Easy

Throughout the uproar of the Tiger Mother book, a part of me quietly cheered on the mother. While I disagree with a tyrannical leadership style and social deprivation, she affirmed two of the deepest truths I learned.

#1 It's not fun until you get good.
#2 You won't be good if you don't put in the work.

Those thoughts ran through my mind as I put in my 5 miles this morning. As it usually happens, I got frustrated going too slowly during the run and let my feet really fly for a few stretches. The joy, the exhiliration, the sheer uplift, my feet thrilled. Barking, chasing, and the dog tired before I did. Better luck next time, kid.

My youth was never like this. I hated running. I especially hated basketball because it required both running and jumping. I felt the fat jiggle on my unsightly breasts, around a too-large midsection, rippling across the thighs. Could there be a worse sensation in the world? Yes. Worse still was the sensation of other humans seeing your shambling, porcine form lope down the street. Running is embarassing for the slow and ugly.

So stop being slow and ugly.

Work.

It hurts. Forget your muscles, forget your weak, aching back. I know that hurts. You can withstand that. You're having trouble with how much it hurts to show other people you're fat.

Battle your fears with reality. Taking refuge in delusion invites disaster.

They know you're fat. They see it. I see it. You alone refuse to see it. They knew I was fat. You saw it. I alone refused to see it. Until I had my heart broken. Until I overheard a girl say "Him? Ew! Never!" I'm forever thankful for "Fight Club" teaching me to embrace "rock bottom." In the earliest posts here, in the oldest posts there, I wrote about immersing myself in the reality bath. Acknowledging the cruel reality, a hundred, a thousand knives piercing your every inch of skin, every acre of soul, the freezing waters of the arctic killing your flesh, awakening your soul. Come alive and wake up. Things are bad.

And they'll stay that way until you change them.

Until you put in the work.

Work first to acknowledge truth. Work next to change what's true. I think soon, you will find the work become beautiful. It has for me.

Excerpt from this morning's journal

So then, if that’s my goal, let’s get there one day at a time. My intention is intentionality. I want to focus on the do-ing, on the here, on the now. I want to be present for my own life. I refuse to be a spectator operating on animal instinct and impulse carried along by tempestuous moods, always taking the course of least resistance. Such a life would be an abomination of all that I love and value. I love life. I love joy. Joy is not lying in bed, comfy and cozy. One can be happy there. One can be content there but in my most brutally honest opinion I cannot entertain the notion that one may be joyous there. Joy is exuberant, shouting, wild, energetic, frenetic. Joy is dancing, jumping, running, leaping, flying. Joy is active, alive, vibrant. It may in a quieter moment become something else, something still good, but my life is about joy and not comfort. But comfort is easy, warm, low-energy. I can slip into comfort by slipping into pajamas, crawling under sheets, staying in bed just a bit longer. Can’t I slip into the grave that way too? My fear, the one that decided my life course when I was in college, was my fear of waking up 30 or 40 or 50 years old and wondering what happened to my life. I don’t want to miss my own life. I will meet the grave one day. I want to meet it at full throttle, fully knowing where I’m going. If I’m going to meet Death, I want to meet him by not backing down in a game of chicken. I have no intention of rotting away warm and sedated while I still live. 

Jumpstart

I have not posted here in what feels like forever. I'd like that to change.

So here I'm posting a reply to an e-mail that I sent this morning. I recently wrote to a good number of friends that growing up I was taught to be 'nice' and that the major struggle of the past few years was to undo the psychic conditioning to which I've been subjected. He asked me what not-being-nice looked like. This is my response. (I moved some ideas around and re-worded some sentences for clarity but hey how would you know that unless he's fwd'ing the e-mail and if he's doing that, then he's about to die.)

Being authentic.

Living according to my values.

What are my values?

I want to see the furthest limits of my existence. I want to explore how strong I can be, how fast I can run, how deeply I can think and how fully I can love. 

I want to conquer one challenge after another, to keep searching out higher and higher mountains to climb.

I want to be fully authentic, without duplicity, deception in my being. 

I want to summon forth all the best that I have within me. 

I think I would be doing God a disservice if I was content to let that potential rot while I play church.

