Month: October 2017

I actively abandoned the happiness chronicles. To quote Thich Nhat Hanh, “There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.” In that sense the entirety of what I was trying to accomplish was wrong. I was asking the wrong questions. It isn’t ‘what makes me happy’ but when do I experience this feeling naturally? What are these moments and are they something that is in balance or something I need to devote more time to? The other side of that equation is this: What are the times that bring me sadness? How much time and energy is devoted to that? The answer is too much.

There is another quote on happiness, attributed to Connor Franta, that goes like this, “Use your smile to change the world. Don’t let the world change your smile.” I did let the world–let circumstance–rob me of the very core of my happy engine. Other people’s problems and drama, family drama, the echoes of very bad choices made; all of this combined to steal that critical part of me that makes me who I am. I stopped being a happy person and became this greying, stressed out old man in the span of 5 years. What should be the best part of my life has daily served as the best and the worst largely due to expectations and misunderstandings on both our parts. My partner says I need to find happiness within myself and not in another person, and that fundamental truth is what first led me into the chronicles, but to quote another writer, Heinlein, “Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” Not coincidentally or even germane to the point, hate is the condition in which the pain of another person is essential to your own.

So I am at a place where I’ve abandoned the idea of happiness and fallen back into the idea of distraction. Kissing and holding my partner, playing with my kids, a good story, a film, a game. These are the things that eat my time for the good. Coaching, teaching, trying to understand why my relationship is what it is and how to change that, searching for a place to live, trying to make sense of my finances. These are the things that shove me towards despair. In truth I need to kill off the things that function to kill me and make peace with the truths of the now.

We are not guaranteed any future, but we have the ability and the responsibility to hope. I can do that, if quietly, and try to set the conditions for such things to be reality.

There are certainly things that I hate to do. Grading is right near the top of the list. This is, of course, the backbone of teaching work and what I am paid to do. So, reluctantly, I must do it. But I don’t ever really want to.

Here is the problem as I see it: Too many iterations of the same thing. It is not so much that it is boring. Grading is depressing. I see students making the same mistakes over and over again across the board and I see the same shoddy plagiarism efforts over and again and slowly become jaded on all of those minds. This is in sharp contrast to how things are in the classroom where they are often lively and creative and bring strong talents to bear.

So what is the difference? I don’t really have an answer. I know that it could be the same problem I’ve been having as a writer: Butt in Chair or BIC for short. Taking the time and patience to sit down and do the work is really hard. Sometimes it is hard because you don’t have the time, but more often it is hard because when you do have the time it is much easier and more fun to drown in distractions.

In the Buddhist culture you are supposed to return to grave of your lost loved ones after one hundred days. You do so to perform last rites–a final ceremony in which you, at last, can say goodbye. Today I say goodbye to the love I lost–not through death but through circumstance.

I spent a great deal of time thinking that people who did not believe in soul mates were somehow limited. While this may still be true, that limitation spares them the burden of that ephemeral love. When we consider the concept of soul mates who ever asks what happens when one part of that connection moves on and the other doesn’t? The Ka-tet is broken obviously, but the lives that remain?

In the end I am a person filled with responsibilities. Those things will ultimately tether me, but so far as anything else, anything meaningful, productive? The double edged sword of that soul mate belief is that if you do believe that and you do believe that ultimately love is what drives us all, then what is really left to fight for?

“Come back to square one, just the minimum bare bones. Relaxing with the present moment, relaxing with hopelessness, relaxing with death, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything is changing all the time—that is the basic message.” – Pema Chodron

I woke up this morning. That’s all. It doesn’t entirely matter how much I slept or how or what I first thought when I rose. I did rise to experience something. As I move into the second day of this search for what fills me I am reminded that life fills me. I know what makes me ultimately happy–what brightens my day–and I get to enjoy that almost every day. I’ve been thinking about this in two ways: In the in between times, and the inevitable erosion of that joy because of what is happening when I’m not a part of that life. Yesterday I reached an acceptance of that latter part. I cannot control what other people do. The very idea of impermanence is the abandoning of the expectation that things will remain the same. I can control how much I allow myself to enjoy the moment. I can control how I filter things in the in between.

