“Sticks and stones may break my bones, No chance your words will phase me!”
G. Kourtesiotis
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
Or something like that. It is a common expression to capture spiritual and emotional resiliency.
Truthfully, people say some messed up things. Some things are said out of anger, some things are said by mistake, and some things are said with good intentions that just come out the wrong way. Some things are said in no particular way at all, but are taken out of context. And some things, have no explanation at all.
I am a very physical person.
I enjoy athletics, and I love training like an athlete.
I also love trail running, I find it more absorbing than regular pavement running– and though I do find myself hitting the concrete from time to time– the other day was definitely a trail day.
Mindfulness Is Nonsense Once It Becomes Self-Defeating.
For the sake of this post, and how I am feeling in this particular moment, I will say it and spell it out again: mindfulness is nonsense.
Don’t get me wrong, I am all for appreciating the mindfulness of a moment as I practice some form of mindfulness, awareness, and meditation daily. Likewise, I purposely try to incorporate it into every facet of my life to capture more of the moment.
Well What’s your f*king problem then?
My issue is that when we set the intention to be mindful in our experiences, we may become expectant to achieve a specific state for ourselves. Inevitably, things get lost in translations with our own skewed expectations.
Mindfulness is nonsense when our focus is aimed at being mindful, as opposed to the experience itself.
In other words, labelling our actions as mindful can limit our experience in observing things the way that we intend to experience them.
I have talked about labels before, but to spell it out mindfully,
“Once you label me, you negate me”
As soon as we call it something, it is limited to nothing more than that.
This is true to experience as well.
As soon as we intend to be mindful in our experiences, we limit our experience to whatever preconceptions we have of a mindful experience.
Some of MY OWN LIMITING preconceived attachments to mindfulness:
Road to Happiness
Zen
Slow controlled breathing
Easy, neutral state
There is more to experiencing the moment than this, but can you see how the ego’s intentions can potentially trap us with such an inhibited experience?
A crude labelling example:
Let’s imagine ourselves going out to an event, any event, and we suddenly find ourselves experiencing it negatively. We find the event so bad that we put a label on it, let’s call this “a shit time“.
Once we put our mind to those words, we limit ourselves to nothing more than what a shit timestands for in our mind.
We can try to force our way out of it, to be happy about it, but it’s still going to be a shit time.
In walking away from the event we will say:
“Today was a shit time out”
And the next day at the water cooler we will say:
“Yesterday was such a shitty time.”
And later on down your life line, you will say:
“I went to that thing once, It was…” Well, you get the point!
Conceptually speaking, mindfulness can completely immerse us in our moments.
But things can become rather skewed when our mindful practice conflicts with our urges to be more mindful, which only takes away from the experience itself.
We can become tooself-aware, where we may try to control our perception of things in the moment, when the whole basis of mindfulness is surrendering to that moment to experience it.
The ego steps in with its own pre-conceptual contributions to the experience in how it wants things to turn out for itself. This is self defeating, as the original intentions of mindfulness, is to dissolve the ego, and surrender to the moment.
Mindfulness is nonsense when our intentions aren’t clear enough. Therefore, it is important to understand why we choose to practice mindfulness in the first place.
For example:
Someone who experiences a lot of negative emotions may finds themselves frequently depressed. Such a person may then turn to mindfulness training in hopes of becoming happier. Truly, this is great, to an extent.
Take that crude example again; You remember, right!?
That “shitty time”:
We receive negative feedback from the experience during the event. For Example:
We’re at a restaurant, and the waitress accidentally dropped a meal on our lap; “Grr, it burns and my clothes are stained!”
We’re at a festival, and there is too many people here; “Grr, large crowds make us uneasy.”
We’re at a bar, and the music playing isn’t up our alley; “Grr, this song sucks.”
We’re having breakfast in a cafeteria, and someone just pissed in our corn flakes;“Grr…”
etc…
The issue can come in play when we experience this negatively and try to change our experience to suit our goal…
So,
[Insert Sh*tty Experience Here]:
“This is a sh*t time”
Turns into:
“This is a sh*t time– But…
I’m going to paint this smile on my face,
Because I just want to have a great time, and be happy!”
Fake It Till You Make It?
In this instance, we steadily assume a controlling aspect over our experience in order to achieve a result for happiness.
As we try to bring an awareness or focus onto a more “positive” light, we neglect the negative. And in this example, embracing the negativity is generally the heart of the moment.
True mindfulness is letting yourself flow from moment to moment, and if it calls for it, through contrasting emotion. Awareness is being able to identify this process happening within ourselves in our immediate perception of experience. Being mindful then, is taking it in and accepting it how it comes. And if you find yourself rejecting it, doesn’t mean it to be mindless.
Shitty experiences can still be mindful.
Mindfulness Is Nonsense: If It’s Shit, Let It Be Shit!
Ultimately, our INTENDED practice can hang us up. Actually, It is better practice to simply bring awareness to recognizing a moment for what it is how it finds us.
Keep rolling with that shitty time!
Even if it means living in it all day and night. Live in the shituntil it starts to change on its own. And if it doesn’t, keep trying new things until it does.
Mindfulness is nonsense otherwise, when we find ourselves purposely tainting, or forcing our experience to illicit a particular result; a feeling, emotion, or state.
Of course, mindfulness is appreciated most when we experience it alongside some state of bliss, however, we can’t shy away from, or avoid our negative emotions in hopes of instantly transforming them into positive ones.
The human experience means balance, whether it’s basking in the beautiful sunfor hours or rolling around in the shit for a few days.
Can you see your life path unfolding before itself?
**Littermature Creative Writing, And The Illusion of Free Will.**
Of Seers & Fortunes In The Illusion Of Free Will
What is this sorcery here? What can we ponder within ourselves in attribution to how our life is unfolding?
