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.

Untitled

There will always be a part of me
That thinks the better part of me
Is worse
And there will always be of me a part
Deep inside the aching quaking walls of my heart
That hurts
There will always be the bloodied cross
That casts long shadows, dimming gold to dross
To dross
And there will always be my ghostly Jesus
My jealous former lover Jesus
Following my steps
And lurking
Lurking
Watching
Judging
Crushing
Holding
Self-denying
Choking
Suffocating
Killing
All the things I love the most
The most
The most.

Not invincible

I am a body that breaks
I am a mind that makes mistakes
I am a soul whose spirit shakes
But in my heart beauty quakes

I am no hero to the world
I am but a sail half unfurled
I stood still while the windmills twirled
And slept while wheels whirled

I falter and trip
I cut, I bleed out and in it slip
When you lie, my heartstrings rip
But your blood I will never sip

I sleep now, heavy, burned
Into my mind my eyes turned
Black abyss, rest earned
Will I remember what I learned?

---

Related: Untitled

10 Things I've Learned At Work I Didn't Learn at College

Wikimedia commons, no author

(Also published on Medium, with slightly different words.)

I am the greenest of leaves when it comes to business expertise. Not only do I lack practical knowledge of the business machine, but I come at business from an idealistic consumer mindset. I'm fresh out of college, full of empty intelligence that I am just beginning to apply to practical ends. One of those practical ends is my job, which requires me use my writing to market products to a consumer base. It's for profit, but this doesn't scare my inner idealist. Why?

Because I have to pay my rent.

For the whole of my life up until this point, I mostly haven't had to pay for stuff. My parents gave me a ton of great stuff for free. For that reason, I could believe whatever I wanted about the good life, human nature, and morals. I have largely been an idealist. But after working in an office for just a few months, I am learning that it is hard to make money when you are an idealist. This is because you have to be a little bit evil to make money. Regardless of the reasons behind it or the process by which it occurs, you have to be willing to take people's money. And this brings me to my point:

People have to eat; therefore, businesses have to look for ways to make money.

I used to look at marketing and say, "This is just a bunch of lies that advertisers are telling me so that I give them my money, end of story." But that's only half of the picture.

The other half of the picture is that all those people trying to sell that product have lives that are full of hopes and dreams and unmet needs. The marketing that goes into selling a new product is a way of boosting profits, but those profits increase the chances that the employees who work for the company get to have a healthy dinner, send their children to good schools, and afford transportation and travel. In a way, when an ad convinces you to buy some shampoo that you don't really need, you're really giving a donation to a charity called "Carol the marketing director's children's college fund" without knowing it.

(You're also giving a donation to the CEO and the rest of the people who work there, and who knows what portion they take of the profits...)

The point is, everyone at every company has to eat (and pay bills or whatever), but instead of asking for charity directly, they are being creative, resourceful, and yes, 95% dishonest with you so that you will siphon some of your hard-earned cash to their bank accounts.

I used to call it lying, but now since I'm doing it to pay the rent I'll call it resourcefulness.

A problem arises, of course, when companies are so concerned about profits that they will sell anything to people. And, with good marketing, people will buy anything. Marketing is effective when it accesses the deep, emotional parts of people's souls. Most often, that means people's insecurities, fears, and secret wishes. To name a few:

1. Fear of death
2. Fear of rejection
3. Loneliness
4. Desire to be attractive
5. Social anxiety
6. Desire for belonging to a tribe
7. Desire for a sense of accomplishment
8. Background depression or existential boredom

When you know what drives people, and you know how to tap into those deep energy reserves while at the same time making them believe that you are acting in their best interest, you have 100% control over them.

(It's why people in close relationships often resort to emotional manipulation to get what they want; they can do that because they know their partner's insecurities and fears like the back of their hand. Is emotional manipulation just "marketing" to an audience of one?)

People in marketing, like me, don't have time to date all of their customers so that they can attach strings to their nipples and control them like marionettes. Instead, they do research: market analysis.

