A Picture Worth a Thousand Words

I saw a picture once, when I was browsing social media, that has stuck with me for several years now. It was an artistic rendering of two people silhouetted against a moonlit sky, walking hand in hand away from the viewer and over a hill. It was captioned, “We are all just walking each other home.” I was deeply moved by this image and its caption, and it reminds me of how important it is to be a safe place and a shield to the people around us.

Grow Into the Void

The concept of walking each other home has since become a part of my personal philosophy. There are many times, looking back, that I wish I had someone to walk with me. Many times also, that the person who was walking with me was not there to help me. I could learn three different lessons from each of those times in my life. I could learn to let people walk alone who need me to walk with them, since no one was there for me. Or I could have learned to exploit people I cross paths with, because that’s just how people are, and it’s a “dog eat dog world out there.” I could also learn to be the person I needed. To me, people who choose the latter lesson, to grow into the void that they suffered from, are truly beautiful.

A Friend or a Bandit

I sometimes reflect on the people that I have crossed paths with in my life. An English/literature teacher in high school, a theatre teacher in college, a Drill Sargent in Army Basic Training. My brother, my stepfather, my wife, childhood friends come and gone. We found each other on the trail, on a moonlit night. We held hands and walked with each other a ways, until one of us stopped and the other continued on.

It’s funny to me, to imagine that to other people I am a stranger on their trail who may either hold their hand and walk them home as a friend, or a bandit who will rob them and leave them stranded along their way. But so we are, to everyone that enters our orbit. It is a beautiful and terrifying thing, the responsibility that we all have for each other. A gentle reminder to be kind to everyone we meet.

Another aspect of that picture that speaks to me is the simplicity of it. As complicated as we make our lives, and regardless of our personal identities, the groups we associate with, and whatever other lines we draw in the sand…we are all just walking each other home. The only question then becomes, “Do I want to be a friend, or a bandit?”

Much Love!

My whole life has been a giant identity crisis; a “where’s waldo” of the soul, of comedically tragic proportions; sifting through all the who-I-should-be’s, who-I’m-expected-to-be’s, who-I-wish-I-was’s, and the rest of the bullshit, until I find who I am, who I can be, and perhaps most importantly: who I want to be.

As a young boy, I had to grow up without my biological dad, who was killed when I was 8. I had a stepfather who adopted me, but he changed my last name to his. He changed my middle name too, because it was my fathers name, and he hated my father. And if that wasn’t confusing enough, he spent every day telling me how evil my dad was and that I shouldn’t emulate him. Unfortunately (or fortunately, perhaps, in retrospect) I was not allowed to emulate my step father either though. I felt like I was abandoned in a fatherless no-mans-land where I had to conform to impossible standards and nothing I ever did was good enough.

In the deepest, hottest part of that particular circle of hell, I remember writing a poem titled “Who Am I?”. It was dark, angry, and poorly written, and I was extremely proud of it. It very accurately expressed how I felt, and that is why I loved it.

“Who am I?” is a question that most of us have, or will have, at some point. It’s a question that I still ask myself. Though now I ask it without all the pain and misery that I had attached to it previously. And not even at my greatly advanced age of 25, do I know whether or not it is something that can ever be answered…but in my considerable wisdom, I suspect that it can’t be. We are infinite creatures, after all.

Eventually, when I was 17, I snapped. I decided, after 10 years, that I was done trying to be whoever it was that my step dad wanted me to be. This resulted in me being kicked out of the house, which I consider to be one of the best things that ever happened to me. I have spent the last 8 years learning about myself and healing all the self loathing that I acquired during my childhood.

I tried on all kinds of different personas, trying to find one that fit me, fit my idea of who my dad may have been, fit who I felt my family wanted me to be, fit who I was told “God” wanted me to be. It was like trying to find a single blazer that would fit a toddler, Shaquille O’Neil, and a Barby Doll equally well. Impossible in both size and style. But, tenacious man that I am, I stuck with it for a loooooong time before I realized that it just might not work out.