Is there no sense of control in the grand scheme of it, or are we simply rewriteable; written, and re-written on the go?
The Master Plan
The master plan that rules us all shows no real boundary. Well, that is until we come to conclude one towards one with our end.
Really, who are these seers; these mystical beings?
Have they been placed here to mediate one voice through another? Or, are they of simple nature, seemingly observing the obvious intentions of being.
Have we been written, or are we re-writeable?
I ask again, where is our place within that master plan, and how do we belong? Perhaps we are written, and written on the go.
Well then, what dictates the present moment? It is the written expression of the past, one moment to the next as influenced by its prior moment.
What then do we have to determine? What choiceis there to obligate our rights in our own lives, or are thesemediating encouragements unscrupulously guiding our own actions?
And so, the kicker therein implies that ANY ATTEMPT to seize full control, or to rebel against these pre-organized events simply amplifies the fact that these actions are in contradiction of their intended efforts. As they were, in fact, ORCHESTRATED as well.
Do you believe in FATE or FREE WILL, or is our destiny merely an illusion of free will?
“I don’t WANT to huff and puff. I NEED to huff and puff!”
As people, we are hilarious because we love to live in delusion. Listen, I am all for positive thinking, but not at the expense of ignoring our negative thinking and emotion.
We hear it often:
Build on yourself; Be more optimistic; Work on your greetings and smiles; Develop your openness;Be better, etc…
YOU ARE WHAT YOU THINK!
It is in fact great advice, and advice I fully try to commit to in myself and others. However, I feel that we are easily clouded by such advice.
Particularly, we can find ourselves overly fixated on optimism and positivity in a way that keeps us seeking feeling good all of the time.
This creates an emotional disconnect in relation to any adverse feeling. Especially when we don’t know what to thoughtfully do with, or how to process our negative thinking and emotions in the first place.
YES, I ALSO AGREE:
“It is a muscle; Destroy your self-doubt; Destroy your fears; Destroy these emotions for the sake of liberating yourself from them.”
I get it. But, we must still experience, and fully feel the emotions that plague us.
Acknowledge it, feel the fear, sadness, hurt, pain, and whatever the hell else.
We want to feel good, for the reason being that it feels good; Okay Copernicus!
But ironically enough, succeeding these emotions comes from just that, RECOGNITION.
The ability to recognize destructive patterns, while also allowing their presence, and fully feeling to experience them.
Recognizing Negative Thinking.
Yes, yes it’s true:
I don’t want to huff and puff. But, I need to huff and puff!
The point being again, that if we don’t allow our body to experience and express itself negatively, all of the energy from our negative thinking wont go anywhere at all.
It will go nowhere.Nowhere meaning that it will go to places that we don’t want it to go.
Nowhere meaning, that it will stay trapped and emotionally bound within the structures and tissues of the body, which can manifest itself in different, and unpleasant ways from there on out.
Here, take a look at this video below:
Though most probably a re-enactment, and a tad corny for my personal liking, the message to take away is this:
The stuttering and stammering is a result of blocking out, or suppressing his initial negative emotions. And only until they are addressed, and diffused years later, can he finally overcome the barriers of his own torment.
Surely, this is likely an extreme example, but the trick is to positively empower ourselves through our negative thinking and emotions.
What the F**k does that Even mean?!
It means feeling your shit out!
All of it too. All of the nitty-gritty, shitty feeling bullshit! You know, all that painful shit. Feel the f**k out of it!Feel it in flow with your energy, and then diffuse it in a positive and constructive manner.
But, to be more polite in three words, or less:
Acknowledge, Accept, Replace.
Negative Thinking Behind closed doors
Personally speaking, I can get so bound up and angry for any whichever reason. And yes, sometimes these emotions become overwhelming enough where I emotionally feelthe need to physically lash out, or slap the first person to look at me funny!
“What the f**k are you looking at asshole?”
Look, life is all over the place sometimes, and emotional moments like that are of often unclear, and their reasons are unbeknownst.
There is no sense to pretend that we feel a certain way when we don’t feel that way at all.
Thankfully, I can recognize that these tensions exist within myself and are often secondary to what I need to address. These emotions are reacting to something other, in which case we must identify the source, or at best, we must try to.
In saying that, I also need to diffuse them through myself. And though I may feel the urge to lash out and slap someone, the best solution is to avoid taking any action in slapping that random stranger who happened to stare into my insecurities.
That will only snowball into bigger problems, and potentially, a lifetime of regret.
So what is the trick here?
Doing nothing won’t help you much either. We still need to address that emotional need to express ourselves physically as a result of the moment.
We diffuse the emotion by constructively diffusing it.
In this case, swing a damn bat, or a prop of some sort! PHYSICALLY live out your frustrations by swinging it wildly through the air!
I know, it sounds crazy and weird, right?
“That’s your solution? Swing a damn bat?!”
Yea, definitely!
We are all crazy weird, and we all need to express that side of ourselves openly, but constructively.
A tamer example IN JUDGING OTHERS.
Most of us have been taught, or heard with repetition:
“YOU BE NICE, YOU HEAR?!”
“What goes around, comes around!”
“Be grateful to yourself and others!”
Again, it is great advice, and I purposely try to practice selflessness often. However, there are days where someone may happen to stumble into my life where everything about this person completely repulses me.
Growing up with the “You be nice!” ideology, I actively try to find good qualities in this person, or humble down their “unlikable” qualities.
But in trying to treat them in kind, there is so much more tension than just accepting the initial emotional response, and rolling with the fact that I kind of hate everything about them.
Look man, I hate your f**king face, and your stupid mannerisms!
Get the f**k away from me, you stupid douche asshole!
When I do happen to recognize these emotions, I still try to take the same “baseball bat”approach.
Constructive diffusion is key To Negative Thinking!
