-Indigo Girls

​Ok, so we may have overdone it.

Finding ourselves each poorly at year’s end could be a signal to my wife and me that we pushed a little too hard over its course. It’s been a building year, with practical decisions abound and processes set in motion, destined not to see completion until the following year or later. Still, these years happen from time to time—rather, more often than not—and I’ve learned to relish and respect them as much as I do the roller coaster periods of high output that inevitably follow.
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We’re used to the long game. We chose it, and it nourishes us in a way that expedience never has and never could. That’s not to say there are no downsides. There are times I fall prey to avarice, envy, and other negatives unbecoming of a person living immaculately. I take ill-guided solace in lack and the zero sum game, believing for a second that another’s success is tenable only in a world that guarantees my failure. To that end, I believe in the inevitability of failure-on-my-watch, see no triumphant end to my journey, and succumb to despair and languish in gloom and sorrow.

​If there’s a prescribed way out of this sinkhole, I’d like to know what it is. Right now the only antidote for these moments of which I am aware appears as a combination of two things: 1) embrace madness and the lack of logic, and allow yourself to be an “unreasonably happy” individual. World imploding and doomed to catastrophe? Smile, darn ya, smile! And 2) to quote the character Dory from Finding Nemo, “Just keep swimming!” These moments of depression are equivalent to the psyche trying to escape the gravity of a black hole. Your only hope is to achieve escape velocity (which is, I dunno, probably the speed of light?) before you reach the event horizon, a near impossible feat, made more impossible if one doesn’t even try. So, boop-boop-diddum-boddum-waddum, swim and swim as fast as you can.

​The long game values authenticity, growth, and self-awareness more than anything, more than money, more than status, more than influence and fame. It’s a lonely life, because for the most part the world is entirely predicated on these very things. I remember there came a point when I stopped giving a rats about which ones of my former classmates sold platinum or were nominated for Oscars. I remember realizing, in that moment, how it all just didn’t seem so important anymore.

There are two aspects to this mindset. The first is knowing what you are here to learn, how you are intended to grow, both from a spiritual level as well as a practical one. Understanding what life lessons are yours, uniquely, to tackle, provides one with a sense of direction. Everything else fades away. The second aspect has to do with a phrase that I used earlier: living immaculately. This has to do with treating others with respect, grace, and kindness. Ultimately, our only lasting impression in time is the energy output of our interactions. Our achievements will eventually crumble to dust, and even absolute fame cannot stop the grapevine from misattributing our deeds (just ask Richard III). The interactions themselves are quickly forgotten, but the energy generated by them is eternal. Imagine what a world we’d live in if everyone who believes in a religion said, “Hey stranger, you think differently from me, and that’s okay.”

In my last blog, I wrote about a condition that I have that makes it imperative that I practice living immaculately, not just patroling the energy that I generate, but also carefully curating the outside energy that comes into my space. I remember what is surely a mis-quote of former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, in reference to then candidate Barack Obama’s religious beliefs: “The correct answer is, yes, he is a Christian. The right answer is, it shouldn’t make a difference whether he is a Christian or a Muslim.” Possibly the smartest thing any US cabinet member has ever said. How far we’ve come.

To this, I submit: I curate my relationships, whether friendships, work-relationships, or other, very sincerely and very selectively. Why? The correct answer is because, as a suicidal, negative and destructive energies could easily seep into and overcome my consciousness with thoughts of self-harm. But the right answer, and what I submit to the world this year, is that people should curate their relationships, sincerely and selectively, because people deserve to be treated well. All people. Even the shit ones. Especially the shit ones. Immaculate living postulates that if everyone treats others with kindness, grace, and respect, then everyone will be treated with kindness, grace, and respect. For no reason whatsoever. Just because.

And by doing so, maybe we’ll turn the world from a place overflowing with misguided billionaires, clueless award winners, musclemen, and warlords, to one overflowing with compassion, harmony, and balance.
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Travel safe, and talk soon.

WISHING YOU ALL A HAPPY 2025!