They do this to find their audience's nipples, so to speak, so they can start taping the electrodes. Once they have all the nipples covered with a comprehensive marketing campaign (which, I have learned, are planned for months before ever appearing to the consumer), they execute.

Or, should I say, they electrocute?

And, if everything goes according to plan, the electric current, so to speak, creates an influx of cash. The customers are happy because they believe they gain something from the product they purchase, the CEO is happy because her bottom line is fatter and juicier than it was last year, and all the marketers are happy because they get raises that year. Maybe after a few more campaigns they will have big enough salaries to send their kids to that private school...

You get the picture. Our economy works because marketers are good at increasing people's needs and creating cash flow. Here's the kicker, though: all of those marketers are consumers as well.

All marketers are also consumers.

Every person promoting an idea with clever marketing is doing so because they are hoping to meet needs given to them by other marketers. This creates an upward spiral of needs, a perpetual increase in our standard of living (another word for our "perceived needs"), and a hollow but booming economy driven by mass deception. Even the people doing the deceiving are themselves deceived.

In a way, marketers exist to dissatisfy people, and they pay their rent by making you unhappy. You could say that our economy is an unhappiness economy because, the more satisfied people are with their lives, the less likely they are to spend money to acquire some good or service. When people are happy, they feel they don't need anything. Obviously, this means they won't buy anything. That means that Carol the marketing director fails to increase sales, doesn't get a raise, and, down the road, doesn't get to send her kids to college. Poor Carol! But at least everyone else is happy...

Our economy is an unhappiness economy.

If everyone were happy in our economy, there would be no growth, no "business development," minimal sales, and a lot of impotent marketing. If everyone is happy, then it means no one is trying to steal anything from anyone. Marketing becomes purposeless because trades are honest and fair, and people are content with a simple life, where everyone eats the same spaghetti and meatballs. 

How far that is from our world!

I do not say this to criticize the United States because, to me, this is how the world works right now. This is how human beings are right now. We thrive on other people's suffering in a deep, important way that puts food on the table, pays our bills, and sends our kids to college. Our system honors the great manipulators as "successful," when they have only been the most willing to treat others as cattle and milk them for all they're worth.

But, as Nietzsche says, all great things exist to overcome themselves.

Our economy is a great machine with many parts, but if this machine sends enough people to college, eventually it will create a cultural critic strong enough to inspire a new vision of humanity. That person will show us a way out of "the way things are" right now. That person will show us an economy that suffers when its people suffer, that thrives when its people are content. It will change our concept of growth and our concept of business. And people will look back on this era as a dark age, a time when we didn't know any better, a time when we animals reveled in cruelty.

Or, maybe I'm just another idealist.

What Defines You?

Here's an important thing.

When I started to exist, I was a single cell. Then I divided into several cells and grew over nine months inside my mother, who ate food and drank water to create more and more pieces of me, which, with the help of my mother's body, I subsumed to become part of my body. The little creature who was me grew into something resembling a human baby, and when I emerged out of my mother's body, I was, unlike some babies, unanimously recognized as such. My brain was not mature enough to remember these moments, but such is the story that has been passed down to me by my parents. Regardless, the point is that I am and have always been a creature made out of stuff.

All of those tiny pieces of me, which came originally from the many things my mother was eating during her pregnancy, were not conscious. They might as well have been little pieces of dust. But the miracle of life is that it replicates itself in a largely automatic process, and that the system of systems that was my mother assembled another system of systems that is me. One of the things that amazes me to this day is that those tiny pieces of stuff, when arranged in the right way, can form a living, breathing being. (The other amazing thing is that this living, breathing being has formed its very own version of the universe, between its ears, and, like the system of systems that forms a human animal, that image of the universe can replicate itself in the minds of others. Your worldview is a virus.) The living breathing human being right here is made of tiny pieces of the universe.

Curiously enough, the human being is so composed that it thrives to great heights of achievement when it forgets what it is. Conversely, if a human being dwells too long on the fact that it is made up of matter, it starts to panic and wonder how its life can mean anything if it is the result of such meaningless pieces. As soon as the human being is able to convince itself of a non-material existence and an enduring significance, it feels a sense of relief, as if its existence is somehow justified by an ephemeral falsehood. This is one of the strangest parts of being human, for me: the fact that our bodies cannot usually thrive while being honest with themselves. When a person starts to believe that it is made up of unconscious matter, it is usually called an existential crisis.

