desiring, must have, can't have, should have, not fair! And all around me, everywhere, everyone is crying. In pain. Suffering. It was all I knew and I think its all some people will ever know.
 After a lifetime of crying for Peter the Budgie, I nearly die. Not once. 5 or 6 or 7 times or more. Frustration, anger, confusion, disgust, gets the better of me and I find myself on a slab of steel. About to be sedated and knowing I may not ever wake up, ever. I decide that if I am to recover, I'll spend the rest of my life accepting the loss of Peter the Budgie. Stop crying and take everything that comes as part of the game. Life is a game. Its meant to be enjoyed. We all only have one chance to enjoy it. I woke up from my operation. I was lacking a stomach, a spleen, a gall bladder, lost half my pancreas, lots of intestine and had a colostomy bag stuck to my side. Lots of loss to cry about. We all only have one go at this life. One go. Thats all. Do I cry about all my loss? All my mistakes? All my self-pity? All my grieving? All these things that could easily keep me crying - and in this world, my tears would be accepted I'm sure with 'poor bloke, he's had it tough' or 'Idiot, he deserved it', normal responses - I neither want pity or to be thought of as an idiot. Pity me or call me an idiot if you so wish, only don't expect me to agree or join in the futile gossip of my worthy life. I love my life today. I have found what I have been searching for since 1970. Searching high and low. Feeling high and low whilst searching. Looking everywhere for it. Now, I have found it at last. Peter the Budgie has come home or is home, or more to the point, was always home. To my surprise, astonishment, amazement, and absolute delight, I now know that Peter the Budgie had never left me in the first place. It was me who left him. I'm the one who has returned. Still crazy, mad, finding life as hard as I always have, drinking, smoking, swearing - I'm still a bad boy - The only difference, is that now, I'm the one who is flying, floating, moving with the wind. Its called the Tao. Freedom from the bondage of all misery, living in the essence of it all. No past, no future. Just the Now and in the Now is everything the Buddha talked about. The Now is here and there's no need to look for it, its here already. To explore it, live it, be it, is a gift. The Ego, the disillusioned sense of self, is insanity. Get real! Man has gone crazy. This planet is hosting the biggest lunatic show in the universe and I know because I've got a front seat ticket, the show is called 'Greed! Grieve and Give!'. Its a good show. I've seen it before. In the end, they all Die before they lived.