Quote source: Watershed (Saliers), Indigo Girls

-The New Christy Minstrels

I recently came across a quote, a line spoken by Keanu Reeves in the role of Frank from the movie Destination Wedding, which I’m paraphrasing here: “There are eight billion people in the world. So when one of them behaves badly towards you they’re actually doing you a great favor because they’re saving you time. They’re telling you that they’re not worth your while. They’re freeing you to say, thank you for the information, I will now move onto to the seven billion, nine hundred and ninety nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine other people, some of whom may have some value.”

The end of the old year greets me with the scent of betrayal, the sense of dejection, of goals exceeded, yet still apparently so far out of reach. When people promise you that they have changed for the better, yet the noxious, poisonous behaviors still persist, where is the threshold of compassion? Must the winds of forgiveness undermine the years of hard work you’ve done to heal your soul? There are eight billion people in the world. Must we return to the same ones, time and again, if the ultimate result is that they cause us pain and take us away from our journey?

I should back up. In 2019, my life went into free-fall. My medication for bipolar disorder all of a sudden wasn’t enough to contain the mania and the rage that had been insidiously plaguing my home life, and I checked myself into an inpatient unit not once but twice in the span of three months. The programs in there were intense to say the least; I had small but measurable consolation knowing that legendary songwriter James Taylor had made the trek before me in the very same ward. When I came home, I was beset by chronic anxiety, and it took the better part of the rest of the year to normalize me to being in the world outside once again.

One thing that was determined while I was inpatient was the fact that I was, in a word, suicidal. Now the concept of suicidality is oft misunderstood; it’s worth understanding that this condition manifests in manifold ways. In some cases (my case) it presents similar to alcoholism, where the patient is dependent, in some way, not on the substance, but on suicidal ideation. What this means is that in the same way that a recovering alcoholic is self-aware enough to know that there’s never “only one drink,” a suicidal knows that whereas a non suicidal may have a random thought one day of jumping off a bridge (know as intrusive thoughts), when the suicidal has similar thoughts, they last for days, sometimes weeks, and can grow and sprout into terrifying detail concerning the means, methods, wheres and whys. Something about the ability not just to harm oneself (that’s a different thing) but to end one’s journey once and for all, is captivating to the suicidal.

One can understand why. The greatest constant in the world is uncertainty, and there’s a certain comfort in knowing that if things get too dicey, you can reset the game (or end the game, if reincarnation’s not your thing). It’s a compulsion, and it takes work, a lot of work, sometimes hours of focus at once, chugging away, double tasking as I somehow try and complete the work of striving musician and artist at the same time, to turn the mind away from what for the suicidal are scarily reassuring nihilistic mind patterns.

Here's how this relates to Keanu Reeves getting a pedicure. It takes a staggering effort for the suicidal to live a life that even comes close to what you could call normal. More often than I care to admit even to my wife, the first thought in my mind when I wake up rings along the lines of, “you know, that lower limb on our Sycamore—I reckon that’s probably strong enough.” Fucked up, right? That’s how it goes. And I’m not about to spend the next four hours trying to meditate my way out of this, so I get up, turn the mind as efficiently and as unswervingly as I can, and I get on with my day. I have time for me. I have time for my wife. I have time for my work. These are the gifts I give myself.

What I don’t have time for is people treating me poorly, gracelessly, and disrespectfully (and neither should you, by the way). Bad enough that 60% of my mental radio static is self-generated existential threats, the last thing I need on top of that are people telling me why I don’t measure up to their expectations. I’ve given up a lot to create a worldspace based on mutual respect, support, and validation (the good kind), and I will not give it up easily. I’ve sacrificed success, longstanding communities, old friendships, all in the name of mental healing, all in the name of just making it through to tomorrow. I’ll admit, at times it has been painful, but I wouldn’t change a thing if I had to do it all again.
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I have to live immaculately. The only other choice is death. My mind must be clean, well-oiled, and quicker than a fisher cat chasing its prey. I must constantly learn how to express emotions more and more healthily. I must communicate with compassion and with precision. I must love with all my heart, even if that means it sometimes breaks. And most importantly, no toxicity must enter my worldspace. This is the killer of souls, the breaker of the foundations upon which the suicidal’s daily work must rely. I will not bow to this energy. Never again. There are eight billion people in the world. I will find those whom I value, and who value me.

​Thara m'er thoul.