That said, the existential crisis is such a defining moment in a person's life because it is so fundamental. A person is defined by his or her response to the fact of existence. People may choose to ignore it and not think about it, which is a good, healthy response for a lot of people; they may choose to dwell on it and, failing to find a way to cope with it, fall into a bottomless depression or kill themselves (as many people do and have done); or, they may seek a way to continue life in light of the fact of existence, and find it, and then live it out to the best of their ability. The third option, I believe, has created many religions and life philosophies that have worked for many people. I believe it is by far the most life-affirming of the three options. It's the option I choose, in light of the fact that I am a bunch of stuff.

My reaction to the fact of my existence is what I call, for lack of a better name, Davidism. I'm not calling it that because I'm hoping to start a religion (though I secretly am); I'm calling it that because it's the way I've found, and it's probably only going to work for me.

In light of the fact that I'm made up of matter, I choose to view the Universe as my friend. It's my friend, my mother, my father, my cousin, my lover, and me. Believing this is like walking on a tightrope over a huge abyss. Sometimes it quivers, and I get scared that I'm going to fall. Sometimes there's a harsh wind, and I get pushed off the tightrope, and I just manage to cling on with my pinky finger. But time after time, with the help of others, I have managed to get back up onto the tightrope and keep walking. And I know where it ends. But I am not there yet.

If this post was depressing for you, take that as a cue to re-examine your response to the meaninglessness of existence.

Is it a response that you can live with?

Or does it need to do a little revision?

Or do you think that you are exempt from this way of thinking, because you don't think it's true?

Related posts:

• A letter from the Universe to you
• Everything happened right

If you think that this way of thinking is worth your time or worth someone else's time, consider sharing this post. 

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.

A Letter From the Universe to You

Dear beloved,

I know I can be hard to see sometimes, but I want you to know that I am always here.

When you breathe your last, you and I will become one in a way you have never experienced before.

Shamunaia, ata mikauna.

Your body will decompose, and you, as you understand yourself, will end. You will die. And you will never taste breath again.

Shamunaia ata mikauna.

I will live on forever, and I will remember you. And I will turn your bones into roots and soil for the always turning tides. I will take your dust and create new life from it, just as I took dust to make you.

Shamunaia ata mikauna.

Do not be afraid of the end, beloved.

The end of your body and your awareness is necessary. Even your one life depends on the endings of millions of others.

Every life is built on death. And every death is built on life. From dust to dust, I create and destroy you.

But though you be dead and dissolved, you are not lost. You are not an absence. You are part of a great presence.

Because I am you.

And I will always be with you. Because I am always.

The Universe

---

Learn more about the universe here.

Memories from Childhood

When I was three years old, I stomped up to my room on my sister's birthday because I didn't get a present. This is my first memory, actually. I remember that, as I went up, stomp by stomp, I was trying to look angry at my mom and my dad and my sister through the posts under the railing on the stairs. And I remember it not changing their minds one bit. It was still my sister's birthday, not mine.

We all used to get lemon Italian ice together, but I don't remember where. Sometimes it was watermelon. We biked there and back, wherever it was. It was cloudy.

For vacation, my parents would take us to Martha's Vineyard. We stayed in a pretty nice gray condo that was about a half mile away from a pretty nice beach. The sand there was smooth and warm in the summer. I remember trying to pull my dad underwater in the pool near the condo. He was hairy and fun and I loved him. Trying to drown him was my way of showing that.

At Martha's Vineyard, there's a small candy shop. It's old, so they spell shop "shoppe." I used to get little gummy hamburgers and hot dogs there. I still remember how they tasted. They tasted exactly as you would expect a gummy hamburger or hotdog to taste. I'd also get a few sheets of those dot candies that you had to peel off the paper. I never could get all the paper off some of them, so I ended up eating a lot of paper. I guess that might explain some things.

