The Wilderness Years

A common theme in great success stories are the wilderness years. These are separate from the youth stories, they are after some initial hope is realized. This is the way of truth and it is also the way towards success or the abundant life, and regardless of circumstance, the narrative can be traced in almost anyones life--likely it has to do with brain development more than age, however age makes it seem more common because the majority of persons are still developing in concert socially. Carnegie quit near these years (28); Jobs was ousted from Apple around these years (30); and even Christ himself as a the post pre-figure for most Western hero or comeback stories began his work at 30 to end it and start its next phase at 33. His first tempting is in the desert, where he prepares to carry the famed Cross: Turn this stone into bread, and Christ says, "No." It is the great, "No!" which is also ultimately our greatest "Yes!" Or even a great, "Yes, and" - because I'm into Improv.

In at 23 and out at 32 - my previous employer was formative and has nearly a decades worth of lessons to plume richly for the rest of my life. Most all lessons are the same - Trust God. That's the lesson, and we learn it at a higher level with each pass.

The ceiling of a self-concept must be lifted. We will either be courageous, or self-sabotage, but our spirits, in their yearning for God--which is in some manner, the life abundant--will not abide in worldly comforts and basic wealth. We just won't do it. Any human in-touch with this ether agrees: there is room for Apollo in Dionysus' Court and vice versa- they just can't run one another's domains. This is a great lesson in practice. To remain slightly uncomfortable, actively - this is also a champions way.

Shaved my head. Space Monkey, shot out into space for the greater good of mankind (Palahniuck reference). One sinks to the level of their training and I did this 16 years ago when Fight Club was relatively new. This is your burning hand, it's right here. Be your own cavalry - a solider on our Lord's chariot; we are not volition or design; we are the universe come alive and dancing, bent on our destruction in the ultimate glorious firework of our own lived life, a shimmering testament to the love of God.

Happy Independence Day!

Terror

The judgment sets in long before the work ever begins; when the judgment sets deep, the work ceases before it begins.

-1-

Thou shalt not judge is being said to us also for ourselves, and I’d reason, primarily for ourselves—for to love others, we must love them as we do ourselves, assuming we love our lord God above all things.

Drop the word ‘god,’ from the previous sentence and its palatable to most; even adding the word, ‘gods,’ and ensuring no capital ‘g’ and its more palatable to ‘intellectuals.’ There are all sorts of lords we kneel to; the keenest of us are aware of our slaveries—those excesses and deficiencies, which catch us at our worst with ourselves.

-2-

How to reflect the light? To let it burn and shine? Or better to know when the sun would blind the eyes of someone only comfortable with shadows on cave walls? To know when better to seduce to wisdom than impose it; to draw it out instead of impregnate it.

Completion is important, and habit is the terror or the partner of completion. Activity is the harbinger of habit, and feelings are the forerunner to activity - leaving thought the precursor to feelings.

So keeping thoughts shiny allows the light to reflect off what one completes by the habits one forms, and through the feelings that activate them.

-3-

We must abstain from judging ourselves too harshly and be ashamed to catch ourselves whipping ourselves, surprised look on our faces painted with rage, hand in the air as the other clutches the collar of our youngest self.

God help us. 

Only In Discipline is There Freedom

Writing on a computer is different than when using pen and ink.

The medium affects the work.

We are the medium for the work being done in the world.

"Impress your will upon the millennia," as Nietzsche’s work says.

Incendence v. Transcendence

The concept is terrific. It reminds me of the end of Narnia, where CS Lewis says the world, as one got deeper in, somehow got bigger and more beautiful.

Incendence is the further pluming of our self, deeper in and into larger, more beautiful spaces. 

Understanding the difference in what we are and what we do helps us bridge the gap between what we’re doing and what we come alive most in, and by extension, what we most bring alive. When people recommend chasing your passion, I think this is the route they’re talking about.

I’ve been doing improv for about two years.

It brings me alive and I think I also bring it alive.

It is where I find myself blooming. 

I also am learning a lot about leadership.

Over the course of a few years I’ve amassed a great set of knowledge and practice, including the patience to enjoy it gain momentum over decades.

This presumes I make it into coming decades.

As my professor said, we just have to keep our eyes open to stay alive. 

He was helicoptered out of Beirut with his wife and young son soon after the Dean of the university he was teaching at was assassinated. I listen when he speaks.

His story has gained momentum over time.

The narrative we use is critically important.