I know that this doesn’t make entire sense for a lot of readers (given that I don’t check my analytics, I don’t actually know that I have readers). The basics of the situation is this: The best part of my life is also the hardest. So when I am apart from that part of my life and roiling over what happens there, I need to find a way to be centered and happy.

In truth, that is the wrong argument entirely. This search is about being centered and happy within myself and allowing for the duality of I-happiness and We-happiness to be separate things. As of now there is not much by way of I-happiness and that isn’t healthy. I continue returning to the idea of writing as the singular source of I-happiness and perhaps I return there not out of comfort (I really don’t want to write) or obligation (I’ve published enough that I don’t actually feel a need to succeed) but out of love (I just can’t quit you, writing).

So here we are, searching.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I am still hopelessly and insanely in love and that has fundamentally changed me as a human. It changed how I view the world, what I see and feel in it, and what I expect.
2. I have too been changed by the experience of parents in youth sports. Vicarious living is a serious affliction.

My first day of the happiness search was more like a mourning period. Abandoning an idea that has been your fuel for so long is worse than fasting. It is going off a serious drug cold turkey. A lot of emptiness followed. A lot more emptiness remains. Buddha once said of impermanence, “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” So I did and I do. I thought, ‘what makes me happy now?’ I found nothing for a long stretch of time and then my mind wandered into the idea of how it would feel to be buried in story. It could be good. However, thinking about what could be vs. what is has become a rallying cry for depressive thought. So, I cleaned my office and drowned my thoughts in an audiobook.

That worked for a while.

Then the kids were back. Honestly, without them as part of this experience I would not have that present love I spoke of and that alone means that I am not really moving past the need. It is only when all that I love is afar that I can truly focus on what it means to be alone and what is born out of that loneliness–good or bad. I’ll have a great deal of opportunity to explore that over the next few days. In one sense I look forward to the opportunity to grow. In another I am purely terrified of what may come.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. One last chance for the Giants. The kids really want to see the Xmas eve game ($600?!?!) and I really need to see a win before I consider anything. The losses have been so disappointing that I cannot see myself shelling out that kind of coin for more of the same. I’d rather go to the Nintendo store and buy swag.
2. It is worth noting that in Madden I added three buffed out made up players and Jarvis Landry to the lineup and the squad still couldn’t do better than 9-7. Hot mess.

I don’t think I can watch football anymore. The joy once associated with the sport has become a sad sad feeling normally associated with Cubs fans of yesteryear. In short, there is no hope.

Football is a game of promise. On any given Sunday my team can go out there and compete with any other team and give us a win from time to time. Sadly, that is not the case. When I watch the Giants I no longer feel hope. I am waiting to be disappointed. There is no joy in waiting for that. I feel the way Charlie Brown should feel when running towards that ball. He knows she is going to pull it away, yet he tries anyway.

When you know something is destined to disappoint and hurt you there is absolutely no reason to continue down that path. Unless sadness, disappointment, and hurt is what you came for in the first place.

This is where we get into the Cubs fans. Cubbies harbored a sense of hope. There was a slim belief that they could turn things around and be successful. For others there was the fun of the game event itself. They thrived in the moment, despite the certain pain and disappointment that followed.

That is not where I’m at. I am in a place of hurt and disappointment and no longer believing at all. I’m the butt of the jokes and not at all laughing. So, I’m done.

 

Sitting in front of the classroom before the start of class I feel on the verge. I spend a great deal of time riding that verge tipped towards good or bad or something very different–evolution perhaps. I am unhappy, which is becoming more seriously obvious to the world around me. I can mask it behind some of the more mundane maladies in my life–Trump, too much grading, overworked and stressed–but the core reasons are more about where my life is and going. The answer is, sadly, nowhere.

I’m stalled out.