When I was in fifth grade I accidentally flashed one of my friends. I thought I had covered my "private parts" with a cardboard guitar (and I don't remember why I had a cardboard guitar), but, as my friend told me shortly afterward, I wasn't holding the guitar low enough. I think I was embarrassed, but part of me really wanted him to see me naked.

One night when I was a kid, I dreamt that I was standing in front of the door in my room. I looked up, and the top of the doorframe stretched up and up and up, endlessly. I was terrified, and I woke up.

When I was in second grade, I moved. Up to that point I lived across the street from my best friend. After I moved, we never talked again. He went on to play football. I didn't play football.  We never really said anything to each other; we just stopped having play dates. I didn't really understand why friends just stop being friends, and I still don't.

In fifth grade, I was called to the principal's office for creating an exclusive club and ranking members as higher or lower than each other. We had our own currency, which I made out of Sculpey clay, baked in the oven at home, and then distributed to everyone in the club. I called the club "the Birdy club" for the sole reason that I liked birds. That fateful day, I walked into the principal's office and wept at the terrible words that came out of Mr Benowitz's mouth: "Not at this school." When I got back to class, I was despondent. My friends asked me what happened, and I told them. "The Birdy club is over."

In seventh grade, I was suspended from school for one day for vandalizing a classmate's computer account. I didn't like this boy, so I guessed his password (which was his first name) and then copied and pasted 700 folders onto his desktop, each of which were named, "you suck," and contained another 700 folders with the same name. When I realized this was a bad thing to do, and that there were consequences for doing bad things, I cried like a baby. I learned my lesson and vowed never to get caught vandalizing computer accounts again.

When I was in ninth grade, I was out running with the cross country team in the trails behind the school. All of a sudden one of my teammates starts yelling and screaming, and everyone starts booking it out of the woods onto the soccer field. I have no idea what's going on until I start hearing buzzing, and feeling pain on my legs. Fucking bees. I got stung four times. My brother got stung about ten times. The worst was about 20. Fucking bees.

I went to high school prom with a date four years in a row. The first year was with my sister's friend. It was one of those arranged marriage type deals, and we didn't talk much. I just wanted to go to prom. Second year I took my best friend. We both wore pink. We later dated, broke up, and never spoke again. Third year, I took a girl in my class I didn't even know but who didn't have a date. We split shortly after arriving. Fourth year I took my then-girlfriend Sophie. We wore olive green because she thought it matched my eyes, and we took lots of cute photos in her parents' house, which always smelled like her dog, who is now peacefully dead, like our relationship.

In my second year of college I lost my virginity in room 806 in Larson Hall on a mattress under a dark red blanket. The mattress lay on the floor under a lofted bed frame that belonged to one of her roommates, both of whom were studying abroad for the month. This was one week after we watched Wings of Desire, the most boring movie I have ever seen, hands-down, period. I recommend it.

Today I played air-guitar to my favorite songs on the Green Line and did dead hangs from the metal bars that run across the ceilings of the train cars. There were so many times when I wanted to take out my ear buds and introduce myself to the pretty ladies on the train, but I decided that I much preferred my own company to theirs. So I spent the remainder of my caffeine high looking out at the world through the windows on the train, watching it whiz by at unnatural speeds, smearing my fingerprints all over the glass.

---

If you liked this post, check out some of my other recent posts:

• I can't watch TV
• Everything happened right
• My ass glowing in spandex, plus death
• This weekend
• I don't believe in love

Thanks for being you.

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.

My Ass Glowing in Spandex, Plus Death

About half an hour ago I was spinning with my hands above my head wearing nothing but spandex leggings and a high-visibility vest. The lights from cars on a busy Boston street shone through foggy windows, and the deep beat of dubstep vibrated through my chest and melded with the shouts of a young man, my yoga instructor. Everyone in the room glowed yellow and pink and orange under blacklights, and people's teeth glowed white in broad, joyful smiles.

