"Gaslighting is a term often used by mental health professionals (I am not one) to describe manipulative behavior used to confuse people into thinking their reactions are so far off base that they're crazy." ... "Those who engage in gaslighting create a reaction -- whether it's anger, frustration, sadness -- in the person they are dealing with. Then, when that person reacts, the gaslighter makes them feel uncomfortable and insecure by behaving as if their feelings aren't rational or normal."

via Huff Po

It’s the longest day of the year, and I’m not particularly interested in writing a long discourse on feelings and junk. Instead, I’m posting some items that I’ve found interesting over these last few weeks. But first,

a few words about Facebook.

I’m an early adopter. I love trying new things—especially new tools and technologies—and social media is no exception (my Twitter number is under a half-million, klout score of 37-45.) With that said, I’m very conflicted about Facebook. From the moment I joined, I checked-in constantly, several times a day. I love seeing what my friends are doing, and I love the interaction that Facebook provides. I feel like it’s more important as I get older, and real face-to-face interaction with my far-flung friends becomes ever more difficult/impossible.

Yet, over the last few weeks or months, I haven’t enjoyed being part of the Facebook community. Checking-in felt like a chore. Meditating on it, I realized that my problem is that so many of my friends are suffering. The Buddha admonished his students not to turn their face from the suffering of the world, but it’s painful for me to watch people struggle (maybe more so, since there are still so many things I’m struggling to work through.)

So I took a break from Facebook. I haven’t visited in almost two weeks (and then, only to reply to direct messages.) The first thing I realized was just how often I was visiting (a lot.) After a few days, I felt happier, like a burden had lifted. But after a week I began missing my friends. I still haven’t really come back to Facebook, but the time is nigh. There’s a twenty-year reunion I need to finalize, and like it or not, Facebook has become a part of my life.

I haven’t come to terms with how to help my friends. There are people whose relationship with their hardship seems so familiar that it feels comfortable to them. (To those souls I say, ask yourself the difference between comfort and familiarity.) I’m not interested in poking my nose into people’s business. This blog was established primarily to help me, but maybe it can help others too. Still, if you’re one of my friends who are suffering (and we are all suffering to one extent or another) please know that it doesn’t have to be that way.

See you on Facebook, I guess.

Why is friendship so painful?

Good advice from Salon. I think it clearly explains how many of us become so protective of our friendships. I’ve arrived at a different conclusion from the author because my perspective is a Buddhist one.

Nice Quotes

Thich Nhat Hanh

“The Buddha observed, ‘The person who suffers most in this world is the person who has many wrong perceptions, and most of our perceptions are erroneous.’ You see a snake in the dark and you panic, but when your friend shines a light on it, you see that it is only a rope.”

“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.”

Garry Shandling

“You can’t win a welterweight belt for beating the shit out of yourself.”

Laurell K. Hamilton

“There comes a point when you just love someone. Not because they’re good, or bad, or anything really. You just love them. It doesn’t mean you’ll be together forever. It doesn’t mean you won’t hurt each other. It just means you love them. Sometimes in spite of who they are, and sometimes because of who they are. And you know that they love you, sometimes because of who you are, and sometimes in spite of it.”

I like that quote, but I don’t entirely agree with it. I think Robina Courtin said it best: “Love is recognizing the happiness of another.” It’s as simple as that.

The people who want to stay in your life will always find a way.

people.jpg (my edit)
(Original Image @ witsendnj.blogspot.com)

Win or lose, you won’t know until the die is cast

Shopping in my old nerd-haunt last weekend, I discovered this little gem. At $0.75, it was a perfect metaphor at a pittance.

Doesn’t this represent how so many of us are living our lives? Roll the die and it comes up happy. Roll it again, and it’s sad, or angry, or afraid. More often, we don’t feel like we’re even rolling the dice; someone else is rolling them for us. They say or do something we think is mean, so we feel hurt and angry. They do something nice, it makes us feel happy. This is so common that it feels natural. Yet if you had the choice, would you let someone make that decision for you? Are you ok with letting someone dictate your feelings?

That is essentially what we do. The result is the same regardless of whether we allow someone’s actions to engage our emotions, or if we do it to ourselves.

We have zero control over what we feel. It’s not possible to say, “I’m not going to get angry,” or “I’m not going to be afraid.” Our mind rebels against orders like that. It reminds me of the classic Simpson’s self-help video starring Troy McClure: Get Confident, Stupid! It sounds dumb, because it is. Yet that’s about how effective we are at taking our own advice.