Nice may as well be an abbreviated way of saying "non-offensive." Doing your best offends people. I don't know why and all I have is conjecture about why. Think about school. If you're spending all your time studying something you love. What are you? A geek. A nerd. A dweeb. He doesn't want to hang out with us. He wants to read. But what if reading gives him joy? What if he just is so excited that he wants to learn more about something? The effort he spends invites mockery. In our churches, we call it idolatry. If you spend more time going to the library than to fellowship, you have an idol! Think about going to the gym. If you work your hardest, what do people say? He's nuts. He's roiding. He has insecurity issues. He's vain. They never accuse him of finding his happiness when he pushes his limits upwards. What could a couch potato know about the joy a lifter feels when his lift goes up 5 pounds? When you tell people that you want to produce the sincerest, most honest, most transparent love from your heart, and that you know you aren't doing it right now, but damnit, you're working at it, what do people say? Hippie. Fag. Homo. Or at least that's what a lot of people we know would say. Or at least that's what a lot of people have said to me.

Nice people don't offend other people. The office drone quietly mining his minerals and vespene gas for the Overlord, goes to the gym, looks OK, goes to happy hour with everyone else and watches the same shows as everyone else is a nice guy, no matter how many off-color jokes he tells. Think of the hipster, detached, too cool to try, content to blog about whatever arts world of interest. Talks about it from a distance. Says he creates but rarely shows. Irony everywhere. Caustic and sarcastic but nice, I wouldn't think it possible if I didn't see it myself. The office drone and the hipster -- not so different after all. Being authentic in your ardor offends people. Passion is never detached. Passion is never purely intellectual, purely theoretical. 

Maybe it's because your passion makes you a mirror for others. When you love fully and truly, when you try your best -- and fail -- and you hear their laughter, their "Look at him fallen and defeated! All his efforts for nothing!" and then one group of people will say "That's why you forget all that stuff and just have fun getting your d*ck wet." and the other group says "That's why you forget all that stuff and serve God." You hear their mockery, their baseless, senseless comments that reveal how little they understand of you. You see their faces, the ones who say they are closest to you, and you hear them snickering. But still you fight on. Still you believe and still you struggle. Because what you have means more to you than their opinion. They look at you. Everything you have, destroyed, yet still not defeated. All your work now ashes, still building. Alone, without friends, still fighting. They see what they themselves might be 10 years younger, 20 times more courageous, a million times more honest. 

That's what they read onto me. I don't care about being anything for anybody. I am myself. I want to find my joy. Let them think whatever the hell they will. I'm so done with living in a way so as to not offend other people. I've already wasted far too much of my life doing so. I'm going to climb the highest mountain in the universe. And they can come along, they can watch, they can laugh, or they can not even notice me. Let them do as they will. Going higher is the way that I meet God.

Always and Never

Women never shut up.

Men never listen.

Blacks can never be trusted.

Jews are always stingy.

Asians are always frail.

Whites are always boring.

Republicans never care about the poor.

Democrats never care about America.

It suddenly strikes me that the words "always" and "never" might be great indicators of the lizard brain at work. The lizard brain works at the instinctual level responding to fears and drives. It can only act on impulse. People are not lizard brains. They have lizard brains. It is simply a question of whether they serve their impulses or their impulses serve them. I'll go into that another time and if anyone knows any more about it, I'd love to learn.

But at any rate, why am I thinking about this? Facebook. Youtube. If I wanted to argue for the destruction of all our technology and a return to the age of naked savages with clubs and torches, I would use the internet as my strongest argument. In graduate school, one of my classmates was fascinated with technology and the concept of the singularity -- particularly the eventual union of all humanity into a single consciousness. Having seen Facebook threads, having seen Youtube comments, I can only shudder at the thought. Discussions on the internet have this unnerving tendency to degenerate into what amounts to be geysers of sewage spraying in every direction.

The words "always" and "never" have the ability to comfort a person in ways that empiricism simply cannot. Absolutes order the world, give it structure, tell you what your place is in it, require you only to nod your head and go along.

Arabs are always terrorists.

Americans always fight for freedom.

Arabs are always oppressed by the Zionists.

Americans are always after oil.

Atheists are always scientific.

Christians never think.

Atheists are always arrogant douchebags.

Christians are always persecuted for their faith.

Everything fits into categories. Nothing is left unaccounted for. The things that are left unaccounted for need no explanation. They only need to be explained away. That black swan isn't a swan at all because all swans are white! Logic now moves in reverse, a retrograde rationality.

If you wish to live life, the lizard brain must be subdued and made your servant. The impulses must be mastered. The fear must be mastered. Embrace uncertainty, venture forth into the darkness of not-knowing, of possibly-never-knowing, and set up your tents there. When you hear the questions howl in the night, don't run back to the warm, moist confines of mother's womb -- once you've left it, you can never go back -- instead go forward, always forward, and seek out the unknown.