As the music wound down to a gentler pace and the sounds became less like drums and more like flutes and water, the instructor's voice similarly grew softer---not in weakness but with resolution, such that it filled one with calm. And our fluorescent bodies sank to the ground with our falling heartbeats. A hug of the knees here, a side-stretching twist there, and with the name of the final pose, "Shavasana," I melted into a puddle on my mat. A billion stars could see my teeth as I laughed, and through the ceiling I could see them all laughing along with me. And as I laughed with the stars, and the fifteen other warm bodies in the room heaved with slow, deep breaths beside me, I knew that in that moment I would be content to die.

What a sad and terrible thing to say, you might be thinking. Why should this young person (a man of only 23 small years) be thinking of his death? Why not look forward to better things? Why not live happily instead of dwelling on something so far off?

I will tell you.

Two nights ago, I was at the apartment of a friend I met in yoga class, and he and I smoked a bong, and then we sat in his living room and sunk into the couches like drops of rain in a lake. My friend's roommate, Matt, was there as well, and he was talking about the troubles of the United States and being hopeless about the "state of this nation" and expressing all sorts of anxieties about what might happen in a few years if things continue on their current trajectories. I felt for him, so, in an effort to calm his nerves, I said to him:

"Matt, do you realize that we are all going to die?"

He did not understand what I meant, and he proceeded to talk, for what felt like an hour but might have just been five minutes, about how what I said was a terrible thing to say, and that it implied that there was no meaning in life, no point to living, and that no one could ever be happy while thinking that. I listened from deep inside the couch, and his voice and everything it said were like a door that creaked back and forth in the wind. After the wind died down, I spoke up again.

"I think you misunderstood me." And I explained why the certainty of death, to me, was comfort. I explained why the certainty of death, to me, was freedom. I explained why the certainty of death, to me, was a transcendent happiness that overflowed into every cell of my body and gave life to every single one of my days.

I explained that death, as one of only two known points on the map of life, can help us to take good, solid steps in the present, to take what we need and leave what we cannot carry to the grave...to live a life that matters to you...and that you could be proud of at the end.

I explained that when you stand before an unstoppable equalizer, you forget about the posturing and the groveling and the hierarchies that people create and you just see...

The universe.

(For more information on the universe, visit this page.)

Matt got up and went to bed. I remained deeply enmeshed in the sofa with a smile as broad as my hometown. I was happy that, that night, I had reminded myself of those things that I believed. I was happy that I believed them so well, and that I could hand them to someone and say, these are mine.

In that moment, too, I would have been happy to die.

What are these moments, and why do I bring them up? What is it that makes these moments so blissful? And what is it that makes contentment to die---so wonderful, and so worthy a goal? Why do I say so proudly, at 23 years of age, that I could end it now?

Because with the certainty of death, every moment spent unhappy is a chance to die full of regret.

If death can come at any time---and it can---we simply cannot bank on death postponing its arrival so that we can search for happiness just a little longer.

We need to find it now.

We need to find it now, and live it until that final day.

Where is your happiness? Is it inside you? Or is it somewhere else?

Where is your life leading you?

Where is that place you would be happy to call your grave?

Who is that person you would want buried beside you?

What is that thing you do that you would be happy to die doing?

How long will you wait?

Busting the Myth of Making a Difference

It is true that living beings in the past have determined the circumstances of other, presently living beings.  I need not list examples of world-movers and world-shapers because they are the essence of the most basic history classes, which we all have taken.  It is probable that in their individual minds, they felt the pangs of thinking as a human: by this I mean their feeling like doers—agents—their not being pulled along like a lame donkey but rather pulling themselves along —pulling their own donkeys—by their own…donkeystraps.

There is something about humans that makes them feel privileged above other animals and cues them to give themselves a lengthy, heartfelt toast just for showing up at the soiree of the animal kingdom.  But I’m sure donkeys would give themselves a proud eeyonk! if they had the chance to see themselves carry the kinds of loads they carry.  (Shout out to all the nice asses out there.)  And that’s precisely what gives humans the opportunity to praise themselves: their ability to objectify themselves, see themselves and so admire themselves.

But what are they really admiring, and is it really what we think it is?

