Love the One You're With

I want to start off by saying that, when I post abstract questions about the meaning of life or make generalizations so broad that you could land an entire planet on them, I am not doing it because I think that I have figured out life. Even less so am I doing it to teach you something. First of all, I do not have life figured out. Even if I am right about something, it is a complete accident, and I didn't mean it. (Please forgive me.) Second of all, if you can learn anything from me, I believe you are smart enough to learn it without me masquerading as an authority. After all, Nature, my best teacher, never tries to teach me anything, and yet I learn so much every time I take a walk in the woods.

Now that I have removed any suspicion of my knowing something, I will tell you what I know. Today, in this fraction of time, I know what I have known several times in the past, and I know it strongly: I only have one life. That is the truth that vibrates under my skin today like a sweet, crunchy chord pulsed in heavy four-four time on a noble black Steinway.

Knowing the singleness of my life is overwhelming to me. It terrifies me. It makes me feel small. It amplifies the passage of every second into the crash of a wave of the great cosmic ocean. It is paralyzing. It is beautiful in a way that breaks my heart and inspires me to do great things, and, at the same time, it is humbling in a way that makes me content to do what I can. It is a cold, white, starlit knowledge projected on the asphalt of an empty street. It is the warm, black knowledge of the deepest caverns of the earth, which sing silent songs that echo for all time.

Knowing that there is one, and that there will always only be one, reminds me of something people say about relationships: "Love the one you're with." In the one life that I have, I come into contact with various people every day, in passing or with purpose. But the one person I never leave, my truest friend and my most toxic nemesis, is me. Only living one life means that I only get to be one person; I don't get a second chance if this one doesn't work out, or if I get tired of being me. I have to live with me forever, until I turn into dirt. I can't take a break, and I can't quit. And when I think about the fact of the oneness of my life, and I think about loving the one I'm with, I feel that the way I need to live my life is fairly clear to me. I need to take myself on, the good with all the bad, give myself a big hug, forgive me my sins, and love myself until the day I die.

Maybe I have figured out something about life. I don't know. I don't like to presume. If I do, it doesn't mean I know anything about your life, or about the way you should live your life. But while I don't know anything about your life, I do hope that it includes this message of love. Life is really too short to spend it giving yourself anything less.

Related: I do not believe in love.

Did you know that today is never going to happen again?

I woke up today as I normally do, feeling like I got hit by a truck. I slept in another hour, got up, stumbled downstairs, gulped my coffee, made myself some curry, and answered emails during breakfast. I worked for three hours, and then I walked to the coffee shop to work some more. I walked home, ate dinner, and then worked for the next four hours. There was a phone call with a friend somewhere in all of this. In ten minutes, I will go to bed.

As mundane as it all seems, the truth is that this day is now completely, utterly gone, never to repeat itself, and never to exist again.

Every day of my life is like this, I realize. No matter what I do or what I learn or who I see or how I feel, there is that one constant: that the day that happens is unique. It is unique in the sense that it alone is happening, while all other days have either ceased to happen or have not yet begun to happen. Every day is the only day, and the contents of that day belong to that day and that day only.

Reality is exclusive.

Realizing that every day is unique, unprecedented, and unrepeatable is not just some esoteric insight. It is a practical, useful truth.

Since every day is unique, boredom is the result of inattention.

If I find that on any given day I am bored, feeling like every day is exactly the same and that my life is not interesting, all this means is that I have stopped paying attention to my life. It means I have grown comfortable to a fault, numbed to my environment, deeply complacent and dying in a waking sleep. In other words, if it is true that every day is impossibly and irreconcilably unique, then boredom is an illusion.

This also means that boredom is not a problem in itself.

Boredom is a symptom, not an illness. The illness is a chronic inability to recognize the novel beauty in the mundane, a deficiency that necessarily prevents a person from feeling thrilled or pleased or intrigued in more than a shallow sense. We seek endless new experiences to fill the void. The next hit show on Netflix. The next travel destination. Whatever. Something new, that's the answer. Only for a little while...shallow novelty is like caffeine...the spirit builds up a resistance...more and more is needed...until eventually nothing works.

Relieving the symptom of boredom takes renewed, sustained attention.