So I try to practice saying what I really feel like saying, I just do so in my own head.
“I thought this was a tame example? That just sounds crazier, twisted, and more dysfunctional.”
Yeah, it’s crazy and weird, and I am dysfunctional as f**k! But again, we all have our own unique dysfunctions.
So go ahead and try it for yourself. It might actually make you happier by bringing a smile or chuckle to your face, in which case you are now experiencing a moment of happiness.
You see how that works? The offending qualities may now be somehow more tolerable.
It is a form of constructive diffusion, and can take you from a firm feeling of:
“You sh**y bastard! You f**k!”
To a mere:
“Bro, you suck.”
Feel Better?
I am no master at diffusing my emotions, and this isn’t a cure-all to your emotional pitfalls. But, it is a practice.
Go on, get creative in your own practice to thwart the creative bullshit your mind is busy conjuring up trying to thwart your happiness.
Practice cleaning out the gunk and sh*t from your soul!
Practice it often, let yourself feel your own sh*t, and feel it fully.
Believe it or not, acknowledging and expressing your own negative thinking is therapeutic in this way. It is a way to purge our own bullsh*t.
The power behind this negativity, is learning how to sort through your emotions when you are feeling down, this way you can relish on the high of feeling high when the cycle is making its way around again.
In practicing the optimistic diffusion, through the pessimism and gloom, and never suppressing it,
The creative exploit as a lazy alternative to the rat race, means instigating the fight between irregularity and normality. And while you’re out fighting normal:
Test yourself, test nature, test the faith. That’s what living is all about!
The Rat Race And The Creative Alternative
There is work, and then there is work.
Someone looking from the outside in can be so quick to pass judgment. It is socially common, at least here in the west, to be defined instantly by what we do for a living.
Quite usually, this is implied through what we do for work. Your working life is everything that your everyday life stands for. It is everything people use to work you down into a nutshell. After all, we are what we are consumed by.
The Three Types
The way in which you spend your time for compensation is what makes or breaks you, socially speaking.
In this, I like to separate people into 3 different working classes:
1. Employers
Employers, or people who found obvious success on their own terms. These are people who are praised, and glorified. These people are excused from such terms as real job, or real work because it is automatically assumed considering that the money earned here, speaks for itself.
2. Employees
Employees, or people who are directly working as an employee/trading their time for someone else’s dream in some manner. These people are deemed admirable, respectable, and honest. These people exemplify the typical hard-working stereotype. This is also the classic definition for what work really is. The intense effort sustained in the longevity of a career, exchanging compensation for one’s time. This is work, because people work hard for their money. Most people live here.
3. Transitioning Workforce
Transitioning workforce, this is what I call everyone else who doesn’t fit into either of the above two categories. Quite typically, they are on the cusp of falling into one, or the other. While transitioning, these people can be scrutinized as lazy, or lost. The hassle here is that they aren’t engaging with real jobs. The reason being, a) They haven’t made a lot of money yet, or b) They aren’t choosing to exchange their time for compensation, in committing their life to another’s strange dream.
Pipe Dreams
In pursuit of my own creative exploits, I feel I fall into this transitioning workforce. Categorically speaking, I am usually on the verge of breaking even or going broke, a true starving artist.
Regardless of the situation, people on the outside looking in always cultivate such scrutiny towards those who find themselves in similar situations.
But before I go any further, I want to note on how I am cultivating a very biased opinion in these experiences here.
Nevertheless, here are some of the personal examples to touch up on to showcase what fighting normal really means in our effort to escape the rat race:
The Rat Race: “Get a real job.”
No.
I had a real job, a very lucrative one at that for my standards, but I gave it up.
I left for several reasons, predominantly because of the endless existential crises that kept surfacing for me.
Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for the experience and what it did do for me. But I had to leave, to respect my personal callings.
But Let me ask you:what is a real job, and what are the standards that make it so.
Everything we do on this plane of existence has been fabricated by the men and women here.
Technically, A real job is something people do in place of what we were going to do anyways, which is…
To fill time.
Regardless of what we strive for, the clock continues to tick away steadily. In that fact, time is also just another conceptualization of moveable moments.
“Well you should seek it out, to get a good job, to work for a good source of income.”
If it’s not a financial suffering, it will be something else; It always is.
Fighting normal is a choice to make away from the rat race. So, ill take my chances by choosing to opt out of the 35 year status quo to chase those cushy pensions, or some other emotional security blanket.
Not to take away from the typical working lifestyle, or to make it out as a “wrong choice”, But what sticks me most, is when people project that path as the only path, or that I am delusional in trying to find a pleasurable alternative.
Fighting Normal: “You Lazy bastard.”
“You’re lazy, you don’t want to work like everybody else. You have terrible work ethic, you Quitter!”
I grew up a grunt, and I put A LOT of hard work into a lot of things. Contrary to that fact, I also put VERY LITTLE effort into a lot of other things.
This is what sacrifice is all about, and it doesn’t mean there is a lack of work ethic solely on the fact that an individual is not holding onto a “real job”, let alone has nothing to show for themselves.
It’s not a lack of work ethic, it’s simply a sacrifice to apply a strong work ethic elsewhere.
This is sacrifice,and we all do it day in and day out, on many different levels.
Escape the Rat Race: “Chase Your Passion.”
Calling someone lazy, or knocking their work ethic right off the bat is sheer ignorance. Furthermore, a ‘bad’ work ethic is usually the symptom of one thing, a lack of passion.
Go ahead, it’s easy to call someone lazy for opting out of the typical 40-hour, 9 to-5 lifestyle. But chances are, that a person who is projecting this laziness to another person who is seeking alternative paths, is usually well immersed within that typical 40-hour grind themselves.
If you’re miserable, it’s not our fault that you’re miserable. And honestly, anyone can play this ignorant game.