What is a person?  It is not a human being who.  “A what?”  No, who!  “So what is the who?”  It’s the way a person does, and, also, it’s what a person is.  “It’s what?”  If we assume that anything is what it is because of how it is or what it does, then a person is the same way: the essence of the person is the way persons are.  And what are they like?  Maybe I can show you.

Would you love your parents if they were unfeeling robots—not that they wouldn’t show affection or manifest care or look as if they love you, but would you love them if they had no minds?  The thought itself is frightening.  How could you trust them?  If they have no minds, they would feel no remorse accidentally killing you.

They could be reprogrammed in an instant.  They could turn on you before you got a chance to shut them off and—bam, you’re dead, or maimed, or captured, or some other horrible robot-induced betrayal and suffering.  To have no mind is effectively to have no soul.

What a grave consequence, to lose one’s soul!

Some say it’s not worth gaining the whole world if you lose your soul.  But what a disproportionately grave consequence for losing something of which no one can ever be sure to have any ownership in the first place.  You can be sure that you’ve lost your wallet, or your car, or your house, or even a limb—but how can you check to see if you’ve lost your soul?

Better yet, how can you be sure that you ever had one?

A person is an inference, a creation by unconscious logic of a selfsame subject behind another set of eyes.  She—the person—is a sending-out of oneself into another body, an imagining of it from the inside and back towards oneself.  It is an exchange, an experiment, a building of the Empire State Building upon ground whose firmness you yourself have not had opportunity to test, but of whose fidelity all testimony seems strongly to confirm.

A person—the very idea of others—this is a game that everyone, every person, is compelled to play despite having never expressed an interest.

No one has ever seen a person, really.  They’re hard, if not impossible, to see.

To be a person is to objectify yourself.

Personhood is a relationship between a subject and an object. You cannot be a person unless there is someone else to treat you as such.  For what good is it to be a person if you are the only one?  From what does your title differentiate you?

You are a singularity, not a kind; an anomaly, not a category.

You have no need of a word for yourself.

Nor can you be a person to yourself unless you yourself are the other to whom you relate.

The act of “looking inward” creates this other; it pretends to see the workings of consciousness as though they belonged to someone else—as thought they were another’s, and could be seen.  The inalienable rights of persons, therefore, such as the right to life and the pursuit of happiness, are not so inalienable after all; rather, they are alienable as soon as there are no aliens.  This goes for all rights, all freedom, and all laws.

Thus “person” is a role to play in a community of similar beings.  It is a name given to an object that dictates exactly what can and shall be done to it, what it can and shall do to itself or to others, how others ought to think about it, and, in the special case of persons, how it ought to think about itself.  

The person is a unique category, for the category itself was created by persons to classify themselves.  Also, being a person is not something that a human has absolutely, or inherently; it is a social role, and it is given to humans by those humans who have the power to give it. 

“What gives humans this power?”  That is like asking, what gives a tree the power to sprout leaves?  Or, what gives the sky the power to be blue?  The power to create meaning is a power of human physiology, a consequence of chemical equilibriums and enzymes comingling with their substrates and DNA self-replicating and subatomic particles cleaving to one another with a faithfulness that should strike despair into the hearts of any honest human couple.

What gives humans this power to decide what things are?  No one gives it to them—it is a fundamental human trait: to make some meaning out of life.

---

You are the universe.

You are the universe in two distinct ways.  First, you are the only world you will ever know; therefore, you are the only world.  Second, your consciousness, the tool you use to explore the universe, is a part of the universe.  There is no spirit; there is only matter.  Therefore, the same things that make up the book you’re reading make up the brain and eyes that read the book.  The universe is curious in that way.

For more information on the universe, visit this post.

This Weekend

Tuesday. See the orthopedist about my IT band injury. Get cleared for exercise but not running.

Wednesday. Spend more money than I have ever spent in one purchase at REI on backpacking, camping, and cold-weather adventure gear.

Thursday. Spend a day at the office writing and editing. Drive four hours to Pittsfield, VT with co-worker Bill. Eat peanuts along the way. Sleep in Amee barn.