If you find that your life is boring and unsatisfying, the problem is not your life. It's your attitude.

It is a fact that there is only one day happening at a time.

It is a fact that no two days are identical.

A million tiny things set each day apart from the next. You just have to learn how to spot them. Once you attune yourself to these tiny things, you become fascinated by your own life.

Every day becomes the most interesting day of your life so far.

The Reasoning Behind My Last 5 Posts

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.

I Can't Watch TV

Since high school I have not been willing or able to watch TV.

There are three big reasons why.

Time.

My time is too important to me. Every minute I spend in front of the screen I feel I have to justify. What did I gain? Was it worth more than an hour, or a half-hour, of my time? Nearly 100 percent of the time, the equation leans toward no.

Escapism.

Second, I view TV as an escape from life. The only reason I personally watch TV is when my own existence is not interesting enough. This happens from time to time; I'll feel uninspired, and I'll go to one of my favorite movies. I choose these movies very carefully so that every single one is likely to leave me feeling refreshed, inspired, and re-awakened. That way, I can stay away from TV for another few months.

Passivity.

Third, I dislike the helplessness and passivity of watching. Every second I spend staring at the screen, I'm absorbing one more second of a world that someone else created. I'm drinking in someone else's values, someone else's product, someone else's imagination. My own thoughts shrink to the background to make way for commercials, capitalist agendas, and talking ponies.

Absorption is for sponges, not human beings.

In a Davidist life, it is important to take a close look at everything you let in.

In the face of every decision, a Davidist has to ask: is this a part of my best life?

Is watching this show going to make me a better person? (Maybe by phasing out my worries, helping me to relax, inspiring me to create something, making me laugh...)

Is this friend helping me to find my best self?

If I ate this food every day for a year, would it help me or hurt me?

Of course, there are many unknowns: people you don't know well, things you've never tried before, places you've never been. For that reason, Davidism takes a lot of experimentation...trial and error. But through that experimentation, you gain a better understanding of what helps you and what hurts you, and you can move closer and closer to living the best day of your life, every day, with the resources you have.

Learn more about Davidism.

Everything Happened Right

I look back on my 23 little years of existence on this planet, and I am utterly awestruck. Putting all the uncertainties and daily stresses aside, and all the hurt that comes and goes, and the unanswerable questions that I could wrestle with for the rest of my life...there's this core of light that remains. That core is the tiny tiny lightbulb of my awareness that for 23 years has told an evolving, changing story.

And it has been an amazing story.

I grew up in the Christian Church and loved Jesus from age 13 to age 20. During that time I lived the life of a teenage boy, complete with its hormonal ups and downs, social trial by fire, and all of its anxieties and depressions. I ran Cross Country, was a leader for my class, made friends, lost friends, and then, after what seemed like a lifetime, graduated, went to college, and entered the next unknown.

In college I stopped loving Jesus. Jesus became an obstacle between me and my true self, so I pushed him out of the way, made my way to the edge of the cliff of despair (High Horse Cliff), and jumped, hoping I would land somewhere on the soft, grassy knoll between Daoism, Humanism, and Nihilism---a space I, for lack of a better name, like to call Davidism.

(Read more about Davidism here.)

(Or here.)

(Or.... here.)

While I was falling from High Horse Cliff I saw all sorts of spirits. Some were terrible and told me that life was meaningless and that there was no point in going on. Some chastised me and told me I was bad and evil for pushing Jesus away, and they taunted me from a high cliff face to which I could never ascend. Some were kind, though, and said nothing. They held me in warm, soft hands and pulled me close, cooling the chill of the wind with the fire of their breath. When I did eventually land, I kissed each of these kind spirits goodbye, and I knelt down and pressed my hands into the dirt, warmed by the sun.

This is home, I said.

I've fallen in love with the air here. The earth is firm and forgiving and goes down and down onto an endless bedrock, and water gushes from the openings in its mantle. Cool streams flow into placid lakes, and I wander their edges and hold hands with the sun while it dances across the sky. From time to time the sounds of music touch my ears, and I'm reminded of the spirits who loved me while I floated down from "Heaven." Always I will remember how they breathed their love on me, and one day I will become a spirit, too, and breathe my love on someone as she falls from grace.