Given that we have no control over what emotions we feel, what are we to do? The answer is simple to see, but difficult putting into practice. We can’t choose what emotions will flow through our minds, but we have the absolute choice in determining our response to them. Are we swept away by the raging torrents of our feelings, powerless in our reaction? Absolutely not. Being powerless in reacting to your feelings is to be subjugated, controlled, and enslaved to your feelings. It might be easier to believe that. Have you ever heard someone claim “I can’t change who I am!” Can’t you? Or won’t you? It’s a convenient excuse to absolve yourself of responsibility, because you’re the Victim. It’s merely an excuse. Yes, you’re a victim all right. A victim of your own mind.

We have a choice, always. We may react or we may observe. Without training, observation is nearly always our last choice. Last, because it’s hard, and it requires us to understand ourselves in a deep, intimate way. The Star Wars metaphor of The Force is apt for showing the difference in response. When we choose to react, it’s like the Dark Side: quicker, easier, more seductive. The Emperor even says, “let the anger flow through you.” He is telling Luke to let his emotions take over. Don’t think. React. Lash out. It’s easy to see how we do this with anger, but we do this with all our emotions.

The other choice is observation, and it is powerful. But it doesn’t seem easy. Instead of being swept away by our feelings, we can watch them flow past us like leaves blowing in the wind. When you learn how to do this, emotions cease to control you and you become free to react to life as it is. Even better, you can see the world and life for what it is, instead of how you imagine it. You might be saying that this sounds crazy, maybe even impossible. I assure you that it’s both true, and it works. I will give you an example, but you don’t have to take my word for it because you can prove it to yourself. If just once you are able to let go of an angry, fearful, sad, or any other emotional response you will have already proven that it works. After that it’s only a matter of repeating as necessary.

Here’s my example. I recently received some information that made feel profoundly unhappy. I was prepared for it, but it was sad nonetheless. My very first reaction was an elevated heartbeat, then sweating. I remembered my training. I looked at the feeling and knew it was the anger response. I said to myself “this is anger”. I didn’t judge it (or me) I just observed it. “This is anger. This is anger.” Soon, maybe seconds later, it changed. Now it was sadness. I said “ok, this is sadness” and observed that for a while. “This is sadness.” After a while it changed into something else. Eventually, the only feeling that remained was compassion. The whole process didn’t take very long, because that is the nature of our emotions when we observe them; they drift away just as they came.

Notice that I didn’t observe “I am/was angry” or “I am/was sad.” This is because there’s a difference between feeling an emotion and being it. This is a crucial point. Look at the words, the language. If you are angry, you define yourself as being the emotion. I hate to break it to you, but you aren’t. You aren’t the earthly manifestation of love, hate, melancholy or anything else. No, you simply are feeling those emotions.

And what are emotions anyway? Emotions are simply strong thoughts. They are often very strong thoughts, but ultimately just thoughts. Most of us are thinking all the time. We are quite capable of easily dismissing normal, everyday thoughts. Thoughts that we recognize as absurd or throwaway thoughts are disposed of without special effort. Yet emotions are also just thoughts, not really different from our everyday thinking. The difference lies in the fact that we have a physiological response to emotions—which is why we call them feelings. Because we feel these thoughts, we give them much more importance than any other thought that runs through our mind. Are they more important? I would say no, we only believe they are more important because we feel them. But this is a debate for another time.

I carry this die around in my pocket. For now it reminds me of how random emotion can be. Mine, or others. Sometimes emotions are predictable, other times they’re like a roll of the dice. If we choose reactivity instead of introspection, we remain imprisoned. It is our choice: Observe our emotions and learn to see life more clearly (and ultimately, begin to eliminate our fear and suffering); or travel through our life as a victim of our feelings.

When you see the world with this awareness it becomes so obvious how so many people around us are utterly trapped by their emotions. We may never free them from their suffering, but we can free ourselves. That’s where we should begin.

Of course you do. We all want happiness. Every moment of our life can be weighed in terms of whether it makes us happy, or if it causes us to suffer. Sure, we’ve met people who seem to thrive on their own misfortune (or worse, the misfortune of others) but even they want to be happy. They just don’t know how to find happiness. Much of the time, neither do the rest of us. Even if we think we are basically happy, it often doesn’t take much to push us into suffering. Sound familiar?

I felt a serious need to investigate happiness. Simply, because I wasn’t happy. It’s what prompted me to work with a therapist. I might have balked at the prospect had I realized that the ongoing costs of therapy would approach that of a semester’s college tuition. Still, I’m glad I did it. The progress I’ve made is incredible—or so I am told—but I know it to be true.