The story of ourselves we tell ourselves.

The future we have and the past we retain, the present we experience, forever transforming into the history we choose from.

I’m only writing to write.

The discipline is more important than the expression because it is through discipline that expression finds the power in its voice.

It’s startling how little new I—or perhaps anyone—is really saying.

If you get anything from me, it’s that everything I have came before me for centuries till I was born to express it during our time.

I was listening to some of the horrible music I made over half a decade ago and before.

When I was making those songs, I dreamt about people finding it after my body of work had run its course and they were still hungry for more. 

If they find it now, and they like it, I would probably turn in my grave.

Laughing is a very important component of my conversations.

So I hear these songs and instantly begin in on a dismissive narrative about all my previous work.

The danger is the habit extends ultimately to most of what I do regardless of the quality of expression. 

Artists have written this off as part of their process for years, but its only partially true. 

The other half of the equation is that we build mountains over decades to spend other decades mining through them for gold. 

It takes a ton of ore for a few milligrams of gold. Something outrageous like that. 

Those horrible songs are the ore of my present, pregnant with gold within them.

I’m about five songs into a third and maybe final album.

I’d like to keep making them; as their quality improves so does the expense. A pleasant problem.

I need to start making it more self-sustainable if I can continue at this level and pace. 

The work will speak for itself and if it brings the opportunity for more then it’s probably a good bet that’s a way my voice should come out.

Improv has been that in two short years, but I also spend at least a few hours on a main stage every week.

The other four songs of the album may have a few bits of gold from the decades gone by. 

As if time teaches us to smelt and refine ourselves so that we ultimately glow like the precious rarities we are. 

Incendence to passion.

If you’re reading this, thanks. 

Isn’t it funny that we will probably forget this moment together?

Focus

1.

For the past four/five years I’ve had a theme running. Here’s what I’m talking about, how it came around, and what it does should emerge as I express those two points:

The idea began with the recollection of how it felt to hear about a 26 year old when you were a 5-7 years old. I had a crush on a 22 or 26 years old and always believed I loved older women since then. She was kind to me as women who think a young boy is cute do; however as a young boy, this was a validation of everything the movie, “Big,” with Tom Hanks is about—there is some magical thing. As I thought about how 26 felt to a 5-7 year old, I then remembered how 30 looked. Woah – it was within reach compared to grandparents ages, but just outside the conception – 30? Jeez, I couldn’t wait to turn 10 and these people are in their 30s!

            This same narrative is essentially carried forward through the teenage and especially the 20s. In the 20s – the 30s loom, heavy with baggage from a thousand sources all bemoaning its existence. It’s all ridiculous really. Age is important, but we trace it beyond the scientific data of cell regeneration rates and begin right with the presumptions. I think people in mid to late 80s through their 100s (and maybe much sooner for some) feel this social weight acutely. The chasm they sit across is the distance we have from the thoughts of our own mortality and death.

            So as it goes, I began saying, “one inherits the earth at 30,” and was and continue to be massively excited by those crossing that threshold. There are murmurs of this positivity about aging here and there, and that’s good – the narrative of age must transition to one of appreciation for the unique experience each decade had the potential to bring along. The understanding of self plods along as we try and fly through these generations. Christ also began his work towards the cross at 30 according to Christian scripture; Buddha leaves at 29;Pope Innocent III authorized the St. Francis’ order when he was on the cusp of 30; St. Augustine was converted at 33 - though his roots come sooner.

            Conversely, I say that, “we give it back up at 80,” – the reason is that the generations that crossed 30 when we cross 80 will have more primacy in the minds of youth than we will – though the choices we make while we all inherit the earth set up the foundation for the next. These are, let me be very clear, simple psychological lines to make rudimentary pieces to construct conversations about experience and life. The ultimate expression of life is whatever it is breathing in you reading this, and it has its own agenda – this is just conversation.

           

2.

So we have 50 years where the world is hours – and each year I began following a theme, so that at the end of my short life, I could have words to say to a loved one – or at least have a story I can hopefully remember or care about; who knows, all my thoughts on dying are conjured from a lack of intimate knowledge and likely some kind of fear – not of dying necessarily, but of becoming an invalid—even the word—my goodness right, an “invalid,” we dismiss so much wisdom from our font of young pride.

            The first year was 2011: The Year of the Win.

The idea was essentially activity; that’s what I learned. If you actively lose you still win a lesson, but if you passively win you actually lose because you have no assurance of how to recreate it.

