Wednesday, August 20, 2008
The Tenth Road
The other day – the morning after my reunion – Mike, Israel, and I went out for brunch. I was still drunk from the happy hour, which is a rarity, ha, but anyway I’m sipping on a Bloody Mary, and we’re hanging out. We’re talking about pre-reqs, you know, things that are required. Supposed tests, like If the next guy I date doesn’t like blah blah, that’s it. Red flag. Just say no. It’s not what you’re like, it’s what you like.
Why? Because it’s easier to trust someone based on what they like than what they are like, especially in the beginning, which is when you are more likely to pay attention.
Analysis. Self-deprecation. Excuses. People are so quick to tell you what they are like, and sometimes it takes longer to see through it.
That’s not to say people are bad. People are good. We are good in that most of us prefer to think we have good intentions.
But good intentions are hardly an investment. Time is. More than bull shit this and bull shit that. We can fill up so many hours of our waking lives with bull shit. We can dream about bull shit. We can live for bull shit. We can make love to bull shit. But you know what all that adds up to? Shit.
I’m living my life. I’ve been learning to for awhile. In some instances, I have been able to uphold the whole moderation ideal: my drinking, since the accident, for example.
Smoking is a whole other story.
So is that 99 percent of my relationships have been on-and-off. That tells me a few things:
1) You’ve got to pay more attention.
2) Take things slowly. If you don’t rush into things you may not have to break up after a few months, or wake up a year later. So, maybe I’ll need a vibrator. Maybe I’ll need to play my guitar a lot. Maybe I’ll need to remember to spend mandatory time alone every week. Maybe I’ll have to remind myself how long I’ve known the person, or how well/not well I know the person, how much I really know at all.
3) Don’t compromise so much. There are too many mediocre things in life and love shouldn’t be one of them. It’s OK to want things. It’s OK to want intimacy, to want someone to share your life with. It’s OK to want 100 percent. Not just 50 or 60. And if it boils down to 2 percent, you waited too long.
Really, these can all fall under umbrella 1) so it’s worth repeating: Pay attention.
Someone once told me, a customer as I poured him coffee, that people like us will find it harder and harder to go through life, harder and harder to relate to people. He was speaking of our level of intelligence, experience, and craving for knowledge and new experiences. This man was waiting on his wife, and confided in me that it was his seventh wife, but he had lived at least seven lifetimes.
For the record, this guy may have been a chode. He showed me his MENSA card. Still, he was onto something: It’s hard for people to keep up sometimes.
Recently, I wanted badly for something to happen, and had been working really hard for it, but didn’t know how long it would take me to get there. I didn’t know if we were ever going to get there. I was forced to face the questions alone: Were we to get there? Was it really what I wanted, and would I still want it if we did, regardless of time? I refused to think about it.
Sometimes refusing to think is a bad idea. I refused to think about how going to school part-time was going to take me ten years. It was like I magically still thought I’d see a degree in five, when no, it is not magic. It is not mathematically possible.
Yet, if one can be logical, face fears, face emotions, face consequences, face failure as well as possibilities, paralyzing as they can be, and especially in the instances when they all come at once, the outcome is much more pleasant. To be in command of one’s self even in uncomfortable, testing times is important to survival as well as success.
I could be neurotic here. I could go back to my hole, and talk about how long it took me to get out. I could dwell in the past, or I could accept whatever I did led me here, which is absolutely necessary to bring my life forward into something new, rather than some tired, old desperate pattern.
So, I accept it. When confronted with negativity and uncertainly I do not nor will I put on a blindfold or take a pill. Instead, I stare at it. I look through the doors: Fight, Flight, or Freeze. Possessing the ability to do this is key. From the outside, they appear the same: dark, mysterious, and scary.
But if you can remember enough, if you can keep your head enough, you can know truly this is not such a mystery after all, not nearly so much. You do it without clouding your mind with the emotions you know provoke you to take one of the primitive aforementioned choices.
Stop. If you stop for a second you can realize exactly where you are, even IF you’ve never been there. Odds are you’ve taken the road before. If you’re not sure, think some more. Odds are you’ve taken at least a similar road. Down the similar road and you realize it might be narrow, or turn, but all empty out into the same larger roads. From this picture it immediately becomes easier to figure out which ones you’ve taken before, and you know where they lead. You have no doubts anymore, because you’ve been down nine out of 10 roads, and each led to the same dark lonely aching broken place.
This moment, the choice is no longer. Some might assume statistically the tenth is no different, but we must assume they are wrong if there is a point in continuing.
(They are wrong by the way: if one reaches this conclusion looking at the tenth road it is time to start over, because it is an illusion. The seemingly tenth road is just a part of one of those earlier nine; it just looks different due to lack of attention to detail.)
The decision is obvious.
The more I do this -- and I have trained myself to do it, and do as often as need be, even now, in several areas of my life -- the more often I take the tenth road. Not once has it led me anywhere near the others.
The tenth road has led me to clarity of mind, financial success, incredible goals, gratitude for life and relationships, and excitement about what’s next.