I may never have come so far or so quickly had not another significant thing happened to me in parallel with seeking therapy. I found religion. Ok, not quite. Let me explain.

In January I began listening to a new podcast by my favorite internet personality, Merlin Mann. The podcast is loosely about Work. The discussion turned profound on February 1st when they released Episode #3. In it, they talked about their backgrounds and the things that shaped their personal philosophies.

Utterly captivated by the talk, I pursued the sources and delved in wholeheartedly. I read lots of books. I listened to podcasts. If you were to watch me in the evenings, it would appear that I did naught else. The underlying philosophy is—if you haven’t already figured it out—Buddhism. I won’t discuss all the ins and outs, so read this if you would like a 5-minute introduction. We could have a reasonable argument whether Buddhism is actually a religion since there is no creator god, nor the slightest trace of the supernatural in the tradition. Buddhists would say that it is a religion, because it is spiritual in the actual sense of the word. Spiritual, in that it relates to the human spirit or condition as opposed to material or physical things.

At it’s core, Buddhism concerns itself with understanding the human mind in the most intimate way. The old proverb says, “One can only be as intimate with another as one is with oneself” For many (most) of us, this study and comprehension can take a lifetime. The reward for this intimate understanding of the mind is a surprising awareness, even in the very beginning stages.

What really set the process in motion for me was this quote from a lecture (mp3) by the Ven. Robina Courtin, a Buddhist nun.

“It’s a practical issue. The bottom line is, ‘do you want to be happy?’ Do you want to feel less stressed, less miserable, less neurotic, more kind, more loving? Every one of us would have to say yes. If a dog could answer, the dog would say yes. It’s so clear to us. So all Buddha’s saying, is ‘Well honey, the methods you’re using now don’t work. Give them up.’ Not for moralistic reasons—‘because he said so’—which is how we think of religion. No, it’s simply because it doesn’t work. And if we have the humility to look, we’ll recognize the truth of this… the reason to do something is because it works. And what we’re dealing with here is learning how to discover, how to uncover our extraordinary human potential. According to Buddhism we all possess—innately—astonishing potential within our own being, right now, to be more happy, more wise, more loving, more kind, all the rest. All these words we know so well. They are our natural potential. It’s waiting to be uncovered.”

And that’s what I’ve discovered. I’m not enlightened, not even close. It feels obvious (and maybe it is, dear reader… I hope you’re farther the path than I) but it’s astonishingly simple: happiness lies totally within ourselves. It doesn’t come to us from the external, from jobs, things, other people, entertainment, food, our pets. It is realized from within. The realization of that happiness comes from developing an understanding of the mind to such a degree that our negative qualities—things like anger, fear, depression, jealousy, loneliness—simply drop away. Not because we don’t feel these things anymore, but because we understand that they are coming from inside our mind; not from the outside world.

Let me give you an example. Say you’re waiting for a bus. It’s a pleasant day. You’re reading a book. A man sits on the bench next to you to wait. Time passes and now the bus is running late. This doesn’t trouble you. You aren’t in a hurry, you’re reading a book. The fact that the bus is late doesn’t bother you at all. But the man next to you is fuming. He’s swearing at the inefficiencies of public transportation, the bus drivers. Now, is the bus running late causing the anger? If it were, wouldn’t it also be causing you to be angry? No, the cause of the anger is not the bus. The anger is in the man’s mind. Maybe he’s late for an appointment, maybe he had a fight with a family member. You don’t know. But whatever the reason, the bus isn’t the cause of the anger.

That’s just one example. We’ve all seen this. It’s easy to see in other people. But sometimes it’s very hard to see it in ourselves. The point is, all of these negative emotions—anger, fear, jealousy and all the rest—come from inside, not outside, and we suffer from them. This is not to say that things cannot trouble us, that people can’t cause us to suffer. The choice we have is to what degree we will suffer and for how long. It’s the direct opposite of the Victim Mentality. It’s the difference between saying “why do these bad things keep happening to me?” and “why am I allowing myself to suffer because of this?”

I haven’t even mentioned how all of this relates to the main delusions in Buddhist psychology: ignorance, attachment, and aversion. This is where you truly learn about yourself. I may discuss that another time. If you’re interested, please listen to the Robina Courtin lectures (especially lectures 26 and 27, below.) She’s a charming Australian.