I can harp on you for any number of reasons, for a lack of commitment somewhere else along the lines of your life. Though it may not be for your working life, perhaps I can harp on your failed relationships as a lazy spouse. Or potentially on your physical health, as a lazy glutton, or dig on other irrelevant facts about your life.
I could very simply project the MY OWN life importance onto yours and find lack there:
“You’re wasting your time. You could have been doing some real work, YOU could be the one writing this 5000+character rant! Instead, you were too busy with your childish 40-hour work week… YOU LAZY F**KER!”
Perspective is a funny thing.
I wouldn’t say that to you, but I could if I believed it strongly enough.
People fail to see it, and they fail to see it often. Or maybe they do, and just don’t give a damn; Both equally viable concepts.
Regardless, it’s a petty, and childish game that we can play here. And realistically, I would never question anyone’s work ethic, or argue with anyone’s life choices/circumstances under these ridiculous circumstances.
The point I am trying to make, is that a person’s argument relative to another’s work ethic can quickly fall short if you take into consideration that this scrutiny is simply a comparison of priority.
My own priorities, aren't your priorities... they could very well be, but priorities can differ greatly from person to person. Your priority may very well be committing to a 40 hour work week, and my 40 hours goes to however the hell I want to spend it.
Secondly, a person’s work ethic should never be questioned over their choice to participate.
There are plenty of people out there that make for terrible workers,and this is simply because they lack passion in whatever it is they are doing. Which is all the more reason to seek an alternative path in the first place.
I can’t fathom it, how most people can be so miserable, but constantly suppress it…“Oh, butit pays the bills”, how excusable.
Regarding the latter, sometimes an alternative to the rat race is simply seeking opportunities of fulfillment to stray away from such lethargic circumstances.
Give up the dream: “Embrace the rat race.”
A dream is anything other than the grind, where chasing an alternative to the rat race is fantastical. Likewise, where we invest a lot of time without any immediate reward, we are easily instructed to give it up.
Chasing your dream is such a funny concept.
Most people will support it when it’s just a thought out there in space. But as soon as you start to put it to practice, there are very few and very specific people left to urge you through it.
And, if it isn’t rewarding you quick enough, well guess what, it’s time to quit, to get a real job.
You hear it time in, and time out as the most successful people develop that trait.
It is tempting to give into their failures, but their success was found in their opposition to it. No matter how arguable it was to give up on their dreams, successful people found their way through a persistent rebellion.
You only have a lifetime to make your dreams a reality. If you don’t focus on your dreams, what else is left to pursue, outside of an underactive imagination.
Rat Race: “You Must think about your future.”
I totally agree, which is why I made these choices, and why I continue to make them.
I am not sitting here impulsively living my life, I’m purposefully fighting normal over here. And just because I am not collecting steady paychecks, doesn’t warrant that I am not pursuing some purpose, or intention.
In fact, I am constantly thinking about my future, and I intend to find my real purpose.
Our perspectives just differ:
“Get and keep a good job. Save money, retire, live off what I made over the past 35 year routine, and don’t forget to collect that pension.”
VERSUS:
Well, a lot can happen in 35 years. And, I would rather feed my questions for experiences in this world now, than to purposely chase a career down only to go back on my original feelings down the road.
Maybe my expectations are skewed, but I want to do it now, and I want to do it later too. If I have no money from my exploits then either, well at least I did something right in making it that far.
On Potential’s Death Bed
People fear suffering, loss, and death. In avoidance, we absorb ourselves in such realities to live such comfortable lives.
All the more reason to escape the rat race, to start fighting normal, because comfort comes with its own set of problems. It brings complacency, apathy, and guess what else… Death; Both physically, and symbolically.
We become so comfortable in our own comforts, that we lose touch with our personal growth.
It then becomes harder to let go of everything we worked for, because we spent so much time working for the things we think we wanted. As we near our own physical demise, which was taking place all along since our birth –duh, we begin to question the very thing we tried to avoid in the first place when we sold our soul for that shitty career; for that real job.
I’d like to think that I am trying to face up to those questions now. And if I’m the one that’s wrong, ill gladly admit to be the asshole here. Either way, I will never have any regrets as to how I spent my life because the risk of failure is something to accept every single day.
So be it in abundance as a result of my creative endeavors, or penniless, which is also a result of my creative endeavors, the truth here lies in the fact that I have complete responsibility in the way my life plays out.
I am responsible for both the choices I made, and the choices I didn’t.
“Fight On.”, Forget The Rat Race
Go on, start fighting normal for yourself. Shun The rat race.
We are resilient beings living in a clusterf**ked world.
We have lost ourselves through the industrialization, as we have added more layers of complexity to simplest things. Deep down, we are still agrarian beings who overcomplicated our basic needs by adding more prerequisites to achieve them.
It’s the nature of the beast I guess, but still, we must seek to test ourselves as OUR OWN SELVES, and not as the product of a social whole that is misguided and lost.
Don’t Just Work Hard, Work Smart Too!
Life is work, and fighting normal is a gamble.
I find that playing into the grind of the rat race is hard work, but it’s not necessarily smart work. With that in mind, I’ll take my chances by intelligently investing my hard work ethic into smarter work.
In any case, I’ll either find success, or starve myself trying to find it.
Or maybe, I’ll find satiety in swallowing my pride down the road for sustenance.
Test nature, Test the faith, Test yourself– F**K– THAT’S LIVING!
Many of us are aware of the way things are, yet choose to sweep the real talk under the rug. We know better, yet we still fall for same bullshit over, and over again.
Thereal talkcan be anything with depth. Talk to enlightens us, to better, or serves all those involved in some purposeful way.
But this is all about looking at the small talk.
Hold on, wait. let me get my best Seinfeld impression going:
“What’s thedealwith small-talk?