So that was the year of the Win.

            The second year was 2012: The Year of the Great.

The idea was essentially, 1) take your own advice 2) submit your eyes to Christ to perceive beauty over cynicism/ opportunity over impediment, and 3) allow your actions to be a language unto themselves.

            The way this worked that year was I would take time to actually write down the advice I gave myself and then make a plan for it—that is what I would advise anyone, so I started taking my own. Just basic shit – writing down what I’d like from each of the four quarters of the year, how I might be able to get that going, etc. It was a clear direction, and like Bruce Lee says, “sometimes a goal is just something to aim at.”

Submitting my eyes was an interesting one, and one that stuck fairly well since then – to see where the opportunity for anything is in an initially perceived impediment; to try and choose beauty over cynicism. These things are worked on continually and constantly with no gauge of perfection, only progress.

Lastly, it was my actions as a language – that one also persists and is very fun; if I am typing an email that says, “I’ll get that to you by…” I usually catch myself, assess my flow, and if possible just get whatever that later task is taken care of now. All of these need to be disciplined, refined, and scaled – but it’s progress.

The third year was 2013: The Year of the Rest & Respect.

This was great – 1) Complete the rest to gain the rest, 2) Respect the opportunities others are given, and 3) respect the opportunities you are given.

Complete the rest means wipe away the crumbs, do the extra work; finish what’s sitting on your mind so that you can actually take a break—gaining rest. The 2^nd and 3^rd are self-explanatory.

The fourth year was 2014: The Year of the Joy & Achievement Flows.

1) Be Patient, 2) Be disciplined, 3) Let it come and let if flow.

Let it flow was very important, because let it go indicates a pushing away, and the best things in life truly flow through us. Furthermore, studies on flow states support this theory.

The fifth year is this year, 2015: The Year of the Generously Focused.

1) Give listening, 2) Build resistance, endurance, and recovery, and 3) pick two.

Giving listening is very active, and I’m learning about all this now as we’re just rounding out 4 months in. Building resistance, endurance, and recovery is three separate states of stress and each has it’s own disciplines – these three categories allow me to figure out the optimal expression for each of the three states at any time during the day—that includes surprises, which are generally building resistance but can also become endurance. Recovery is actually a lot harder than it seems, but I’m learning all this now. Pick two is really that simple, I pick the next two things I’ll do. So in this case, finish this up and post this—I won’t even think much on image or no image and what image etc. I just have two things in front of me to do; I can think after that.

3. 

The whole thing is deliberate, and they way I come up with them starts 6 months into the previous year - and a lot of time, attentiveness, and prayer. So far, if I’m able to speak about the story of my life and what someone could take from it as I die, I would say, “Win great rest and respect. Joy and achievement flows, generously focused.”

           

I Know I'm Not The Only One

I need to write.

I just need to write.

Without reflection I am not living up to my humanity.

The ability to remap my brain and till a new soil for coming days in the present is done with the toil of reflection.

I wonder if at any time in our human history the majority has enjoyed reflection. The greatest authors are capable of it. To see another and show themselves their own height and depth, we must be courageous about the bare stare with which we look upon ourselves.

The way we highlight those that plume the spectrum of humanity indicates a need to encourage that for the majority, and so implies a lack of this kind of passion for reflection in most people.

Frankly, I think everyone does it, we just need to be trained on it continually. The questions we ask and the words we use reflect in the answers we glean and the interpretation we carry with us; in turn affecting our behaviors which stream through in habits and directly impact our one precious life.

I write words, I live a life that exists outside those words. We are all bigger than any definitions we inhabit.

The habits we have define us more than the intentions we have, though those intentions are a powerful director in our stumble—that is, progress—forward.

The kind of life I wish for lives on the other side of action that I am either too scared or too stupid to make. Perhaps the kind of life I wish for exists beyond the wishing for a life and instead the living of my own with an ever increasing devotion.

The great questions, like how can one live a full life—or an exceptional life—these are what obscure my view. In the separating out of what that means, I think we see how we apply ourselves and in the recognition of those actions we begin to find our capacity. How can we find the limit if we don’t push it constantly?

We live so many lives in one, and yet we are living all those lives. What does it matter what this makes us, for we are bigger than any definitions we inhabit.

It’s worth reflecting on the character we see walking around in our skin living the life we think is our own with a deep devotion to reflecting the greatest love and joy we can for those around us. The heat we put out shines back on us; and when we start to die out, I can only hope the life I contributed to blossoms forward.