Quote source: Today (Sparks) , The New Christy Minstrels

​I recently came across the concept in Buddhism of the “eight worldy winds,” a group of four opposite pairs that cause turmoil in our minds: pleasure and pain; praise and criticism; fame and insignificance; and success and failure. From an evolutionary standpoint, part of the human condition seems to be to chase one of the pairs, and flee the other. Awareness of this tendency was collated into the teachings of Buddha over 2,500 years ago, and still has relevance today.

I used to think that the way through these headwinds was purely through the practice of “equanimity,” or calmness and composure in the face of struggle. The idea was, through practices like breathwork or visualization, if I could keep myself composed during moments of stress, then I could see myself calmly through to the other side. But lately I’ve come to value a complementary aspect to this practice, that of “resilience.” Resilience interacts with the worldly winds in a different way, granting the individual the agency to respond as it needs to in the moment. While equanimity urges one to be the calm in the middle of the storm, resilience steels one’s will to keep getting up no matter how many times the storm knocks you down.

The term mindfulness gets thrown around a lot in spiritual and psychological circles, and no more so than in Dialectical Behavioral Theory, or DBT. When I started learning about DBT after my second inpatient stay, I found the pure mindfulness exercises the hardest things to grasp. While I had practiced meditation on and off for the previous decade, the equanimity I had found in doing so was brittle, and fragile to external forces. As such, I would ping-pong between the two states, that of unrelenting calm (from time to time) to that of utter turmoil (more often).

​With the addition of the term “resilience” into my mindfulness practice, I became more adaptable in the face of life’s storms. The winds may continue, but I would choose what actions I take in response. Here the word “agency” comes back in full force. To some of you, the term “wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tubeman” may ring familiar—to others, check out the link below. This motion, that of being tossed about by the wind, arms a-flailing, comical and ridiculous, can’t help but feel similar to the experience of a soul in turmoil.

​In a curriculum of equanimity alone, there’s a certain shame to being this thing, helplessly tossed about by the winds of misfortune. But in a practice of mindfulness that includes resilience, we give ourselves space to be that thing, that wacky waving inflatable tubeman from time to time, to hold ourselves with compassion, to know that it’s ok to be bowled over by a particularly strong gust, that we have the option of getting up and facing our trials, in all their seemingly sisyphean glory, once and again.

​Modern pathology (especially technopathology) seeks to reduce our resilience, to turn us instead into dopamine-craving zombies. But it doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, one of the most profound ways I was able to practice agency was in taking control of my relationship with social media. For those unaware, I have a spectacular tendency towards comparison. Indeed, it is a talent, for finding ways to compare myself, and always infavorably I might add, to individuals with whom I have nothing in common, neither circumstance nor experience, and after which the inevitable self-flagellation occurs for my not being of sufficient quality, not being up to scratch, essentially, for not being enough. Add to this a nasty case of bipolar disorder, and the years surrounding 2010 (or, for that matter, any of the years before 2019) were not a good time for me.

​So in 2013 I did the unthinkable—or at least what seemed radical at the time: I deleted my personal facebook account, and vested my professional page to comrades and allies who were willing to help manage it largely on my behalf. Nothing happened, of course. Nobody cared. Why would they? They were too busy spending time on facebook. But there was a nice kind of relief about the fact that the sky didn’t fall, that it didn’t suddenly rain fire because I had defied the law of Zuckerberg. I got my life back that day. I chose me.

Now, I’m not at all saying this applies to anyone else. I know a lot of people who derive great utility from social media sites like facebook. I’m just not one of them. My predilection towards comparison made me an easy mark to be exploited by the dopamine trail of crumbs that comparative social media sites provide. But now, thankfully, I was free. This seemingly small decision became an eye-opening example of how I might make the choice away from default behaviors that are harmful, and pick a new adventure, an adventure of my choosing.

​To me, a mindfulness curriculum that includes both equanimity and resilience provides the psyche with both the time and the space to cultivate a sense of “enoughness,” one that is independent of external circumstance and validation. This in turn allows for the blossoming of agency, ensuring that I have the tools to show up, time and again, in the face of life’s unpredictability, that I have the option of engaging with the world’s complexities rather than seeking escape, that I am whole and balanced, and empowered to act for the benefit of all.

Travel safe and talk soon.

Quote source: Stronger (Martin, Rami), Britney Spears