So yes, studying Buddhism changed my life incalculably. I'm not saying that people don’t need medication or outside help from a therapist or another professional. This is obvious. Therapy certainly helps me, probably as much as the Buddhist studies. Maybe more. But what we need to know—and remember(!)—is that happiness is our natural state. It’s inside us. If we are to overcome our suffering, we must merely choose to understand ourselves in a fundamental way. Not only are we rewarded through becoming happy, but the people around us are rewarded by our increased compassion, joy, and strength.

And who wouldn’t want that?

Sources
I recommend the following materials if you desire to learn more.

Intro to Zen by Alan Watts - mp3 (free)

Lectures by the Ven. Robina Courtin
These are all free downloads courtesy of Zencast.org and the Insight Meditation Center. There is some music introduction to the first 3(?), and I encourage you to skip it because I find it unsettling.

• Zencast 26 - No Ego.. No Fear - Part 1 - mp3 (free)
• Zencast 27 - No Ego.. No Fear - Part 2 - mp3 (free)
• Zencast 72 - A Buddhist Mind - mp3 (free)
• Zencast 106 - Cause and Effect - mp3 (free)
• Zencast 117 - Bodhicitta - mp3 (free)

Books by Steve Hagen
These are Amazon affiliate links, which means I get 4% of the purchase price if you buy the book. Kindle versions are also available (for which I receive nothing.)

• Buddhism Plain and Simple
• Buddhism is Not What You Think
• Meditation Now or Never

Personal journeys are interesting, but I feel like this blog is at risk for taking itself (myself) too seriously. For perspective, I’d like to abstract the discussion to what we can learn from one of my favorite characters in all of cinema: Han Solo.

I’ve maintained for years that the most important character in Star Wars is not Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader. It is Han Solo, the lovable rogue.

There’s no question that the Skywalker family is the dynasty and focus of the series. Theirs is a grand, sweeping story; but they aren’t truly mere mortals like the rest of us. Solo’s character shows us a view of ourselves as we truly are and who we want to be.

Like Solo, we’re flawed. We’re stubborn, arrogant, fearful, reckless, prone to acting emotionally. We can also be loyal, determined, courageous, and decisive. The most important quality we share with Han Solo is the capacity for change. His story is about growth, maturation, and redemption. (And not just because the other Star Wars characters are more two-dimensional.)

Han Solo exhibits the most change in character over the course of his time on screen. While he has the best lines in Episode IV (the original Star Wars), no one can seriously argue that he demonstrates behavior worthy of emulation. Even by the end of the film he only decides to go back and help Luke destroy the Death Star because everybody put a guilt-trip on him. In Episode V (Empire), he begins showing more positive traits, especially the aforementioned decisiveness. But he’s still driven by fear. Fear of the bounty on his head. Fear of loneliness, perhaps? I maintain this is true because of his pursuit of Princess Leia despite her continued rejections. Though I will grant that isn’t the whole story between them; there is no discounting Fate in the Star Wars universe.

By the end of the series, Solo becomes an inspirational figure. He no longer puts himself before others. He understands love as an enlightened adult. He’s committed his life to something greater than himself. In essence, he’s become selfless. Becoming selfless didn’t diminish the things we like about him. On the contrary, his positive qualities (humor, loyalty, courage, confidence, determination) are amplified because he’s discovered who he really is. This is the transformation and redemption of Han Solo: a scoundrel who transcends his fears and becomes a true hero.

We have this capacity. Maybe we aren’t walking around with a bounty on our head, but most of us have fears that drive our motivations. Thankfully, like Han Solo, we can confront those fears, understand them, and let them go. When we discover what’s truly important—our selflessness, the recognition of that which is greater than ourselves—everything else falls away. This is genuine transformation.

When we redeem ourselves, we don’t need anyone to tell us we’re a hero because that is what we are.

(or, 1500 Words About Why Weed Wasn’t Particularly Good for Me)

If you’ve followed along to this point, you may be wondering when I will get to the “good stuff”. As the saying goes, If it bleeds, it leads; maybe I should’ve started this journal with this post.

Early Days

I first tried pot in the winter of 1990, and I took to it right away. It was more fun than alcohol. Way more fun. I don’t remember much about the first time I tried it, other than I spent the next four hours laughing until my stomach ached. It amplified my spirit of mischief and joviality. It made me feel happy.

Though there are other possible reasons, like those mentioned in this interesting research, unhappiness was the main reason I tried pot in the first place. People talked about the fun times they had with marijuana, and I was hoping to find something that would make me feel better.

