Survival, happiness, a godfuck life, carry on

My brain is buzzing from coffee I drank too late at night. I may also be coming down a little from my weekend high. Back to the grind but still pleasant enough.

It's easier to be on top of life when I am happy, or maybe not easier so much as more enjoyable. The sun shines brighter and prettier instead of just blinding me. Wind feels like an assuring caress, not an annoyance blowing my hair into my eyes. The air I'm breathing in seems to nourish every fiber in my being rather than being a simple carrier of oxygen to keep my body alive, lungs collapsing, expanding, blood pumping, heart beating.

I can appreciate how the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. 

However, some of my most productive times were made easier during the hardest parts of my life because the reality of getting bills paid, taking care of others, or going to school can be a distraction that is just enough to shove the dying parts I was not willing to truly face to the side. The mundane is the tasteless liquid that makes swallowing life's horse pill fast so the bitterness doesn't touch the tastebuds quite so firmly. Like all traditional Western medicine, swallowing that pill doesn't heal the source of sickness -just numbs the symptoms while waiting for the sickness to pass.

Pass. Hopefully. Cross your fingers, squeeze your eyes shut, and hope.

Sometimes it's just hard to stay happy. It may even go against everything we are hardwired to be. There's a fear of happiness in a lot of us I think. Because it's fleeting and it's easy to get attached. The pain of disappointment or the muteness of low to no expectations is easier to swallow than the pain of having experienced happiness then lost it. I guess that is why it's hard sometimes to declare, "I feel good. I am happy," when I am. The brain does a funny thing instead and turns off the dopamine and oxytocin (the chemical responsible for the highs we have when we love, are taken care of, have orgasms, etc) so the hopes don't stay high for too long. It doesn't last.

But, Chance, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Is that depressing? It really can be if I let it. It depresses me if I think about it too hard. Biographies of all sorts of geniuses seem to point out one shared trait of these artists, philosophers, scientists, any great thinker that left a lasting impact on our worldview today - they underwent deep periods of depression. I don't pretend to be or delude myself into thinking I'm near that amazing. I am awesome but so is everyone I know. I am no genius. Those who know me know I can be quite the 'tard, really.

I do think however there is a pattern in people who do a lot of deep thinking and take thinking to a point where they fall into depression. I fight that sort of falling a lot more than others might suspect, at least those who don't know me beyond "Chance," don't know whoever "me" really is, or do not apply the insight to make the inference (nor really care to, and that is not a self-jab, just fact).

I don't think the depressive tendency is really too uncommon either. Not unique at all. Detaching, disconnecting, withdrawing, substituting a perceived lack with someTHING else is actually common. We make do. We get by. We move on in some way or another. I see it all the time. I have done it, continue to do it, and though I am not proud of it, am not afraid to acknowledge it.

Is there something incorrect or unhealthy about it? Just because it's common doesn't mean it's the most effective. Maybe easier, maybe natural, maybe fastest and gentlest short-term way to get from A to B, maybe the way we are brought up. Monkey see, monkey do. Every good little biology student knows, Darwin framed natural selection in terms of Survival of the Fittest.

It goes against hardwiring for survival to make ourselves vulnerable to happiness and loss.

Yes, we may miss out but at least we are alive and maybe there is something better around the bend. That's where religion gets "heaven" from. Something better around the bend, greener pastures. All that shit. Patience is a virtue because no one can control every aspect all of the time. But when does patience become stagnancy? The line varies. Tricky, tricky.

Then I think to myself, yeah, I'm alive. I'm alive to tell the tale but what KIND of tale? Is it a tale that makes my short, likely finite existence, meaningful? I am responsible for the meaning I attribute to my life. Am I doing the best that I can at that? Will I let the fears take hold, set myself to autopilot and let Darwin's natural selective tendencies take over so I can make it another day?

Life is full of fucking up. Sometimes it's so full of it that life seems like one gigantic godfuck. I am tired of/averse to the hurt that comes from being vulnerable when I open up but I think I'm getting more tired of getting stuck in the fear of fucking up.

Here's irony for funsies after everything my brain just vomited out:

When I DO allow myself to open up, that feels much more natural, more authentic when I am in the middle of doing it than withdrawing and disconnecting feels. 

What a kicker. Go figure, right? Maybe both methods are natural. Maybe every method or combination in between is natural. Maybe some methods are best at different times for different situations. Yay, infinity. It almost sounds like I just discounted the entire entry but I didn't. Don't you love it? I do.

So now I breathe. Just breathe and relax and let it all go and put out there in the universe without a care or worry. Choices matter but ultimately life goes on. Keeps going. It's out of my system and in this virtual box instead. Now I can jump back into the stream and carry on.