Updates, Feelings, Dialogues

I feel like I haven't posted in a while. I happen to be awake tonight, and there's no way in hell that I'm going to be productive, so I'm going to share some feelings with you in the form of a dialogue.

It's like Plato, but for therapeutic purposes.

Maybe Plato is therapeutic for some people. I don't know.

What have I been feeling lately?

1. Frustrated

Therapist: Why have you been feeling frustrated?

Me: Well, I watched a movie.

Yes?

It was a documentary called The Punk Singer. I really liked it. The lead singer of Bikini Kill is a really inspiring person. Halfway through the movie I stopped it and decided to have a dance party in my parents' living room. They were away for the weekend. I plugged my computer into the TV and put on a YouTube strobe light and turned out all the lights.

Sounds like fun.

It was really fun. I felt really alive when I was dancing. I decided that I would just be myself and jump and scream and let all my energy out. It was cathartic.

Cathartic meaning?

There was something inside me that just needed to be let out. And I let it out when I was dancing. I haven't been dancing in a while lately.

Does this have anything to do with you feeling frustrated?

Kind of. After watching Kathleen Hanna scream her guts out at punk rock concerts, I felt like I wasn't doing enough to let out my true self. You know, like how I felt when I was dancing. The feeling of being let loose, free, limitless...I wished every moment could be like that...and I was frustrated that I was a barista and an editor and not the frontman of a punk rock band. I see Kathleen Hanna on the stage and I think, that's who I want to be like...that's me...but at the same time it's not. And that's frustrating.

Are you unhappy with your job?

No, I really like my work, most of the time. I just feel like I'm in a box. Like it's not the real me...it's just something I'm doing for a while so that people give me money so that I can save up to travel...and me traveling is the real me. At least, that's one of my goals. 

Does traveling have anything to do with your frustration?

It does. It didn't take me long to forget why I was looking for work in August. I wanted to travel, and I thought I needed money to do that, which is true, so I looked for work. I found work, and I told myself at the beginning that this was a good thing and that I needed to "earn my freedom," like the author of Vagabonding says, and I was incredibly motivated at that point to just buckle down and work like a dog for four months. And that's what I've been doing. 

So why are you frustrated?

I'm frustrated because there are so many obstacles to me feeling like I'm actually doing what I want to do. I want to travel, but I have to work first. I want to dance, but I also have to eat, which means I have to work. 

Do you think that other people have these obstacles, too?

Yes, I do. I feel like the whole system is rigged to keep people from being themselves. Because if everyone just did what they wanted to do, certain people would lose power. Capitalism's strength is its ability to convince people that they are acting in their own interest when in fact they are acting in the interest of someone else. And we're all stuck in this system, so much that anyone who says things like this about the system is just suffocated by the majority of people who accept the system.

That sounds like a pretty lousy world to live in.

It is pretty lousy. But as I'm explaining this I'm starting to think that it's very natural for me to blame something for the pain I'm feeling. Today it's capitalism. Tomorrow it might be my parents. Things are bad, and I can't explain it. Something is just off. 

So, back to traveling. You said you feel like traveling is the real you. And you're feeling frustrated because you have to jump through some hoops in order to be the real you. What are those hoops that you have to jump through?

Well, I have to finish my pottery class. That's one thing tying me down. I'm working at the coffee shop, but it's part-time work, and it's not really something I'm married to. I have my work for [], but I can do that from anywhere, and I can just tell [] that I can't come into the office for a few months because I'll be doing my work from a cabin in the woods. Maybe I'll just go up to Vermont and work at []'s cabin. That would be cool.

It sounds like it's just the pottery class.

Yeah, I guess that's the only thing that's keeping me from traveling. And the fact that I don't know how to couchsurf and I'm afraid of doing it wrong and either offending my hosts or getting kidnapped by ISIS.

Let's talk about that first one. You're afraid of doing it wrong. Tell me more about that.

Well, I'm afraid of not being welcome. That happened to me a month or so ago. I couchsurfed in New Hampshire, and after a few days I was kicked out because my being there was messing up my host's routine. It was hard for me, but I guess it wasn't that bad. I didn't get kidnapped or beaten up or anything.

Sounds like you've seen a pretty negative scenario already. Do you think this will happen with every host?