I have learned a lot of life lessons through this process of unlearning and relearning. Here are a few of the big ones:

1. The only way to go about finding and discovering yourself is with a curious and loving attitude toward yourself. It nearly brings tears to my eyes when I think of how I used to hate myself. Whatever reasons you think you have for your self loathing, you don’t deserve that kind of abuse from yourself. Out of everyone on the planet, YOU are the one who should be wildly in love with you. If you aren’t yet, that’s ok. We all struggle with this because we are also the ones who see the biggest, nastiest parts of ourselves. Be patient with yourself.
2. You are a goddamn work of art. I am a goddamn work of art. Just from a biological perspective, humans are insanely dope. We are the most adaptive and indestructible animals on the planet! Well, except maybe Honey Badgers, but we have them beat in every other way. I love going to the circus, or seeing ballet dancers perform. Acrobats, athletes, and dancers…how can you look at them, male or female, and not just be awestruck by the beauty of the human form. We outperform every being in the known universe psychologically. We can think about thinking (mind blown). Ever heard of “mind over matter”? Shits whack, yo. I could go on for literally ever concerning all the ways in which we are dope, and YOU ARE MADE OF THE SAME STUFF AS ALL HUMANS, YOU ARE THAT DOPE TOO!
3. There is nothing more powerful than a person who is friends with his/herself. If all the time and energy that we spent on beating ourselves up was spent on building ourselves up, how different do you imagine things would be. Also, how much healthier, happier and more energetic do you imagine you would feel if you never spent an ounce of your resources against yourself again? But we’re only human, and it is DEEPLY ingrained in us to be self critical! Yes, and for good reason. That self criticism instinct is there for a reason; it’s how we learn from our mistakes and evolve and get better. Just make sure that you are kindly critiquing yourself, instead of descending from the heavens in a fiery rage to smite the unworthy wretch that is you.
4. Who you are is up to you. No one else has the right to tell you who you should be. Not even, dare I say, god himself. Get creative and curious and start questioning yourself. What do you want out of your life? Who do you want to be? Paint a detailed, picture that excites you to look at! If it doesn’t get you more stoked than your team winning the Super-Bowl, you ain’t there yet.
5. G. K. Chesterton said, “If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly.” I only recently got this one, but it really is a gem. I extrapolated this saying to myself. In other words, I started to practice seeing that I don’t need to be perfect in order for me to appreciate, value, and love myself. Inner harmony, adventure, fun, and making the world a better place are at the tippy top of my list of values. I think each of those are worth doing, but none of them are easy to nail perfectly my first try. Some of them don’t even make sense without repetition. So they are things that I feel deep inside that I must do and strive for, even if it means I am embarrassingly bad at them. A much simpler example than all of that would be this: one minute of brushing your teeth is better than no minutes of brushing your teeth, even though the ideal is two minutes. Ok, done mansplaining this one.

If you take one thing away from this, take away the first of my little life lessons. Be nice to yourself. Love yourself. Be your own best friend. Don’t let yourself down. Realize that not everything you have learned to believe about yourself and your potential may be true. Challenge your limiting beliefs, figure out what stories that you’re telling yourself are holding you back and start telling yourself better stories.

As always, I love hearing from you all! Please feel free to reach out, and/or comment and share your thoughts.

Much Love!

Knowledge is Power

I think we’ve all probably heard the phrase, “knowledge is power”. Francis Bacon said it, in 1597. Knowledge is what set kings apart from peasants. Sages, from fools. And the acquisition of power was a difficult, often bloody task. Wars were fought over knowledge, and sacrifices made.

The more knowledge you have, the better a life you can build for yourself and the people around you. Today, people get hired and given a wage based on the amount of knowledge they have of a certain subject. There is one major difference concerning power today, as apposed to the 1500’s or 1600’s or any other time in history for that matter: Knowledge is as common an easily accessible as dirt.