I find myself trudging along quite undramatically and watching the things that ought to form the core of what matters to me start to form cores of their own without me and I, no longer essential, remain a part of things–vestigial.

This is not the entire reality, but it is the piece of it I most recognize and identify with right now. I’m considering closing these things out–separating from what matters to me and accepting that I don’t get to have any of that and trying to find something–anything I do get to have. Of course, there is no proof I get to have anything. That isn’t how life works. We are promised nothing, but we are given a series of chances to get to that personally ideal life. Often we don’t make it.

I didn’t.

So now unto the next part–living in the remains of what could have been.

Family section seats for the Giants vs. Cardinals football game are ringing in at $130 a pop right now. If I act fast I can buy a set of 4 and only spend $520 + tax to watch the Giants lose. I think I’m going to save that money for a VR rig. At least in virtual space things aren’t destined to go horribly and repeatedly wrong. Having a VR rig and an Oasis-style experience is on my bucket list. The more I move through life, the more I collect a list of things that I would love to do before I cannot. Here are a few.

Tour Japan 
I love the idea of Japan. Everything about the great sprawling cities and the mountains and the valleys calls out to me. It may be the place I’ve always been writing my fiction about and never known.

Leap from a Plane
Skydiving is crazy and stupid and beautiful. I want to leap from a plane, feel my tummy drop, and experience that ridiculous free fall. I want to experience the curve of the earth as I rush towards it, and then gracefully float to a stop.

Drive on the Autobahn
No speed limit is a sick concept, and while I am not ready for that level of driving, I have always felt that this is one of those experiences that I could fall into. However, it will require a fair degree of training, which leads me to…

Learn how to drive a Speedster
I live remarkably close to the Bondurant Racing Academy. I ought to take advantage of that closeness by crossing off this major bucket list item before I move away. I want to learn how to race the fast cars.

Supe up a Car
Sensing a trend? I drive a little box of a 4 cylinder car. I wish it was 6 and had juice. I would love to supe it up and give it to the kids once they’re ready to drive such a beast.

Propose on the Great Wall
The Great Wall of China is 13,000 miles long. I want to walk a section with the love of my life and, upon one knee, offer my hand and heart in marriage. Seems like the place such a thing ought to be properly done.

According to Maslow, I’m in a pretty great spot. His hierarchy of needs charts the needs of humans from the basic function through their highest level–that of self-actualization. Here’s a detailed look at his theory.

 

So here I am locked and loaded on the first one. The second one is largely handled, though the glaring uncertainty of where I will live post May does linger. Love and Belonging is where I start to show cracks.

In terms of love, I have never and will never be more deeply and fully in love with someone than I am now. That translates to a special level of intimacy that, frankly, isn’t the business of readers. The love of my life is my best friend and my confidant and someone I consider to be my partner. My other friendships are extremely few and beat up. I am not a great friend to the two close friends that I also consider family. Friendships beyond that have always been fly by night and generally tenuous and, sadly, rooted in common activity, interests, or one’s sexual desire for the other party. So I don’t have a depth of friendships or any real family short of my own children, which is why things are breaking down there.

The fracture widens to a chasm when it comes to esteem. I used to be the most confident human being on the planet, but a series of setbacks–especially in terms of love and trust (both personally and professionally) led to a level of self doubt that triggered real concerns here. Let’s be real though: my achievements are legit. I’ve done some great stuff so far. Unfortunately that has not consistently led to respect by others, which has really destroyed my ability to respect people I thought I did and would. Beyond that the desire to get married met with the knowledge that this is not going to happen is a knife wound to the self-esteem. As I was taking my second consecutive morning walk I was processing these things in the framework of what is most important in my life–the very idea of hierarchy that led to this blog.

So, what lies above the fracture? Self-actualization. If I am to get back to the top of the pyramid I need to find a certain peace with the facts of life–acceptance of the things I cannot change. I have to find another outlet for these feelings and needs that aren’t being addressed. So, that is where I am at. Just trying to get back to that place at the top.