We allhatesmall talk.
We allknowhow shallow small talk is.
So why do we partake in small talk?!”
Small talk is something we can grow to hate when we become tired of charade to keep up a polite appearance. In which case, most can’t be bothered to have meaningless conversations they genuinely don’t care about.
I’d imagine many of us find some level of bullshit in it, in the most shallow sense.
But we are all guilty in its participation when the situation calls for it.
Even those of us who despise small talk most are usually guilty of engaging in the bullshitity of it to some degree.
Small Talk? Okay, Maybe it’s not all that bad.
I mean, maybe it’s not all that bad.
After all, it does give us an opportunity to break the ice, to dip our toes in to test out the water.
Basically, it’s flirting.
We flirt with the opportunity to see if we’d like to invest more of ourselves into the engagement. If we’re not about it, we get out.
Types of Talk?
Then again, there are different types of small talk. There’s zesty small talk, and plain-old boring small talk.
“I Just have to say it!”
Zesty small talk can be those spur of the moment one-liners in response to some random sequence of events. These are usually entertaining, or captivating in some way.
We set ourselves up for this type of talk in those moments that almost have to be capitalized on, meaning, we just have to say something. What is to be said can be a quick joke, or comment that is warranted.
Then again, there is a deeper purpose behind that as well, especially if it serves whoever your speaking to in some way. And in the end, if it’s serving someone, how small is it really?
Then there’s the boring stuff:
The “Local sports team” talk by the watercooler.
The “Looks like rain” speach.
The “Kill me now” type of conversation.
Perhaps it is that part of the conversation that becomes so redundant, pointless, or dull that it is often better to say nothing at all.
Is it a silence thing, or what?
I think so. I feel that silence makes things uncomfortable for us, particularly when we are forced to sit there with no one but ourselves to listen to.
Or maybe, we feel that we have to be something else for fear of scrutiny by the other party involved. Perhaps feeling the need to be polite, we speak out to interact in some awkward way.
This seems more of a bother, especially when we feel it exhausting to continually force some sort of interaction with someone else who is unreceptive to it. What’s worse is having two people who are both uninterested, forcing words with each other for the sake of being polite.
I guess the intentions are for good, but keeping it real by keeping quiet can go further in the long run. It can go further because we will save our energy, and better spot opportunities of conversation that have more depth.
I guess it’s more about the intention of it in the end.
If your intention is to be polite, than that’s what you’ll come off as, just make sure that you’re genuine about it.
Alternatively, if your intentions are only to have meaningful conversation, that’s what you’ll attract, but you’ll probably come off as standoffish for most.
Less Is More.
If or when we are looking to go deep, to have real talk, why do we dilute ourselves down through the filter? Why do we cave?
Why do we do the things we do at times, when we know in ourselves that we don’t them.
Surely, a deeper personal dilemma.
Either way, I still feel that less is more when it comes to talking small.
“I’m Lost!”, Chasing uncertainty, Breathing through insecurity, and Chasing Down the Road Less Travelled
I’ll be the first to say it, “I’m Lost!”
Choosing the road less travelled comes many uncertainties, and without certainty, it’s common to feel lost in that path.
Lost and Found
I am lost in a world of madness, a non-sensical world, one that is aimless, and unclear on what work needs to be done to fulfill whatever my mission is.
In other words, I am trying to find genuine meaning in my life.
“I Am Lost!”
Although I’ll be the first to admit that to myself, it bites down on quite the nerve if someone other than me accused me of it.
Insecurities of the ego, surely.
But perhaps it is the perceived implication behind it that hits from totally different level once stated from the outside.
“You’re Lost!” they say.
Well what are you, have you found yourself then?! Do you even know what you are doing, and are you even aware as to why you act the way you do? What drives you in light of your life certainty.
More importantly, is what you do truly genuine?
Step Down From Your High Chair.
It bothers me how people can come down on the chosen path of others, especially when such socially disoriented scrutiny stems from a highly fixed, and superficial place.
The typical context of the socially fixed perception:
We are deemed to be lost when we shun the beat of the social drum in which we came from, and have not yet produced a result for ourselves.
Once again, I’m lost, and like many others like me, I am lost for choosing to do things in alternative fashion.
When other’s can’t identify with the path you have chosen, it is easy to feel disdain for it. People are quick to shove off what they don’t understand, or what is simply not the norm.
My biggest fear in the norm is becoming complacent in the normal path, only to watch your time slip your fingers meaninglessly.
We can spend a lifetime, not thinking for ourselves.
It is funny to me, to think how so many people can spend a lifetime avoiding complicated thinking for themselves, or desperately try to avoid the scariness associated with their own immeasurable search for meaning.
I feel it is far easier to shy away into the mold, to fill one’s time with meaningless distractions, than to do the dirty work for yourself.
The Road Well-Travelled
The road well-travelled, at least where I grew up:
birth-> school-> more school-> high paying job-> marriage/kids-> retire in everlasting happiness...
Life is over before it even started, turn your brain off.
For many, a retirement plan is an endless routine of avoidance and distraction. However, financial freedom fast-tracks the eventual thinking process if they happen to fulfill their financial, or material needs before retiring. People who aren’t pressed to make ends meet have more time, potentially, to think about their lifemeaning.
In any case, it is easy to look for distractions in avoiding the complicated thoughts rampantly running in our head.
I know, I Know, “Live in The Moment.”
Well, I do. Or rather, I try to. Awareness is keyafter all, and the intention is to practice this often.
As firmly as I believe the effortless flow behind such intentions, we can’t avoid the contradiction we find ourselves in.
For myself, living in the moment means ignoring the automated pulse of society. Checking out at the end of the working day, it’s not about strolling over to your local pub to pig out on beer and wings. The choice to zombie–out in front of 5 giant tv’s pumping out different sports highlights, over-jargoned shows, and biased/recycled news clippings screams nothing more than absent-minded consumerism.