The Magic of the Internet

What do you do when you want to know more about something? Hop on the Internet and find out! Imagine telling a common person 500, 300, even 100 years ago, that you could answer any question they had about anything. What will the weather be like for the next 2 weeks? Instantly have access to the worlds best and brightest minds without having to travel 100’s of miles and risk certain death. Imagine proving to them that you could solve their toughest math problems, engineering problems and whatever else, without even having to go to school or anything! You would be a god. Can’t get much more powerful than that.

Bring that same ability to answer questions into the present, and you’re an average Jane/Joe, at home on your couch on Tuesday night, asking Google if that weird growth between your toes is something you should take care of, or will it go away on its own in a few days… Not quite as powerful as a god now.

So, Who has Power Now?

So, what changed? Infinite knowledge is now something that everyone has equal access to, yet no one seems to be much more powerful than anyone else. In fact, most of us can’t even use all that knowledge and supposed power to break away from our 9–5’s that we hate so much and live a better life! What is missing?

The powerful people today (outside of the horrifically corrupt) are innovators, pioneers, visionaries and other people who are constantly testing and breaking barriers, and working to move humanity into the future. They take all the knowledge that is available to them and apply to new and different applications. How do they do it? They ask questions.

“Whomsoever asketh the more perfect questioneth, haseth the more powereth.” Caleb Rohr said that, in 2021. Now that knowledge doesn’t require work, it’s not as valuable. It still is, just not as much. Knowing what to do with it, and how to use it to its maximum potential, that is what will give a person power today.

A More Beautiful Question

I read a book recently, called A More Beautiful Question. The author, Warren Berger, talks about this sequence of questioning to get breakthroughs in life and work: Why, What If, and How. Knowledge has got us to where we are now, and for regular people like me, following along in the deep ruts that great men have established for us seems safe and makes sense (“making sense” here meaning it looks like everything everyone else is doing), but it isn’t really making my life that amazing. If I want things to change for me, I need to ask myself questions. Why are things the way they are now? What if they could they be different, better? How can I make them into the different and better that I just what-if’d in my head?

Maybe you’re a manager or someone in a position to create change at work or in your establishment or business. Asking questions is how you find out what needs to change, and where to unleash all that pent up knowledge! It does you no good to keep watering dead grass if the amount of water isn’t the issue. Why is the grass dead? What if I did this or that to make it better? How can I accomplish said “this” and “that”?

There are a million other questions to ask, but “why, what if, and how” are a great place to start. It’s amazing what happens when you start consciously asking those questions in your day to day life. All kinds of new possibilities open up, and you see things you never would have without being inquisitive.

Another couple gems that I pulled from A More Beautiful Question are to stop assuming that what we’ve learned, and what we think is correct. Never stop being curious. We stop asking questions at an alarmingly young age, and we start getting really good at forcing things to fit into our paradigms instead of letting them be and fit into their own bespoke little box.

Go Forth and Ask

I think this is an important topic to think about and play around with in our age. We argue a lot, without asking enough questions of the other person. We don’t question our fundamental beliefs enough, and that prevents us from evolving as individuals. Growth requires curiosity. If you feel stagnant, go ask yourself some real, scary, honest questions.

Much love to all!

A Bad Start

The first time a chose a career, I was about to graduate from High School. I was thinking about what I wanted to do after graduation, and this was my thought process: “I need to find a job that makes good money, but doesn’t require me to think very hard, because I’m stupid.” I chose to be a diesel mechanic, not having any clue what I was getting myself into. I figured that a job where you got that dirty, you couldn’t possibly have to be all that smart… Self imposed stupidity (read “self believed”) is really potent, it turns out.

I never once thought about what I wanted to do. I just convinced myself that this was good enough and that it suited me.