In those days, I felt a lot of unhappiness. I thought I was done with high school and ready to move on, but I was stuck there until graduation. The last few years had been difficult with my parents because I was craving autonomy. The year earlier, there was a shocking accident in which several people died, and I was trying to quell my feelings about that. And in retrospect, despite being fairly popular (or at least not-unpopular) I felt like I was struggling to be accepted. And, I had no small amount of anxiety. Actually, quite a lot of anxiety.

These are common high school feelings, and I knew that I didn’t want to work with them in traditional ways. The church? Psychotherapy? Please. I had no faith that the church could address my problems, especially as a burgeoning agnostic. Psychotherapy probably could’ve helped, but I wasn’t ready for it; I was far too arrogant then—and until only recently—to accept that kind of help.

It felt as though my choices came down to alcohol or drugs. I drank, but not much. Alcohol was too much of a suppressant, and it was too hard to hide. Drugs then. Most drugs frightened me enough that I didn’t want to try anything hard, but weed seemed benign. I learned right away that most people wouldn’t say anything if they suspected I was high. I learned later that some people never suspected I was high.

Marijuana was exactly what I wanted to find.

My family had moved to Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania after I graduated from high school. I decided to attend Temple University in inner-city Philadelphia on the grounds that it would at least be close to the family. College was a difficult transition for me, much more difficult than I was able to admit at the time. The culture shock of the east coast was one thing; living in a fairly rough part of Philadelphia was quite another. Every day was another eye-opening experience. So weed followed me to college. My new friends there used it, almost without exception. There was no shortage of malt liquor, either. If you connect the dots, it’s not too difficult to imagine why Temple asked me leave for not meeting academic standards.

The following year I went to community college and worked almost full-time. I had no trouble with my classes. I made the Dean’s list. Work was no trouble either. It was as though I had figured-out the way to balance school, work, and a social life while still enjoying my escape with the help of the pot.

In the move back to Madison after two years in Pennsylvania, I joyously discovered that marijuana was available nearly on-demand. Not yet 21, it was also easier to get weed than to procure alcohol. As time passed, I was able to get my life into a predictable order of work and play. Provided that it remained predictable, I was satisfied that I had everything figured-out, more or less.

Trouble Brewing

Fast-forward to this last year. My pot usage was an everyday, normal part of life for me. As it had been without real cessation for the last 20 years. But it wasn’t making me happy anymore. Granted, there were bad things beginning to happen in my life that I wasn’t dealing with. I believed that if I just stayed on the path that had worked for me, everything would turn out okay. It didn’t.

Finally there was a day in July and a day in August that made me give up pot for good. On both days, I had smoked some pot (no more or less than usual) and then later experienced a profound soul-crushing depression mixed with a high level of paranoia. I clearly remember thinking, “Didn’t I start smoking this to feel better?”

So I gave it up. Unlike tobacco, there was no physical urge to smoke it again. Even when I came in contact with it in social situations, I felt no desire for weed. This is not to say that there was no physical withdrawal. I think if you ingest anything for 20 years and then stop, your body is going to wonder what’s going on. I had a month of terrible sleep. Wacked-out dreams. Lucid dreams. Insomnia. Too much sleep. It was a rough time.

The effects of withdrawal passed. Or at least I thought they had.

Real Ramifications

It wasn’t until I began working with a therapist that I really understood what marijuana had been doing to me all those years. In all my experience, I considered weed to be relatively benign. Sure, I had a ridiculous sweet tooth, but I never felt as though I was suffering from any real effects of the drug until those final, awful experiences.

The most insidious effect of the drug is the way it suppresses emotion. After all, that’s why I started using it: to suppress bad feelings. I didn’t want to feel bad and, let’s face it, things are funnier when you’re high. That isn’t the only way it works. It tamps down everything. Good, bad, it doesn’t matter. It may be obvious, but there were a lot of things I had to learn (or re-learn) after 20 years of heavy use.

The other crazy thing about weed is that when one uses it like I did, it tends to stick around in your system for a long time. Because it’s so good at traversing the blood-brain barrier, it’s also good at digging into your fat cells. This meant that if I didn’t eat enough during the day, I could start to feel high—even months after I had quit.

Those are reasons enough to never make a habit of marijuana.

The Worst Part

The absolute worst part about my pot usage is purely personal. As stated above, marijuana suppresses emotional response. It’s quite effective when trying to forget sadness and suppress anxiety, but terrible for helping find out who you really are.

Not long ago I was accused of behaving in a frightful way—that I was acting in diametric opposition to my personal character. I won’t divulge the details, but it was sufficiently awful that I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I was shocked and horrified.