Many people live and breathe the lifestyle of it, and truthfully, it’s not a miserable time. On the contrary, it can be quite delightful. Heck, I am also more than guilty of checking out, or indulging in it myself.
Sure, the occasional indulgence is alright, but to make a lifestyle of it? Well, as a big distraction that is ultimately unfulfilling, it’s no way to live.
At least that’s how I feel about it for my life. Likewise, I find it is too easy to get pulled back into a distracted lifestyle routine. As a living, and breathing entity, society produces more than enough noise that is loud enough to drown out our internal voice.
No wonder all that confusion.
“I’m Lost!” So what is all the noise distracting me from?
A MEANINGFUL LIFE.
Since we are discussing meaning, I want to make it clear how subjective this concept is. It is the reason why I continue to take this “Me-Monster” position. My life, Me, Mine, Myself, and I!
ME!
That’s the beauty behind personal meaning, it is unique to individual perspectives in our own favored tastes, flavors, and likings.
The stance to take is to highlight the best interest in my own life. I can bitch and moan about how dreadful the alternative is, but it isn’t meant to persuade anyone to take it on as lifestyle truth. Rather, you may come to identify with, or perhaps understand the alternatives to your own life better, and to those around you.
For me, a meaningful life is clarified by listening to my internal voice, not the voice of society.
This means taking in what society tells us is right, or wrong and challenging it to dig out our truth.
It is learning to question what society tells us is both possible and testing out our own method of inquiry to uncover life’s barriers, or limitations for ourselves.
Ultimately, it’s about challenging what we are implied to follow and how we are implied to live, because If we can’t find a reasonable answer to explain our choices of behavior, what’s the point in them?
In this respect, a strict personal evaluation to question our path will naturally help us uncover life’s meaning better.
An interesting look At A Virtual World
All that we see in our modern world can be looked at as art. Society itself is also a piece of art in the sense that it has been created, and created by man.
It is real, because we can see its infrastructures, it exists because we can feel it, and that we can live it.
However, it is possible that all of it is really just another directed perception. Taking this tangent, as a constructed piece of interactive art, society is comparable to some large-scale attempt in creating a virtual reality.
art1
/ärt/
noun
1. the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, **(enough said here)**
typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works
to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.
"the art of the Renaissance"
2. the various branches of creative activity **(here as well),
such as painting, music, literature, and dance.
"the visual arts"
**Thanks Google
Virtual reality (VR) isn’t really real, but rather, it is an impression on the senses that makes us believe the experience.
As real as VR may seem in our experience, we don’t perceive it as truth when we can physically feel, see, or witness the apparatus that we have created. Being able to peak in behind the scenes allows us to experience this as a created form of reality. When we are physically outside of the device looking in, we can see the wiring.
Well, at least that’s the current standpoint. **Ahem** [cue TOTAL RECALL VHS]
On the other hand, society is the apparatus that we have created, but, we are blind to the wiring, we are oblivious to the feel of the apparatus itself, because we are not on the outside looking in. On the contrary, we are very much inside, and looking out.
In this sense, it is hard to look at things within the manner of our own creation, because it has taken on a life of its own to direct the simulated experience.
Yes, it is quite the tangent, and easily an interesting piece to tackle on its own.
But Whoa, back up bro! What Are You Getting At?
Going against the grain feeling like “I’m lost” can set you up for societal scrutiny. Many can look down their nose at you in accusation, allotting their way to yours. This modern life of ours that has been fabricated does not assume the only way forward, but rather, it is very much just another perception on how to spend a lifetime.
Looking into the grand scheme of things, no one really knows what they are doing. Even those leading the way forward, driving this beast, only have ideas. Likewise, as transient beings in a temporary plane of existence, a meaningful life is highly subjective as the idea we craft for ourselves.
All the more reason to go against the grain where it makes sense to.
A Personal Kerfuffle
My personal conflict stems from the headlong battle between the influential standardized experience, and the effort to drown out the noise of society, persisting to keep to my internal voice.
Society is loud, and often obnoxious, making it difficult to pinpoint your personal calling. What is most important is learning to heed the instinctual nature of our gut, as it is the most valuable tool in recognizing our personal evolution towards a meaningful life.
I apologize for being a complete cynical ass in all of this, but I can’t shake my feelings:
For the many people to dictate their experience on others who claim to have found the way of life, may have only really found society, as it is loud enough to keep them occupied in delusion. What’s yours is yours, including your experience and perceptions.
Regarding those who have found the way of life in society, it is for them to truly distinguish an authenticity behind the meaning.
**User experience may vary**
Personally, I would rather avoid the distraction of the toys and material that we have created for ourselves.
Not all of it, just the senseless things.
And what is senseless, well that’s the challenge, to continuously scrutinize myself with what is necessary and what is not within the scope of my lifestyle vision.
It means openly facing the difficult questions inside for the sake of learning, and growing in ourselves, in our nature, and in our faith. Tap into our inner voice to grow ourselves fully, without being swallowed up by the voice of society.
Look beyond the endless chatter of opinion to produce a lifestyle that is intrinsically produced, not extrinsically fabricated.
Step away from the game if you don’t want to play!
I was down and out, or at least that’s how it felt for a while, for a good long while too. Coming out on the other end meant tackling the demon in my life, but what I found was that demon to be me all along.
Well if that’s the case, then we are also capable of becoming our own Gods.
As I furthered this lifestyle in reframing who I was, I kept at my personal practices to overcome my general fears and discomforts.
In these attempts, I continuously tried to expose myself to uncomfortable situations to build resilience to them. As a result, my experience and my outlook progressed.