It wasn’t until I had already been to tech school and started a job as an apprentice diesel mechanic that someone asked me what I actually wanted to do for work. I had NO clue; not even the foggiest idea. I realized that this lack of knowledge about my own desires was a red flag in my relationship with myself. But I also recognized that divorce wasn’t really an option. So I got to work fixing myself, like any good spouse would.

Seeking the Golden Thread

I was advised to look back on my life and see what kinds of things came naturally to me. Did I find myself in similar situations often, using a particular skillset? What did I love as a kid, and what did I want to be way back then?

As I started plucking at the golden (or at least golden colored) threads in the tapestry of my life, I tried really hard to feel which one pulled at the deepest part of me. What I discovered was surprising to me, and would require a 180 degree flip from my current heading. I’m not much of an acrobat, so the flip was really awkward and painful, but after much failing and lopsided dare-devilry, I wound up pointing in the right direction.

Gaining momentum in that direction was another matter.

Orchids, or Succulents?

I can be really committed to my mistakes. More so, I sometimes think, than to my successes. So I more or less lived life as I had been, not really believing that I could make the changes necessary so late in life. I was 20 after all. But I gave ‘er the good ole college try, and bought a Life Coaching certificate for something like $180. I learned nothing from that course, but I thought “Hey, I’ve given something to this little dream of mine, it should grow into a beautiful plant now.”

Dreams are a lot more like orchids than succulents in terms of how much care and attention they need. I had that backwards starting out, and I just about starved my poor little dream-plant before it even grew roots. But then my unit in the National Guard got called up to deploy to Jordan, where I sat in a white room for nearly a year and had nothing to do but think about my life and where I was going. And do pushups.

The Creation of a Life Vision

I created a very detailed vision for my life. What it would look like if nothing was standing in my way; if I got everything I wanted. Not everything I pretended to want, but really wanted. And lo’ and behold, this Life Coaching thing was in it. So I decided to finally commit to it and start assembling the pieces of this life vision.

Just the choice to start seriously pursuing a life I wanted had such an enormous impact on my…well, life. Going from living a life I was trying to force myself into, to building one that fit me, had a much more drastic impact on my mental health that I imagined it would. Shocking, eh? It was like taking off the suit I wore to prom, many many pies ago, and exchanging it for a tailored suit, that made me look and feel like none of those pies ever happened.

Aweigh Anchor!

You can make this kind of change too. If you’re carrying around the weight of a life full of other peoples expectations and your default decisions, then full speed ahead and drop that anchor off the side of your ship. Watch how fast she spins aft then. And once your bow is pointing to your true North, you’d be surprised how fast the winds of fate suddenly switch from trying to capsize you, to filling your sails and pulling you along the way.

No ones past is too heavy

I believe that no ones past is heavy enough to keep them from a bright future. Bold statement, I know. And, to be perfectly honest, I haven’t always believed it. My own past once felt like an insurmountable pile of shit trying to drown me and any shred of hope I clung to!

We all have a past. Some of us have pasts that leave us with nothing but smiles and laughter and the occasional wince and shiver. Lessons learned, good times had!

Others of us have pasts that leave us wide awake at night, staring at the ceiling and trapped in a nightmarish Catch-22 where we’re doing painful and unspeakable things to try and feel something, anything, and simultaneously searching the bottoms of countless bottles for thecureto feeling anything. Some of us have pasts that make us wonder why we should give the future a chance. A chance to transform into the same flavor of past that has hurt us to this point. Even worse, some of us wonder why we should give ourselves a chance. Since we just keep hurting everyone around us. Because everything we touch turns to ash in our hands. We feel like our past has transformed us into an irredeemable monster that can’t stop destroying.