Approach each moment, each instance, each atom with the knowledge that its distinct from every other. Your sample size is always one. Don't approach everything the same way. There may in fact be two of the same thing. I may be wrong. You won't know until you get there. I'll be working from the premise that if I want to get there, I'll have to get moving. If it makes sense to you, then get off your ass and go. If it doesn't make sense to you, if sitting still and waiting for the answer seems more reasonable, then sit and wait. But you must think. You must overcome the mind that knows only fear, thinks of only survival, can not give you anything more than survival. Is survival all you're after?


Pretty girls are always bitches. Or have boyfriends.

Good guys are always taken. Or gay.

Frat boys are always homophobic jerks.

Sorority girls are always sluts.

Premise #1: Life is infinitely rich and diverse. 
Premise #2: Homogeneity is wearisome. 
Conclusion: The diversity of experiences and facts in life is a gift from God.

"A ship is safe in the harbor -- but that is not what ships are built for."

-- John A. Shedd 

To enjoy this gift, we have to leave the harbor. A willingness to throw away what we know in order to gain what we don't yet know -- isn't this a premise to all learning? I believe it's a fair one. The classical physics that govern airplanes and billiards required minds to throw away the Greek theory of the elements. Quantum physics, Schrodinger's cat, requires us to discard the airplanes and eight-balls. What new mysteries yet unknown will require us to throw away quantum physics anew? Are you scared or excited? Do you want to shrink back or push forward?

"... don't be mad because it's all about progression/ loiterers should be arrested"

-- Jay-Z, On To The Next One

For me, I learned this experience when I took a gender politics course in grad school. Up until this point, I only received an unilateral education in gender politics -- conservative and Christian. I'm still not exactly sure what my motives were for taking the class. Was it because feminist criticism was the only major school of theory that I had no training in? I think I said that to some people. Was it because other people believed that those people, those gays, those lesbians, those people who love gays and lesbians, were so far away from God that they could never be brought back and consequently needed an intrepid adventurer like myself to go and win them for Jesus? Yes, I believe I thought that to myself a number of times too. Or maybe because it's the only class that could fit my schedule that semester. I don't remember.

But I do remember carrying a combative attitude to class every week in the early part of the semester. I can only express relief that I did most of the readings and as is my usual habit, waited around to get a sense of things before I spoke. Something changed in me. I began to see where they were coming from and the legitimacy of their arguments. These were serious thoughts and issues that needed to be considered. I burned with shame and anger that I laughed at Voddie's jokes. No, lesbians are not lesbians because they "can't get some." No gays are not failed attempts at "being men." I've seen too much to make that repulsive a joke. I have had a lot of great things happen to me in life, all of which I feel a deep indebtedness to God for, and right near the top is whatever work of the Holy Spirit caused me to walk a mile in feminist and LGBT shoes. I don't agree with them, particularly on political issues -- I remain adamant against abortion although not opposed to gay marriage (which isn't the same as supporting it), but I understand the issues far more fully now. And more importantly, I respect the origin of those issues. And I sneer at the ostriches in the pulpit, the ones who have never sailed real-life experience's stormy seas, the ones who say that we're the ones being persecuted when we comprise 90% of the population.

I wonder what kind of world we would have if we could all subdue our lizard brains and venture into the unknown. Last year I had an argument with someone over religion. I don't do much of this sparring anymore but he had been so aggressively douchey about it that I felt compelled to stand up. He eventually made this assertion that I could believe whatever I wanted because it gave me comfort.

Comfort.

Motherf*cking comfort. My religion, my belief in God has been the source of nearly all my greatest anxieties and angers in life. Love God? Sometimes I hate him. I love the Courage Wolf quote "Climb the highest mountain. Punch the face of God." because that's exactly what I want to do sometimes. Even the pains I experienced in relationships are attributable to my theological leanings. I certainly did not choose Christianity for Goddamned comfort.

But this assertion flew. As if he knew me! As if he understood me! As if he knew about my mental breakdown where I ran off into the stormy New England night, sprinting into the howling wind and pouring rain, lost in a park, with my cell phone battery dying, screaming obscenities into the sky until my throat was hoarse and punching boulders until my knuckles bled. Comfort. God damned, motherf*cking comfort.

But can I blame him? Christians, in debates, often assert that people don't want to be Christian because they want to continue to live in immorality. Hell, I made that argument many times in my early years. I made that argument to people I didn't know, barely knew and knew all my life. I followed a script. The whole world followed a script. But that was then. Here we are now. I grew. I moved forward. And now that I know, I'm resolved only to ever move forward.

Would you join me in this journey?