This is where the pot had messed me up badly. By that point, I had only been out of the haze for about four months. As I learned later, I was experiencing feelings at 100% intensity for the first time in a few decades. The years of emotional suppression meant that I didn’t know how to respond to accusations like that about myself—let alone from someone I trusted implicitly. When confronted with something that I felt wasn’t the truth, I had just enough doubt that I could not, did not, stand up for myself. I doubted who I was.

Note: I am not attempting to contradict the feelings of this person. Feelings are one thing, Reality another. Thus, neither will I claim that I behaved like a fully adjusted, enlightened adult. I didn’t.

The Final Word

I have never regretted quitting marijuana for a second, and I have zero desire to ever partake in it again. I’m glad to be sober. Sure, I drink alcohol, sometimes to excess (though I try to be careful of that too.) Do I wish I had never made a habit of weed? Not really. I had so many fun experiences. It’s even hard to regret the bad experiences, because they’ve led me to begin a journey of profound personal discovery. I do regret that my steep learning curve has caused suffering to some people along the way, and I would take the chance to make it up to them, if possible.

But I like who I am. I like that I will continue to become a better, more-enlightened person. I can even value that I have gained some knowledge—albeit the hard way—that might be useful to someone else someday.

I was talking with my therapist the other day about the wonderful feedback I’ve received about this journal. He asked me what it was about, and I replied that it was an exploration of the journey that I’m on. He said, “Oh, you mean it's about Change.” Yeah, ok. It’s about Change.

I don’t believe in any of the astrological notions about how our personalities are reflections of which zodiac sign under which we are born. However, stubbornness is a trait in which my personality strongly hews to my Taurean nativity.

My difficulty was learning to accept change. Not only accepting change, but embracing it.

For years, I thought of stubbornness as a semi-virtue. What I’ve come to realize is that I was conflating obstinacy and determination into a false equivalency. Determination is a virtuous quality. It’s the focus we use to pursue our goals and strive for achievement. Stubbornness is trickier. The word reflects an uncompromising inflexibility. Well, look around. Don’t we see enough examples of people who are unyieldingly pigheaded? (Just look at our political discourse, and Ahem, Birthers) Who wants to be like that? The world is full of people who are unwilling to accept, let alone embrace, change.

I’ve been changing a lot. I’ve mentioned much of it before, especially regarding my health, both psychological and physical. But why stop there? In the old days, I would go to a restaurant and always order the same thing on the menu. Now I’m branching out and selecting new things to try. (This hasn’t yet extended to seafood, but give me time.) I’m also working on meeting new people and going to new places. That has been very rewarding. It has also revealed how small this town really is. I’ve been branching out into reading works by new authors, and music by bands I’ve never heard of before (and styles of music that I eschewed for, frankly, pretty dumb reasons.)

It feels like a trivial thing to write about change since it’s so constant in our lives. Everything changes around us, every moment. It’s easy to see the world changing. It’s not always so easy to see ourselves change. We are constantly changing. The cells in our body are in a constant state of flux. Our thoughts and feelings change. Hairlines recede. It’s accurate to say that you are not the same person you were when you woke up this morning. You’re not even the same person you were when you started reading this.

I think about this a lot. People change all the time. People might say, “Oh, that so-and-so, he’ll never change.” Well, yes. I’ve seen people appear to exhibit the same behavior for years and years. Yet change is there if we take the time to look beneath the surface.

I have a coworker who is a staunch, die-hard Republican. He’s an interesting case because while he does everything in his (considerable) power to skirt the law, he also takes a very “lock ‘em all up” attitude to lawbreakers in society. In all the years that I’ve known him, his thinking seems to change very little. Not too long ago he had to spend a short time behind bars on a work-release program. Afterward, he had a dramatic change in attitude toward the criminal justice system, especially incarceration. That’s not surprising, considering his experience. But it was surprising when I think about who he is.

Maybe we think that people don’t change because often the changes are so subtle, or that they occur over such a long period of time. Certainly people can appear to change before our eyes, and that can shock us. That doesn’t happen often. Our expectation is that people are the way they are. It’s convenient, but short-sighted.

My high school 20-year reunion is this summer. I was discussing the plans with a classmate, and he said “I’m not excited about the reunion. I don’t have anything in common with the people from high school.” I pointed out that on Facebook, I was often surprised by how open and interesting people are; many of whom with I had only limited interaction in high school. I said, “You and I are both different from who we were in high school; why are you assuming that no one else changed?” Change is a fundamental aspect to our existence, and not allowing for the possibility of change in others is to deny them part of their essential humanity.

