I would be lying to you if I said that there was a reason behind everything that I do. I believe I'm not unlike most animals on this planet: driven by unconscious impulse (no matter how reflective I might seem).
I won't get into consciousness here.
But for a good number of the things that I do, there's some underlying thought. And, however small the ratio of thoughtful to thoughtless may be, all of the past 5 blog posts managed to nestle themselves into it. Here's how they did it.
A Letter From the Universe to You
I wrote this letter on my phone while riding the 501 bus from the Financial District in Boston to my home. When I wrote it, I was missing the caffeine high that I had felt during the large part of the previous two days. In all honesty, I wanted to write something that would help me to get back into that bigger, calmer mindset that I tend to take on when I'm feeling on top of the world. If I could take myself to that calm at will, I thought, I would have achieved something highly valuable, maybe a habit I could practice for life.
Often, when I'm feeling sad or hopeless—which is not rare—I will do some positive self-talk. When I do this, I usually talk to myself in the voice of a loving mother or girlfriend (let's not get into how Freudian that is), and I start to tell myself any of the following things:
- It's OK to feel sad.
- I'm here for you.
- I think you did a great job.
- I'm proud of you.
- Just take a big, deep breath.
- I love you.
And that last one, for me, in my most depressed moments, is extremely helpful.
This letter, for me, was a form of positive self-talk. In my journey away from Christianity and through many forms of nihilism, positive self-talk has replaced God and prayer as a means to emotional calm and spiritual centering. Coupled with my belief that (1) there really is only one thing in the universe, and (2) we (who appear to be many different things and people), are all one thing—this letter was my way of talking myself out of a bad mood and reminding myself that there really is nothing to be afraid of in life.
Let me know if you found it helpful—or weird.
Memories from Childhood
I started writing this post just to write something. That might be obvious from the post's lack of structure, but I will admit that this post was just a straight shot from start to finish without any planning or editing.
That said, it developed an intention about halfway through: to tell stories from my childhood, and to reinforce a belief that the stories of my life (even the little ones about watermelon slush) are things that are worth telling. Whether that's true doesn't really matter to me, because the fact that a story is told means that it was worth telling on some level. And if it was worth telling for one person, that's good enough.
The only person who can decide whether your life was a story worth telling is you.
Love your story, embellish the hell out of it, and tell it like the epic it is.
I Can't Watch TV
After writing this post, I realized that it's not really true. That happens from time to time.
(Is anything I say on here true?)
What I don't watch on TV per se I watch in the form of YouTube videos, and the "precious time" I'm saving by avoiding the screen I'm spending (wisely or foolishly, I'm not sure) swiping on Tinder and scrolling through my Facebook feed.
There, that's my #confession for the day.
When I was writing this post, I think I was trying to preserve some sense of being a special snowflake or a reason why I'm different from everyone else my age. We all like to feel special, and I think my snowflake brain wrote this one. Since high school, I've given the snowflakey part of my brain a lot of say in what I say and do. (Whether that's healthy is something I'll figure out along the way, for sure.)
What you can't hear right now is the special snowflake in me squealing in discomfort. It has this small, squeaky voice like the mice from Babe, and it's desperately trying to take itself seriously right now.
It's really great. Wish you could be here to witness it.
Everything Happened Right
I used to feel this kind of ecstasy while worshiping the good lord Jesus Christ. For reasons that may or may not be obvious, I've stopped that sort of thing. However, the feeling of magnificent elation still comes and goes without calling itself the Holy Spirit. Now I feel it when I think of how all the tiny, tiny details of my life fit together in the present moment, and how, despite the moments of hopelessness and despair that have really dragged me down, I found a light at the end of the tunnel.
It's a far cry from Christian doctrine, but I can't help but wonder what Jesus meant when he said that he was the way, the truth, and the life. Which word was emphasized in that sentence?
Maybe it was the "I."
What if, for each of us, the conscious subjective experience—the "I"—is the way, the truth, and the life? What if the answers to all the questions we ever ask ourselves are inside us?
The point behind this post was to explain, in part, the feeling of relief that I feel after going through a long period of questioning and despair. It's to explain the peace that I've found knowing that the meaning of my life is my own creation and mine alone. It's to explain the relief of being free from the old constraints on the meaning of my life—the religiosity and the strict way of thinking of morality.
My Ass Glowing in Spandex, Plus Death
Being content to die is a virtue in my life. Not because life is bad or a burden or anything, but because death is one of the only two known points in our lives. The other point is right here, right now.
My thinking is, if you know where you are and you know where you're going, you can figure out the best route to travel. That route is your life philosophy. That's how simple philosophy is.
For me, I know where I'm going. I'm going to die. Some people are going to heaven to spend eternity with the good lord Jesus Christ, some people are going to the club later this Friday, some people are going to class in about an hour, but for me, it's clear that I'm going to die. (Actually, it's not 100% clear, but it's probably going to happen.) Because I know where I'm going, or I think I do, I can make informed decisions about how to spend my time while I'm alive.
When I wrote this post, I was celebrating one of those times when I felt like I was on the right path, and that, if I died in that moment, I would have felt like my life was complete. Whether other people would agree with that is beside the point.
To quote Roberta Sparrow,
Every living thing dies alone.
If you're going to die happy, you have to be happy being alone. And as I lay on the mat in my yoga class, sweaty and exhausted, I felt pretty happy.
This post
I really wanted to give a solid caption to that picture.
Thanks for taking time out of your day to breathe with me today.
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