Walking works of art

Manny and I met up with his sister and father at the Farmer's Market today. I have never been to the Farmer's Market in Hillcrest and today I walked there in the clean, post-rain sunlight, through our beautiful neighborhood buzzing with interesting people. It amazes me that I am able to experience it, that I can call this home and my life now. It is amazing what we create when we actually act on ideas, goals, desires rather than simply ruminate on them. We are such walking works of art, a beautiful accident that was "meant" to be in the cold universe. We transcend our silly, microscopic existence which I think extends to why the small things make me feel so good to be alive.

Today feels like a huge step toward self-fulfillment. Ordinary eyes might roll at the wonder I fell but I think as "everyday" as this change may be in the grand scheme of things, it propels me forward to where I want to be, whatever that may be. Work in progress is almost the best part of gravitating toward something. Then again, the moment I'm at the destination, I feel that is the best part of the process.

In this moment, I am happy.

Martyrdom as selfishness

It's weird to admit I am prone to martyr-like tendencies. No pride. No shame. Just a sudden realization and lots of thought to follow it so that I can't sleep until I get it down in words.

My mother sacrificed herself to the point of completely withdrawing from everyone she intended to love. In so doing, my brother, father and I were often starved for the wonderful woman I know lurked somewhere in her center. Fortunately, there were enough occasions through which she bestowed some of her wisdom on the young, impressionable Chance. They stuck and are precious to me. I fill up with gratitude when I think of those moments. For her, I can only imagine her martyrdom likely started with her learning from her mother before her, my grandmother. I am not surprised. These things usually run in cycles.

Giving to those you love most is probably the most beautiful act I can imagine, feels like a good reason to live this life. It's when the giving and sacrifices warp into some kind of trap around yourself and the ones with whom you intended to share the bounty. In that case, it actually fuels a form of selfishness in that the most sacred gifts inside of you can petrify and go unfulfilled because there is nothing left to enrich yourself. This is a double-edged sword that also stunts the growth of the others around you who are malnourished because of overprotectiveness (poor word choice but right now I can't think of another). Thus, the ultimate act of love becomes selfish.

I think about my life and how I have allowed the tendency to stunt myself and those I love most. I have clung to fears which only fueled my compulsion to keep giving as an excuse to avoid failure. Or perhaps success and the fear that once successful, more would be expected of me and I would have nothing left to give. Perhaps I fear(ed) that the conditions I have become so accustomed to would change drastically and I would be too lost to deal with it. Something new. Something different. Paradox for the fucking win.

It's starting, even amid confusion. In a way, I think I love HER more than I did when I was with her. So odd.

I may be ready to end this particular warping of the cycle and transform it with as much grace as I can muster into the beautiful act I know it can truly be.

She never truly left

I fill my head with beautiful thoughts, inspiring ideas. Empowering to combat the disempowering train I ride now through a long night with an end too far for me to see yet. I really need to have an in depth talk with the conductor. I think of Rumi's quote: "Darkness is your candle. Your boundaries are your quest."

I watched Anne of Green Gables yesterday. I read through the Maya Angelou book Manny got me for Christmas. I listen to music that gets me higher than any chemical drug. I think back to all the times I felt beautiful and loved by others, those times that confirmed the reflection I saw staring back at me was smiling from a place in her soul and not just stretching the corners of her mouth for appearances. I miss her and I know she is waiting inside of me to come back out.

While others may have left my life, she never truly left with them even though it feels like that right now.

Struck open for the moment.

Something inside of me shifted just now. Something that was locked up tight released in a movement that could echo the grace of a magician's waving hand. Maybe it is magic in a way, considering the landscape. It is a momentary illusion that triggers full force an entire rethinking of reality, inspiring creative action. If the release could be audible anywhere else but inside, the sound would have been loud enough to vibrate the marrow in my bones.

Perhaps the most astonishing part of this unexpected magic trick is my heart and mind. They feel OPEN at the moment, so open that it feels like I'm breathing through them. While I stand witness in shock, there is a message waiting patiently for me to shake off my stupor. There it is, strung loosely like a scroll between head and chest: "I am still so full of love."

What a message. The reality of that hit me like a supernova flash, silenced in space. It trips me out. Here I thought I was full of hurt and shit. Mierde. Hell, one small but purely emotional part of me would even admit to believing I was worth the shit I thought I was full of. Now, suddenly, I realize with an intense strength that such a belief is not true at all. It seems almost foolish to have believed it but then again, it is not hard to understand why.

I feel another shift and now I'm like a bird flying over scarred land. From this high up, it is easy to see the whole picture objectively, recognize it not as awful or wonderful or in disconnected sections of rubble to pick through - just simply for what it is with minimal label-based artifice. The craziest part is that it's all beautiful from up here, damage, death, destruction, and all. Maybe I've just been so crazy inside I hit the end of the spectrum that loops back around into the sanity end. Crazy and sane describe the same "thing" at different points anyhow. Funnily enough, I somehow feel the "thing" I'm thinking of doesn't belong on a crazy/sane spectrum either.

For now, I will push the self-doubt aside and embrace the moment of clarity - of love even - and just be tonight.