Its up to us

At the risk of over-simplifying, I want to say that whether our pasts are cesspools or compost is entirely determined by how we choose to use them. I know how hard of a pill that is to swallow. I remember when someone said something like that to me, and I felt so angry. “Are you saying I WANT to feel this way? Are you trying to tell me that I am CHOOSING to be miserable and hurt? I didn’t ask for this life! I didn’t ask to be beaten, molested, manipulated. It’s not like I wanted my dad to be murdered. Or my mom to die an agonizing death from a cancer that took six long years to finally finish her off. No. My past is out of my control and I don’t want to be as fucked up as I am but I can’t help it. I’m trying!” It’s all still right there for me. It almost makes me want to cry those angry tears again, and feel overwhelmed by circumstances that I couldn’t control.

And then, one day I started feeling tired of my life and how I felt. I asked myself how else I could look at things. I don’t know why the change happened, I’ve been asking myself for years. But I began to think, maybe I could use my past and my trauma for good. Maybe every single obstacle that I ran into, keeping me caged, was a doorway into an entire universe of learning and opportunity. Maybe (and I really hated this idea, it cut my pride deeper than anything EVER), just maybe, it really was a matter of how I looked at it. Could it be that I had the power to choose how my past ultimately affected me?

Me writing this, right now, is proof that all those maybes were true. I am trying to make my life an offer of hope to people who still believe that their past is why they can’t, instead of why they can.

My advice

If anyone every came to me and asked me for my advice for getting out from underneath a crushing past, I would tell them to start asking questions. Start poking at the walls of their cage and see where it gives. Where do the bars flex, which walls are just illusions, what windows open? And most of all…find out how you are holding yourself back.

For me, it was that pride I mentioned. I would almost rather die that admit that I could just walk away from the enormous amount of pain I was experiencing. I may not have put myself in my jail cell, but I sure had the fucking key the whole time! Perhaps I’m not the fire that is burning me alive, but the fire extinguisher was literally in my hands the whole time. And I almost didn’t use it! Just because I was too embarrassed to admit that I just couldn’t see how to escape before. That would be like losing your glasses, asking everyone for help finding them, and when someone points out that they’ve been sitting on ya damn head the whole time you refuse to check because you don’t want to face the embarrassment.

The worst part of all

And you know what’s even worse than the prospect of me never being free of my past and trauma? All the people that I could have reached; all the impact that I could have had on this world would never come to be. So the sooner I got over myself, the sooner I could start using the soil of my past to plant a garden to feed everyone I might reach.

No matter where you are in this journey, you are where you are meant to be right now. Other than the undeniably vast importance of everything else I’ve said so far, the OTHER other most important thing is to not judge yourself. You are where you are, and that’s ok. Be kind to yourself, or the fire extinguisher won’t work. I don’t know how the physics works in that example, you just gotta know its true. Compassion is not just for others, its for you too! Much love to you all.

I woke up running, my feet pounding the road in a dead sprint. A gut wrenching, soul crushing fear prevented me from stopping, though I knew not from what I was fleeing.

As I sped along the road, I noticed people standing along the side of it. Some of them angry, some of them sad, some of them completely oblivious to and unconcerned about me. I don’t know how long I had been running, how long I would have to run or where I needed to run to. The only thing I knew for sure was this: If I stopped, I’d die. Maybe worse than death; the savage capabilities of my pursuer were completely unknown to me, and that in and of itself was enough to make my blood run cold.

I noticed myself slowing down. The spike of fear brought on by that realization fueled a surge of adrenaline, empowering my aching, swollen legs to propel me along at their previous break neck pace.

As I continued passing people along the way, I noticed something odd about some of the people. Every few miles of my terror induced marathon I would pass someone trying to wave me down and pointing behind me at whatever was chasing me. I had no time to heed them, or find out what they were saying. The smallest distraction could prove fatal. But over time I couldn’t help but notice them as I passed by them, and there was something about them that was the same over and over again. Then it hit me, it was their eyes, bright and piercing, and the way they all looked at me, they seemed to know me, like they understood exactly what I was experiencing. Yet they didn’t seem at all concerned!