Friday. Wake up at 4:15AM. Pack up my rucksack: 40 pounds of gear I've never used before and 9,000 Calories of nuts and raisins. Drive to Riverside Farm for Agoge registration. Stand in line with frozen toes until it's my turn to go inside the barn and register for the event. "Once you pass through these doors, it's Agoge-on." Receive a knit cap with my participant number on it: 22. Disclose my medical history and give up my driver's license and car keys. Go outside into the snow and empty my backpack onto a tarp to be checked by event staff. Be told my boots are unsuited to the extreme cold, but pack up gear anyway. Log roll 300 meters and back in the snow. Do 500 jumping jacks. Do burpees 300 meters and back. Line up with 33 other participants and do a human log roll for 300 meters. Unpack 100 feet of 1-inch tubular webbing and proceed to the other side of the barn, where I and a team of 7 others design and construct a vehicle out of two circular tabletops to carry all of our packs and 1 team member. Learn... 

• How to prevent hypothermia and frostbite
• How to build a fire (my firm belief in birch bark is reinforced)
• How to build a shelter that protects against the elements

Hear that two members of the group have been taken to the hospital with black frostbite. Receive an entertaining lecture on orienteering. Spend four hours in the woods wandering around looking for shit (W.A.L.F.S.). Return inside. Receive lecture on sleep systems. Have sleep gear examined. Be cleared for outdoor sleep. Go up the mountain 300 feet to choose campsite for group of 8. Set up camp.

Saturday. Sleep for 2-3 hours. Wake up at 3:30AM. Pack up campsite and put out fire. Walk back down the mountain and get on a bus. Sleep for 1 hour on the bus. Arrive at reservoir. Meet Steve the adventure guy. Divide into groups of four and hike off-trail to an orienteering point. Boil 2/3 liter of water for hot chocolate while memorizing a paragraph about leadership. Spill the water in the snow at the last minute. Do 20 burpees as a penalty for failure. Venture to the edge of the reservoir and move an aluminum canoe loaded with 4 huge backpacks across a frozen lake. Repel down an icy cliff face thinking I'm going to die. Reach the bottom and be absolutely speechless. Take the bus back to Riverside Farm. Stand at attention, barefoot, on an unheated barn floor for two hours. Do one hour of PT and yoga. Complete a teambuilding exercise where six people stand on two eight-foot two-by-fours strapped to their feet with lengths of 1-inch tube webbing and step forward together 300 meters and back. Get mild hypothermia. Spend an hour resting indoors by order of the medics on-site. Realize steel-toed boots were a terrible decision for 30-below weather. Find a spare pair of cold-weather boots in my size resting by the heater. Complete the planks exercise again, but with a different team. Try to blend in as much as possible without letting on that I have no practical skills. Build a fire outdoors and boil water to cook a frozen fish. Get mild hypothermia again. Spend half an hour shivering in the medical ward. Return to group. Carry two 20-pound buckets of ice around to the other side of the barn and run suicides with them for 20 minutes. Take those same buckets and perform a 100-meter bucket brigade, doing 3 burpees every time 10 buckets passed. Run a lap around the entire farm. Return to a warm heated barn. Set up sleeping pad and sleeping bag.

Sunday. Sleep for 2 hours. Awake to a booming "GOOD MORNING. YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES TO PACK UP YOUR SLEEPING SYSTEM." Do yoga. Do 30 burpees, 100 squats, 30 pushups, intermittent planks for 10 minutes, and 30 more burpees. Rest. Circle up into discussion groups. Talk about the weekend. Receive a medal, sweatshirt, and T-shirt. Take group photos. Gather belongings and pack them into friend Bill's car. Eat three breakfast sandwiches at the Pittsfield General Store. Think about eating 10 more. Drive with Bill and Ben Greenfield to Newburyport, then to Boston, then to Brighton. Get out of car. Take stuff. Enter home. Collapse.

---

Cetus Spirandi blogs vicariously through the body of David DeLuca, the founder of Davidism.

Read more about Davidism here. Or here. Or here.

This is my ideal life

Yesterday was my birthday.