The human condition is a never ending source of the richest reflection for me.

The Western Black Rhinos are officially extinct today, and the last Northern White Male Rhino is guarded twenty-four hours a day with armed guards, fitted with a radio transmitter, and we cut off his horn to make him less attractive to poachers.

The human condition is a never ending source of the richest reflection.

Print v. Digital

The following is intended for the particular as predominately observed by one himself trammeled with the recognition of his insignificance and potential, and the endurance of a great book:

Root driver for environmentalism available in the contrasting perception between the primacy of print media over digital media as artifact. 

            When confronted with the instinctual reflection on someone that says they’ve written a published or self-published physical book, versus someone that has a voluminous blog—the tendency is to afford primacy to the tangible form. This instinctual response is seen in the corresponding and mediating perspective of reason to begin searching after the particulars for its judgment making. Before reasoned judgment has at its feet the decision between how many users have read or follow the blog, versus if a book is published or just printed and homebound; before we even ask if the content is of any substance, instinct affords primacy to the tangible product. This may shift in later years, however this potential transition in perspective is the heart of this thought process—namely, if we cannot instinctually begin affording primacy to the digital form, there exists inside us still the need to become accustomed to it. We’ve had written records long before wired networks, and in that adjustment lies the question of the permanence available in either media, for those who create wish some little of eternity even if they are simple and joyful, freely expressing.

            Though we have seen books burned and lost at the dismay of anyone with curiosity and respect; it has taken other books to help contextualize the burning and destroying of books—wide products of thought which lit fires of insight and experience after Gutenberg. It is the Church’s actions played out in different cultures; it is humans contending with their own supremacy and infancy. Still, with these destructions, water damage, fading, tearing, etc. the form of the physical written record seems to endure—we do not yet have the same trust built with digital forms, though our tactile engagement with them continues to advance. The more commonplace taking photographs becomes, the more the ones made physical seem to take on a greater importance—perhaps because we still see art and statues, but as a species we’ve not had time enough to build the trust with our new digital expressions. Our oldest history with them is still less than a full century and we’re already seeing instability in our thirst for fossil fuels which act as foundation for our digital space.

            At the heart of this is permanence and the always looming, potentially edifying, recognition of our own mortality—and we are yet unsure of our ability as a species to keep alive forever the digital records. The systems of digital record depend on more than themselves—there are more complications and so a greater potentiality for error—also the growing need for electrical currents make a hard-drive packed with data preserved for a far future date necessarily yoked with instructions on how to craft the intermediary for its interpretation. By contrast, with books, it’s just up to translation, but the object itself is the artifact; and maybe in holding an artifact, we also realize that perhaps there is some potential in us to leave behind artifacts of our existence when we are dusty lost bones in a hidden future. So we seek to save the planet with alternate energies if we also want to forget any respect for the full experience of engaging with an artifact instead of just drinking up its contents through a digital intermediary; best case scenario, we do both—and we can write books, blogs, and articles about it—enjoying the fruit of thoughtfulness in our action and maturing from our infancy as a species.

Potatoes

There is somewhere along the way it seems I've found myself lost again but because I'm found elsewhere.

It's like coming out on the other side of a magical cupboard; I'm still me, but more curious, in a strange new world; maybe one I'd known before I'd known any. 

The cities of history tug, and the present says pull historical significance here. The swarming masses everyone sees and only few truly see. 

---

There is a great divide, I'm not sure what side of the fence I'll drop - it's amazing to be so happy with a balancing act; it only makes sense when I consider that before I wasn't even able to stand. 

It's the hustle that keeps me alive. Nietzsche again, "The formula for my happiness: A Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal..." - Twilight of the idols, Arrows & Maxims, [paraphrasing from memory]. 

Life is neat when you can start forecasting certain behaviors in oneself and the society around. I see commercials that call to save clean water. 100% of the beef patties in fast food contain meat from over 100 cows on average. The run off directly impacts water. Yet we promote bacon and beef as the hallmark of high society and freedom. 

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Art. Oh sweet art. There is truly nothing more lovely to me. I can see why Nietzsche writes against the poets (in his poetic way) - the arts pull me to the ideal; the, 'what's possible.' They pull me away from here, but they also make here more beautiful. Philosophically I can see why that revolts him, but I'm still lost in a sea of artistic beauty everywhere around me. 