As a result, I began to find a new handle on my being. One of self control, and personal empowerment.
It took a long time, but I was starting to feel rooted again.
I reorganized my personal fitness regiments, shying away from the endless weightlifting I was accustomed to. I started looking into alternative routines centered around my bodyweight for resistance, and supplemented that with a steady dose of running and biking between it all.
Truthfully, I was always a fitness freak, but my personal problems moulded me into a different kind of fitness freak. It was a necessary evolution the face the demon in me.
With the former, I used to find sheer joy through the physical progression in the gym as it carried over into the competition on the football field. Likewise, being gym-obsessed encouraged a healthy competition between teammates.
The defensive linemen quarreled the offensive linemen, but all linemen quarreled with everybody else. We were the big dogs, and it was all in good fun. But, it was fun to form a cohesive bond to better ourselves as a group when taking on outsiders.
In the latter experience, I was put off by the competition entirely. Though I still found great joy with the activity and movement of it, fitness evolved into a personal fight against my own mind. Therefore, pushing my body in healthier ways felt like I was mentally fighting the demon inside physically.— Err, ugh… If that makes sense.
During this time, physical activity tied into a deeper sense of emotion. Weightlifting fueled my anger, bicycle rides were spent chasing broken dreams, and trails were run in the dirt on the brink of tears.
In short, fitness was a physical outlet for my mental, emotional, and spiritual well being. This was something foreign and new, as it was a complete submersion into the self, as I’ve never looked at fitness in that light prior.
Emotional Memories
It is truly remarkable to sit here in reflection still being able to feel the experienced power in those moments. What I can feel is the source of will through the memory of my own words. At the time, it wasn’t a will to impress the ego, but the will to survive my own mind.
“At the time, it wasn’t a will to impress the ego, but the will to survive my own mind.”
How poetic
I always enjoyed fitness, but that’s where it moved away from the shallow meatstick culture, to one of deep personal growth, better emotional processing, and direct communication with the inner self.
Over the next few years, I steadily dropped weight from 290lbs to 240bs. At the same time, I was able to progress through both dark times, and the dark sides of my personality.
My body and mind dysfunctionaly restored itself back to normal levels of dysfunctionality.
On The Right Track
Within this short time period— say 3 years, I had managed to land a career with the railroad as a Rail Car Mechanic. It was great, really, because it gave me an opportunity to potentially stay there for the rest of my life.
In terms of the weight loss, it was fairly easy to drop that weight considering the labor and endless walking as a railroad employee, alongside all of the recreational activity I was already doing.
Side-side note:
All in all, I wasn’t trying to lose weight, but rather, I was trying to feel better. That is a crucial key to realize in reshaping your own body composition. Ultimately, the look of it is always secondary to what it provides you on an internally physical, mental, and emotional level.
Those are the reasons to anchor down on if looking to make great changes for yourself.
Working for the railway was great, both physically and financially. A unionized job with great benefits, a 401k/pension plan, and potential to climb up the ladder.
As a career, you might lose a few people with no appeal considering how labor intensive it can be. But in terms of the security and benefits, it’s the kind of job people dream about landing.
The role meant braving the Canadian elements year round, on top of all the other things in the yard that can potentially roll over you, or give you cancer. But perhaps most challenging, was the incessant micromanagement and political bullshit trickling its way down from the top. It depended on where you were, but the biggest yards pushed productivity and safety standards too far in ways that ultimately diluted productivity entirely.
A safe working place is important, hands down, but safety was often trivialized for the higher ups to meet their own standards and quotas. Come end of the month, it meant they were looking to nail somebody for doing something wrong, or being unsafe in some way.
If you know, you know, and it gets stupid pretty quick. With someone breathing down their neck, they start breathing down yours.
I digress, nothing is perfect. The positives do outweigh the politics as long as you are an honest worker with a strong work ethic. Again, it’s a lifer’s career, and if you get in, you’re sure stupid as hell to leave.
Artistic Epiphany
Perhaps the railroad’s greatest gift to me was a shifted perspective in terms of possibilities. It redefined my outlook into what was possible, as I gained many valuable skills that I can and still use.
To this day the carryover is endless, whether it’s for home improvement, automotive work, or something totally artistic.
Truly, it has shaped my life skills for the better.
Spooning Roses
Heck, many of my current– and future– exploits with Littermature.com can in some way be traced back to the railroad. It allowed me to look at things more creatively, also chipping away at some of the preconceived societal structures that I held in belief.
Likewise, I met a lot of talented people working there. Some of them barely held a high school diploma under their name, while others were rough around the edges with hidden talents of their own.
All in all, it was a place that gave me room to grow personally, to which I am truly, and forever grateful.
You Can Literally Do Anything
Steve was an older carman who had worked there for about 35 years, who had made the point early on that you can literally do anything. And though he was directly referring to maintaining or repairing rail cars, he made the creative process quite clear. Any repair was possible, because we could simply forge, fuse, and shape metals using oxy-acetylene, welding, or other crafty means.
Prior to working for the railway, steel was something that was more or less indestructible in my mind. Upon first seeing a torch cut through a steel plate like a hot knife through butter, my perspective had been forever altered.
Side-side note:
A new employee can be easily overwhelmed trying to self-solve any problems or repairs that needed to be solved. I was no exception, if I needed to make any repairs work, I was dumbstruck and eager to pass off the work to anyone who actually knew what they were doing.
It’s okay to feel that way, but what matters most is what you do in spite of those feelings. It’s crucial then to take initiative, to get in there, to try to practice what you can regardless of how daunting it may seem.
Embrace the risk, hurt, humiliation, or failure.
Throwing yourself in the frying pan is one of the best ways to learn, to increase your capabilities, and increase your confidence.
General advice, for whatever you plan to tackle for yourself.