We have such an interesting relationship to change. When life is hard, we can’t wait for things to change. When life is easy, we want to hold onto that as long as we can. But Change is always arising. We become out of kilter when we impose our desires upon reality, attempting to make it something that it’s not. Thus we suffer when we want the world, things, people to be different than the way they are. If we want to eliminate suffering in ourselves (and who doesn’t?) we must learn to let go of the need or inclination to force things to fit our particular view of the world, and instead learn to see the world as it is; full of change in every moment. Nothing lasts. The Good. The Bad. All things will pass.

Roll with it.

Journey

The english noun ‘journey’ comes from the 12th century Old French word journee, meaning a day’s travel. This was our original usage. I like how it demarcates the distance one travels in a day. We might infer that this distance varies by mode of transportation, the length of the day, and the goals of the traveler. This speaks to me on a number of levels.

Today is my 38th birthday. Therefore it may sound silly that I believe my journey began in the ides of January 2011.

Have you ever had a day when you took stock of your life and asked yourself “How in the world did this happen?” In mid-January, this question ran through my mind on a continuous loop. When I looked around me, it was though everything in my life had gone wrong. Not just wrong, but suddenly and drastically wrong.

I was extraordinarily unsatisfied with my work. I was weeks away from losing my home. My long-term relationships were crumbling. One of my closest friends, confidants and partners stopped talking to me. My cat was dying.

It was as if everything went wrong at almost the same time. Not quite, but very close. It felt worse than that. Only four months earlier I made several decisions to begin massive improvements to my life. I began to take my health seriously, starting with seeing a doctor for the first time in ten years. I began exercising regularly and intensely. I changed my diet. I quit smoking (well, several times.) Most importantly of all, I quit smoking marijuana for the first time in twenty years (more on that later.)

It felt so unfair that I was making great progress in one aspect of my life while everything else tumbled down around me. It was a wakeup call. The alarm was ringing and I couldn’t hit the snooze button anymore. I knew there was a problem, but I didn’t know where to begin. For the next several weeks, I spent a lot of time replaying all the events of the past several months. Nothing was adding-up. It was time to talk with a professional. I won't delve into that experience now, but let it suffice to say that it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

At this point, I heard a recommendation for Steve Hagen’s book, “Buddhism, Plain & Simple.” I put it on the kindle and ravenously devoured it. Don’t worry, I won’t discuss Buddhism any further in this post. Except to mention that this is when everything truly began to change for me. It started with letting go of a few cherished notions, beginning with my relationship to the past.

Don’t trust the past

What is the past? We know we’ve lived through it. We can point to evidence of our past. Yet it remains intangible. Some days it seems we can’t escape our history—as though our existence, our life today, is predicated on something that we cannot clearly remember.

There are very good reasons for distrusting the past. It exists only in our memory. We have photos, mementos, but these things merely help summon the memories linked to the objects. Looking at a family photo, the amnesiac is unable to access the memory of when the photo was taken. To them, the past is practically nonexistent. Most of us would be horrified by that lack of personal history. It seems perfectly reasonable to ask who am I? if we don’t know who we have been.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Allow me to demonstrate.

When I was child, my grandparents had a cottage in Minocqua, Wisconsin. In the late 1970’s there was an amusement park near the corner of Highway 51 and 70, where the main attraction (to me) was a truly massive-scale slide that stood several stories tall. The slide was easily visible from the road. Whenever the family would visit my grandparents, it was a landmark which signaled we were almost to the cottage.

The slide loomed large in my mind. What would it be like to go on a slide that big? I was fascinated and a little scared of it. Fun and dangerous.

Once we visited my grandparents for a week of summer vacation. My parents went off by themselves one afternoon while I stayed behind with Grandma. She drove me to the amusement park, and to that ridiculous slide. I remember waiting in line, climbing all stairs to the top, and the amazing feeling of seeing everything from such a height. Then grandma and I slid down together.

I can picture all of this as clearly as any other memory that rattles around in my head. Clearly, despite the fact that all parties involved—from Grandma on down—have assured me that this event never happened. In reality, it was most likely a dream I once had. I never went down that slide. It was torn down a few years later to make room for a McDonalds.

What are we to do with this? No amount of believing I once was on the slide will make it true. Yet, if I’d never talked about it with my family, I would’ve gone through life believing that Grandma and I slid down that monster one summer afternoon.