I am now 23 years old.

Here is how I spent this special day:

• Working my job remotely for 8 hours at a coffee shop.
• Drinking two cups of free birthday coffee.
• Eating cold leftover homemade curry.
• Doing power yoga at the studio down the street.

It enjoyed every minute of it.

This is my ideal life.

(For more information, visit this page.)

I do not believe in love

I do not believe in "love." I only believe in cruelty, kindness, and sex.

I do not believe in "cheating." I only believe in sharing, hoarding, and rationing.

I do not believe in "true love." I only believe in fatal attachment, impassioned suffering, and confusion.

I do not believe in the "sanctity of marriage." I only believe in government contracts and social control.

I do not believe in "sluts." I only believe in the bitter envy of caged birds.

I do not believe in "sex." I only believe in the thrill of intimacy and the ecstasy of power.

I do not believe in "friend-zoning." I only believe in lies that hide fear and shame.

I do not believe in "Valentine's Day." I only believe in social programming that feeds the economy.

I do not believe in "nice dates." I only believe in demonstrations of social status through conspicuous consumption.

I do not believe in "friendship." I only believe in love.

---

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.)

Anyone Can Be Successful -- Just Read This Blog Post

Success is an opinion one gives to oneself.

The opinion is granted when a person believes he or she fits an idea.

That idea may take any number of forms:

1. Possession of material wealth
2. Existence in the right circumstances
3. Embodying a set of character traits
4. ...Something else. 

The factors that shape this idea are many.

1. Inherited ideas from parents…
2. Adopted ideas from peers…
3. Ideas gained from experience…

If a person takes his or her idea of success for granted, that idea controls his or her life.

If a person understands the origin of the idea, he or she becomes free.

Where do these ideas come from?

Ideas originate from the intersection of past experience, present experience, and imagination. A person’s idea of success comes from this intersection as well. Wherever this idea of success comes from, it has the potential to control an individual’s thoughts and actions.

One person may believe that success means gaining power by amassing material wealth. Another may believe that success requires one to embody a set of ideal character traits—grit and perseverance, for example. Another may believe that success means feeling generally happy on a daily basis. Still another may have a better idea…

No matter what form the idea takes, it takes its form not on its own accord, but in accordance with a myriad of external factors, over some of which a person has no control. As such, no one’s idea of success can rightly be called one’s own. As a result, firm belief in “success” requires a person to sacrifice his or her own freedom in exchange for the opinion of another person or several others.

When a person believes that success is not absolute, he or she may stop pursuing it. In fact, in seeing success as relative, a person gains power over the concept. While under the illusion that success is absolute, one feels unable to grant a successful opinion to oneself; however, when a person understands that success is relative, he may grant himself the opinion at will.

Anyone can be successful.

Counterargument. If a person believes that success is relative, does not the concept lose its meaning? If anyone can be successful, how can success remain a significant mark of distinction?

If a person understands that success is relative, then the concept of success loses its meaning as an absolute standard by which to judge and be judged. In this way, a relative concept of success cannot provide a meaningful mark of distinction. All success is relative, by this definition. However, this does not prevent individuals from holding views about success. Nor does it prevent them from recognizing their idea of success in others, to greater or lesser degrees.

The ability to recognize one’s idea of success in another, and thereby mark that other as a successful individual, does not in itself represent an increase in freedom. Unless individuals understand the origins of their ideas of success, they will be controlled by their ideas insofar as they evaluate others’ attributes in relation to an illusory “absolute.” Just as they may have given up their freedom in evaluating themselves against an idea of success, they give up still more freedom in evaluating others against the same idea.

While relative concepts of success cannot serve to distinguish among individuals, one may easily determine whether one meets one’s own idea of success. Conformity to one’s own idea of success may be seen as a mark of distinction: authenticity is the word. However, authenticity itself cannot serve as an absolute measure of success, as it, too, is a value determined by myriad factors beyond one’s control. In fact, when a person recognizes that one’s idea of success is determined by such factors, success itself becomes absurd; after all, the only force that remains to guide an individual’s action is the will, which knows no principles.