Steve was relatively young for someone close to his own retirement, but he was a guy who was closing in on his 35 years of service. In that timeframe he had seen it all, through the complete internal restructuring of the company, to the intricate details of the work, he knew the game and played it well.
I was fortunate enough to pick up on his expertise, which opened my eyes in applying his railroading experience to something bigger. It showed me the human potential to create without limit.
If you can conceive it, you can create it.
The Demon: The Canadian Dream Scream
Apart from the creative knowledge and reorganized outlook, perhaps the most valuable experience coming out from this place was the ability to fully express myself. It was a place to come face-to-face face with the demon, a personal catharsis to reconnect myself on an emotional level.
The rail yard was roughly 4 square miles large, with an endless amount of rail and vehicular traffic. The job provided lots of time for solitude, with enough space and background noise for any screams, hoots, and hollers to drown themselves out.
Again, the employee-employer relations were often terrible from ongoing tensions between company men and the union. However, this dynamic proved to further the ability to express myself in seeking to break past my own barriers. This isn’t to say I was difficult with my superiors, but it dissolved the sense of authority associated with those in positions of power. This challenge proved to be very meaningful, considering the decade-long obedience as a student-athlete that was mindless.
All in all, Just because they are higher-ups, or in a position of power, does not mean that they know any better.
Certification does not warrant qualification.
Being qualified does not warrant success.
Qualifications are a standard set for performance. There are many unqualified individuals who are more than capable of performing past the set standard for qualification, but, are bound by the label of being ‘unqualified’.
The railroad was a place to dissolve many nooses as I was better able to emotionally process my internal world. I could express anger, sadness, happiness, and silliness, without judgment or the pressure of social ridicule. And if I’m honest, some of the guys in there were worse off than I was.
This last observation helped me realize that we all come to face the demon inside for ourselves, as we are all burdened with something.
I was totally unfiltered. The repetition of these expressions rooted itself into a growing personality. It was always the real me to begin with, but it wasn’t washed into the sociopolitical pressure to save face.
Before jumping off track to derail the conversation, I want to re-emphasize how the railroad really helped heal me of many personal problems. And though my time there was short-lived after 3 years, I am very grateful for it.
Again, I met some great characters, and walked away with a lot of useful trades skills that I will always use in some way. Most importantly, it gave me the spaceto blow off some steam in coming to terms with the demon.
Starry Skies and Open Eyes
After the company overhaul in the early 2000’s sometime, CN trimmed the fat and supposedly under-hired for some time until they were faced with the influx of retiring babyboomer’s. They then opened up the doors to train swathes of people, and in a place where seniority rules, it’s a case of first come, first serve.
For the most part, once you bid a job it was yours to have. But, that was for the Carmen to worry about.
Most of us were still in a 4-year apprenticeship, meaning we couldn’t bid for jobs until that time elapsed. Likewise, apprentices were at managements disposal, factoring in a 3-month rotation. As a result, I found myself working into the night, if not overnight, often.
Day shift was considered to be the money shift; everybody wanted days. And those who put in their time for 35 years to get their bid day shift were so stubborn to change the working schedule to accommodate the surge of young workers. As a result, many of the later apprentices were burdened with no social life as they were stuck working afternoons/overnight with Tuesday/Wednesday off.
Overnight was even more confusing considering the 12:00am start time. Friday-Saturday off looked good on paper, but it was more like having Thursday-Friday off. Your weekend starts at 8:00am Thursday morning, and ends sometime on Saturday afternoon, because you’d aim to be back to work on Saturday night around 11:45pm to start your shift 15minutes later at 12:00am, which was now Sunday.
Technicalities can be brutal, but it’s all relative of course, as everybody has different wants and needs. With that said, I did find myself enjoying a pint at the bar alone with the locals on a slow Tuesday night more often that I’d like to admit.
Sleepless
It didn’t take long, but working there for the short time I did disrupted my sleeping patterns. Although there could be any number of other factors in my life that have affected this, the truth is that I haven’t slept the same since.
Regardless of that, I much preferred to be dwelling in the shadows working overnight, as it gave me an opportunity to keep dancing with the demon. Doing so furthered my reflections, and kept me in contemplation about our origins.
Re-evaluating myself collectively, was only complimented by finding great solace in connection to the beauty of the starry night sky.
This was especially true of the overnight shifts during the winters:
There is nothing like the clarity of a cold winter’s night. Alone in the shadows, as the stars emanate through the darkness, the cold is perceived as its dryness dampens clothing, and penetrates bone. And as a shiver exhales through quivering lips, the tilted mind that peers into the vast emptiness clearly observes that nothing has ever felt more alive.
During this time, I began an active participation into my own meditative practice. Withdrawing from my day where I could to practice anchoring down on my breath more often. Whether it be at home, in my Jeep, at the park, or during my shift, I purposely withdrew to check on my body, and thoughts. There would be no hesitation to pursue any moment into myself to better understand my being.
As this became a comfortable routine in self-study, I finally began to look outwards with less emotional turmoil once again.
The Demon & God:gOD, Where are You?
There were many vulnerable moments fitting enough to streamline directly to the source. But in all that solitude and inner reflection– alongside the creepy dark corners that my job took me to, I was left encounterless with God.
The demon was still there, but as much as I’d like to say that God revealed itself to me in some miraculous epiphany, wouldn’t be true— It never happened.
The only blinding bright lights to chase me down the tracks were those coming from locomotives.
The fact that I was looking for this connection without reciprocation further reconciliated the thought to empower myself further. Walking away from the railroad with an enlightened concept of human creativity, then I was to take the same approach in creating that source inside me for my self.
WE ARE OUR OWN GODS.
Coming Soon…
Testing the Faith [Part 2]-
Coffee Stains and Fortunes– Delving Into the Unknown
… Losing myself — again– with God knocking at my door…
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