I didn’t know how much longer I would make it at this pace. No matter how far I ran or how fast I sped along the way, the nameless fear at my back got no further away. I could see another of these familiar strangers in the distance ahead of me. She stood calmly, her knowing eyes absorbing me. She motioned for me to slow down, to stop. When I came within maybe 3 meters of her, I looked into her eyes. Time seemed to distort somehow. I was still running at my manic pace, but I was getting no closer to her, and my body seemed to be working on its own without my direction.

Her lips twitched in a half smile that seemed to say “come on, child, stop and face it, you know what it is, you know what it wants, you know you have to…”. Suddenly, time snapped back into place. Partly from exhaustion, partly from some deep inner desire to trust this woman, I half stopped, half tripped and fell hard onto the ground.

Suddenly overwhelmed, I curled up into a ball at her feet and waited to be devoured by the monster. I knew it was waiting behind me for just this moment of weakness to finally arrive. I was blind with fear and could hear nothing but the sound of my blood roaring in my ears. My heart hammering in my chest like a war drum, visibly rocking my entire body. Still I waited, eyes shut tight for the inevitable.

After maybe 15 seconds that felt like a lifetime, I slowly opened my eyes. The woman was still standing there in front of me. I had landed right at her feet when I fell. She looked at me with that same soft, knowing expression and stretched out her hand to help me up. Taking it, I slowly got to me feet, still aware that the monster was behind me, waiting. I didn’t understand why I was not a mangled pile of gore on the road yet, but I couldn’t bring myself to turn around to look and see what it was that was chasing me either.

If I looked, that would be the end. I looked to the woman for help, but she just smiled and motioned for me to turn around. I started to cry. Crying with exhaustion, fear, pain from the running I had just done, from frustration that this woman did not care that my life was in danger, that the one person in this moment who could help me was just standing there, doing nothing to save me.

I was utterly broken. She took my by the shoulders and looked into my eyes. Wiping away my tears, she firmly communicated to me that I needed to turn around. She was stronger than me, and even though she could have, she did not force me to turn. She just stood with me. I wondered if the presence of this woman was preventing whatever was after me from consuming me. Was she some magical being that the forces of darkness could not come near?

She seemed to know what I was thinking. She smiled a little bigger and shook her head, mirth clear on her face. Then she frowned and took one of my hands in hers and squeezed it. She put her other hand on my shoulder and nodded at me reassuringly. I trembled, knowing that I had no choice but to trust her. A tear rolled down my cheek and I bit my lip, fighting the paralyzing fear trying to take me over.

Slowly I turned, eyes shut again, to face my pursuer. I took a deep breath and held it…then blew it out, snapping my eyes open to finally confront…myself. I blinked. My self smiled. I could see in myself everything about me that I loved, and also what I hated. Every failure was etched on my naked body. Every kind word I had ever said was inlaid on the skin of my self. I was beautiful. And terrible. A god in form and function, worthy of love and fear. I feared my self because I did not understand it, even though it was me, it was my self.

I turned to look at the woman, she smiled and beckoned my self and I to follow her. We did, and so began the most incredible relationship of my life. The relationship of me with myself. I hurt my self a lot, and yet I was scared that my self would hurt me. Every nasty thing I did to my self, I projected onto my self, expecting and fearing my self as if my self did those nasty things to me. But everything I did to myself that was nice was reciprocated.

We began to get to know each other, and became an unstoppable force. We decided that we must use our partnership to change the world, and so, we set forth on our way, caring for each other and everyone we came in contact with. Some people hurt us, but we nourished each other back to health. The closer my self and I got to each other, the closer we got to the All in all, until eventually, we ended up together on a road. We didn’t know where we were, but we waited, because we knew that good things come to those who wait. Before long two people came tearing down the road toward us, as if they were running for their lives, one trying to outrun the other. We smiled, and looked at them, we knew how they felt, we knew what must be done.