Our memories lie to us! Worse, we can’t be sure that what we experience is true in the moment. Two people witnessing the same event and seeing different things is so commonplace that we don’t raise an eyebrow when it happens. This isn’t to say that the experience isn’t shocking to us when we see or participate in an event, only to hear another participant describe it in terms that sound absurd. The differences in accounts can be banal, “She wore a red hat; No, she wore a white hat.” Or two people can have extremely different beliefs about the event. Who is right? Both? Neither? How may we answer this question if both parties (assuming there are only two) are reasonably sane people believing that what they witnessed was the truth?

First, it may be too much to accept that most people are reasonably sane. Perhaps all we can say is that each of us have our own relationship with reality. Living in day-to-day life, we largely agree on what that reality looks like, with some minor exceptions. Given that, let’s consider the shared-experience/different-account question.

Psychologically speaking, when someone is delusional it means they see and experience reality in a way that’s different from the rest of us. We tend to lump delusional people in with those who suffer from severe mental illness, and that’s often true. What’s also true is that every one of us experiences small-scale delusion on a daily basis—and we don’t even notice it. I will discuss delusion in greater detail elsewhere, but let it suffice to say that delusion arises from things we believe, fear, and desire. Those deep needs and feelings become filters through which we see the world. People become more beautiful or ugly to us based on how we feel about them. It’s very difficult to control, and impossible if you aren’t aware of it.

This is usually—but not always—how two people can walk away from a particular event with very different ideas about what they witnessed. Both people absolutely believe what they saw was the Truth, and both question the sanity of the other for not seeing the same thing. Who is right? Probably the one who saw the event most accurately, if even then.

This can be a scary realization. But if we can accept this, suddenly the past loses most of its relevance to our present. Naturally, where we are right now is the cumulative result of everything that happened before. But being the result of all those actions is different to being relevant.

One last example

Pretend you’re sitting down to eat your favorite meal. Before taking the first bite, you’re aware that the food is prepared to perfection, and that your appetite is ideal for what you’re about to eat. You dig in. You taste the perfect flavor. It is the ideal representative example of this particular dish. Now I ask you to consider a particularly painful memory, perhaps the death of childhood pet. What relevance does that memory have to sitting here, eating a delicious meal? Absolutely none. The same is true for virtually all memories of our past. Consider it. Almost nothing that I can think about has any relevance to eating a delicious burger. But how often are we drawn out of this moment by the remembrance of something unpleasant? Or pleasant? The emotional significance of a memory can be positive or negative and neither will be relevant to this moment. I would go so far as to say that if we spend too much time thinking about those memories, we won’t give ourselves a chance to enjoy the meal. Let alone remember it.

This wasn’t obvious to me until only a short time ago. It leads to a larger discussion about mindfulness, meditation, and psychology. If you find yourself agreeing with these ideas, at least in theory, I will ask you to consider that maybe spending too much time with memories of the past is the mirror image of being too invested in the future.

But that’s a discussion for another time.

Recently, friends have suggested that I begin writing a blog or journal about the journey I'm on. I've parsed this idea for a few weeks and decided that it isn't terrible.

What is the deal with this journey?

A journey implies a destination. That isn’t what this is about, nor is it about geography. It’s an exploration of the mind, the nature of reality, love, death, loss, hope, and redemption. Is it an odyssey? A peregrination? I have departed, but I don’t plan to arrive anywhere. Most of the time, I say that I’m on a path. I’m curious to see where it leads.

But…

Telling the whole story would involve revealing details about myself that are known by only a few people. There was a time when I worried about the things I could post on the internet without repercussion. I’ve made my peace with that. I have no business with anyone who would hold my real self against me.

A complete account would also involve discussing events which aren't widely known, and people who would prefer to remain anonymous. This is unfortunate but fair. Unfortunate, because I can conceive of no way to explain parts of this story while protecting their identities. Therefore, please forgive me for occasional vagueness. I will do my best. Besides which, this story is only tangentially about them.

I will discuss many things in the following chapters (for lack of a better term); where I came from; who I have been; the events that shaped me. I hope not merely to entertain. If I do my job right, I hope I will inspire someone. Perhaps even to inspire myself. Explore. Challenge ourselves. Strip away the meaningless concepts which we wrap around ourselves like safety blankets.

Why This Brief Moment?

We’ve all heard that we should “live in the moment”. I embraced this idea for most of my life. It wasn’t until recently that I realized I had it all wrong. As I will try to explain elsewhere, this moment is all that we ever have, and it’s the most important one. As Kalidasa wrote,

For yesterday is but a dream 
And tomorrow is only a vision;
And today well-lived, makes
Yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.