Probably not. I just need to make my couchsurfing profile and start contacting people. That's the hard thing for me. Actually talking to people and making plans and saying, yes, I'll be here on this date, no doubt about it.

Surely that's unavoidable with couchsurfing.

Yeah, it's part of the deal.

Are there other ways to travel that appeal to you?

Well, everything else is so expensive. I just want to sleep somewhere. It could be a park bench or the back of a van. I don't have the charisma to just walk up to people and by the end of the conversation have convinced them that I'm worth putting up for the night. So, I feel like this whole traveling thing is going to be very dirty and smelly and hairy and grimy and some nights I probably won't sleep, but hey, that's how it is now, and things might not work out all the time. But that's OK. It's OK when things don't work out. I think I'm just averse to the thought that things might not work out. 

Say that again. I didn't quite understand.

I'm much better at handling unforeseen circumstances than handling the idea of unforeseen circumstances. Like, when I'm actually in a situation, and things aren't going as planned, I'm pretty OK with it. But when I'm making plans, I'm very sensitive to the thought that things might not work out, or something might go wrong, or I'm unqualified or unprepared, and those thoughts make me change my course to something more like what I've always been doing. So, I end up not taking risks, not doing new things, and not changing.

So, you feel that the possibility of failure has a large impact on your planning?

Yes. I picture things going very badly in my head, and then I feel how I would feel in those situations, and then that feeling carries over into my reality, and it's almost as if something already did go very badly, and I lose confidence, and I don't do what I originally wanted to do.

And this keeps you from, say, couchsurfing?

I think so. It doesn't make any sense, but I think that's how it's working.

I think we're making progress. You've recognized that there's a pattern in your thinking that doesn't make sense, and it's affecting your behavior in ways you don't like. My specialty is in cognitive behavioral therapy, so I can help you work on your thoughts and your behaviors in tandem. Let's start with the behavior you want to change. Can you identify that behavior?

I think it's not doing new things because I'm afraid they're not going to work out.

OK. So let's take some steps backwards and figure out how you get to that outcome. You said that when you start thinking of something you want to do, you quickly lose confidence in the idea, thinking of a situation in which it doesn't work out.

Right.

The first step to countering the thought pattern is by disrupting it. When we go on autopilot, we lose control. Really, we give up control. The first step is taking yourself off autopilot. This means you have to pay attention to what you're thinking in those times of decision making, when you're contemplating a new plan. So, the real first step is recognizing when you're entering one of those decision making moments, and then raising a little flag in your mind that says, "TIME TO WATCH YOUR THOUGHTS." How do you think you could do that?

Well, I could write myself a note.

You could do that.

I could set reminders on my phone that ask me, every five hours, "Are you getting near one of those situations?" And I could either start thinking about it or just ignore the notification.

These are some great ideas, David. So, once you break yourself out of autopilot, you can start to walk yourself through some new mental steps instead of going through the same old same old mental steps that send you down the bad mental path. Let's say you find yourself thinking about something new that you'd like to try, and you raise the flag and realize you're in the zone. What next? Talk to yourself about what you would usually do in this situation. What you usually do is say, OK, it's a cool idea, but it's just not for me, I'm not ready, it could go wrong, yadda yadda yadda, and then you don't do anything new. Once you have brought to mind the old way of doing things, you can say, OK, I usually do that, but now I'm going to do something a little different, as an experiment, and I'm open to it being a raging success or a mistake. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does.

You're smiling.

Yeah, it just makes a lot of sense. I feel like I'm starting to get a grasp on what's going on in my head.

It just takes some talking. So, with this couchsurfing thing, what are you going to do when you find yourself thinking about it?

OK. I'm going to realize that I'm thinking about it, take myself off autopilot, imagine what I would usually do in that situation, and then do something slightly different, as an experiment. And I'm going to say, I'm open to this being a big success, or a mistake.

Yup, you nailed it. OK, so we talked about a lot of things today. And we should keep talking about them next week. Why don't you come in again next week and let me know how things are going?

OK. Same time, same place?

Yes, this is my office.

How much do your sessions cost, again?

These are free. I don't exist. 

Right. Well, you helped a lot.

God helps those who help themselves.