The arts are there in deepest loses, and they serve simultaneously as the expression of greatest achievements. This, I suppose, is the great joy of all human life. 

Comedy is glorious. It's one of the most enjoyable artistic affections to share with an audience. My music takes another turn; it comes yolked with hopes--my music is emotional; it's good for those moments when you're really into music, otherwise only some of the songs serve as good noise. 

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What matters, is the ability to mobilize; and that exists in such focus, that the ability to be reflective is both necessary, and remarkably hard to conjoin in execution. 

I'm not sure what I'm typing often, I just feel this compulsion. I need it. I need to write. There is so much garbage that I produce it's amazing (literary and artistic garbage along with literal garbage) - but I cherish my fail folder; a great file with the catalogue of my attempts; because if we never try and fail, I question if I'm even living. 

2.

I suppose I once shared because I loved so much I had to. I burned intensely and it transformed my rigidity into a more pliable material; even if only artisan hands are allowed near, whether they be on rich or poor alike. 

My family's warnings and common sense ring true, but still I have an appetite for self-destruction. It’s the two polarities and the pull between them that seem to electrify me. I flit back and forth between the two. The reductionist calls it, ‘love,’ and, ‘fear,’ and nothing more – the two seeds that twist around to make the tree of life; both must be respected. Fear is not bad, and love is often scary. In fact, I think sometimes the most terrifying thing is love – it transforms you; it generates a heat that melts you and makes you pliable; and if it is ripped away and not continually heated in a vat of fresh tears that dry naturally with time, its absence can calcify one into a monster or a shell. For me there is nothing more threatening than love—but it’s only scary, and fright is a choice, a reaction, and a choice to the persistent reaction.

I can choose to be courageous; as in, trigger courage when faced with fear—this is the recipe in building confidence—equal parts fear and courage. The Madman is still laughing at everything. Other times something jumps out and impels a reaction; sometimes many things sequentially—and related or unrelated they correlate with an equal reaction; like a droning depression or stress post trauma. Physics applied to emotional states is all this is. Action, reaction, our action, new reaction.

Participation in humanity and the travesties and majesties we build and destroy make us implicit in madness. As children one soaks in and is born from the very madness we must worthily profess and so often violently deny or distort. The whole point of my anything is essentially, one cannot deny their own madness by any stretch of any imagination and the varying degrees are only relevant to those mad to different degrees.

To be worthy of madness is to be able to be transparent and authentic; to have courage as the response when fear is the seductress and to be overt and explicit about our intention and in doing so call out any ugly pride we may protect by any obfuscation we justify. This is not to say one must reveal all mystery, but more that one must actually be able to craft it authentically while engaged in the social and private experience of humanity—nature come alive, dancing and destroying. 

If we start with a basic agreement on our collective madness, then perhaps we can begin slowing down the troubles of eons our species has accepted so deeply as to acceptingly presume war and famine though created, are a reflection of what is ‘natural,’ –because those are byproducts of our aggressive activity to prove and justify our sanity and righteousness; and that’s both understandable and nuts. In a wider context, as should often be taken at first pass, even the foundations for conflicting ideology are resting on the giants of hunger and greed and lust for unrelenting, unchecked, supreme command—the kind that doesn’t need to contend with its consequences; these tendencies come from fear and dress in strength and nationalism; fundamentalism and degrees of aggression from violent and overt to passive and subtle—what we often refer to as, ‘politics as usual.’

The lust for command is strongest in the weak, and perverted into dominance for the strongest of the strong. In one conception the weak are the drag and they force a heavier burden on those trying to accelerate; on the other side of the coin is the perspective that the strong have no consideration for the weak and simply charge ahead claiming to be charitable, but only to the point that charity is still required, and solutions that matter to the wider populous are not prioritized. In fact, the strong often spend resources to retrain and retain the mind of the weak, and the weakest of the weak are taken in as if being abducted in an old sci-fi film; they come out spouting nothing from nothing and become the harbingers of their own destruction. The coin looks suspended, but its only spinning. All society has seen this happen until enough live in enough poverty and then revolt is attempted. 

These divides and categories cannot of course be spoken about without the banal but critical point of economics. The promise of resources through a fiat economy has long been the driver of turmoil and innovation for human kind; but resources are only scare when the conception we take to their distribution and usage are limited to the justification that we are given reign to subdue them in our image, which just so happens to reflect the image of the all supreme creator of the universe; it is as if our own consciousness may be the universes addiction to self-destruction.