The tenth road, finding it, traveling it, that’s what this is about.
And wouldn’t I love more than anything at times to have someone to take a stroll down through this amazing place with me? Yes, fuck yes I would. But I’m not going to find him hanging out in the others.
The other day – the morning after my reunion – Mike, Israel, and I went out for brunch. I was still drunk from the happy hour, which is a rarity, ha, but anyway I’m sipping on a Bloody Mary, and we’re hanging out. We’re talking about pre-reqs, you know, things that are required. Supposed tests, like If the next guy I date doesn’t like blah blah, that’s it. Red flag. Just say no. It’s not what you’re like, it’s what you like.
Why? Because it’s easier to trust someone based on what they like than what they are like, especially in the beginning, which is when you are more likely to pay attention.
Analysis. Self-deprecation. Excuses. People are so quick to tell you what they are like, and sometimes it takes longer to see through it.
That’s not to say people are bad. People are good. We are good in that most of us prefer to think we have good intentions.
But good intentions are hardly an investment. Time is. More than bull shit this and bull shit that. We can fill up so many hours of our waking lives with bull shit. We can dream about bull shit. We can live for bull shit. We can make love to bull shit. But you know what all that adds up to? Shit.
I’m living my life. I’ve been learning to for awhile. In some instances, I have been able to uphold the whole moderation ideal: my drinking, since the accident, for example.
Smoking is a whole other story.
So is that 99 percent of my relationships have been on-and-off. That tells me a few things:
1) You’ve got to pay more attention.
2) Take things slowly. If you don’t rush into things you may not have to break up after a few months, or wake up a year later. So, maybe I’ll need a vibrator. Maybe I’ll need to play my guitar a lot. Maybe I’ll need to remember to spend mandatory time alone every week. Maybe I’ll have to remind myself how long I’ve known the person, or how well/not well I know the person, how much I really know at all.
3) Don’t compromise so much. There are too many mediocre things in life and love shouldn’t be one of them. It’s OK to want things. It’s OK to want intimacy, to want someone to share your life with. It’s OK to want 100 percent. Not just 50 or 60. And if it boils down to 2 percent, you waited too long.
Really, these can all fall under umbrella 1) so it’s worth repeating: Pay attention.
Someone once told me, a customer as I poured him coffee, that people like us will find it harder and harder to go through life, harder and harder to relate to people. He was speaking of our level of intelligence, experience, and craving for knowledge and new experiences. This man was waiting on his wife, and confided in me that it was his seventh wife, but he had lived at least seven lifetimes.
For the record, this guy may have been a chode. He showed me his MENSA card. Still, he was onto something: It’s hard for people to keep up sometimes.
Recently, I wanted badly for something to happen, and had been working really hard for it, but didn’t know how long it would take me to get there. I didn’t know if we were ever going to get there. I was forced to face the questions alone: Were we to get there? Was it really what I wanted, and would I still want it if we did, regardless of time? I refused to think about it.
Sometimes refusing to think is a bad idea. I refused to think about how going to school part-time was going to take me ten years. It was like I magically still thought I’d see a degree in five, when no, it is not magic. It is not mathematically possible.
Yet, if one can be logical, face fears, face emotions, face consequences, face failure as well as possibilities, paralyzing as they can be, and especially in the instances when they all come at once, the outcome is much more pleasant. To be in command of one’s self even in uncomfortable, testing times is important to survival as well as success.
I could be neurotic here. I could go back to my hole, and talk about how long it took me to get out. I could dwell in the past, or I could accept whatever I did led me here, which is absolutely necessary to bring my life forward into something new, rather than some tired, old desperate pattern.
So, I accept it. When confronted with negativity and uncertainly I do not nor will I put on a blindfold or take a pill. Instead, I stare at it. I look through the doors: Fight, Flight, or Freeze. Possessing the ability to do this is key. From the outside, they appear the same: dark, mysterious, and scary.
But if you can remember enough, if you can keep your head enough, you can know truly this is not such a mystery after all, not nearly so much. You do it without clouding your mind with the emotions you know provoke you to take one of the primitive aforementioned choices.
Stop. If you stop for a second you can realize exactly where you are, even IF you’ve never been there. Odds are you’ve taken the road before. If you’re not sure, think some more. Odds are you’ve taken at least a similar road. Down the similar road and you realize it might be narrow, or turn, but all empty out into the same larger roads. From this picture it immediately becomes easier to figure out which ones you’ve taken before, and you know where they lead. You have no doubts anymore, because you’ve been down nine out of 10 roads, and each led to the same dark lonely aching broken place.
This moment, the choice is no longer. Some might assume statistically the tenth is no different, but we must assume they are wrong if there is a point in continuing.
(They are wrong by the way: if one reaches this conclusion looking at the tenth road it is time to start over, because it is an illusion. The seemingly tenth road is just a part of one of those earlier nine; it just looks different due to lack of attention to detail.)
The decision is obvious.
The more I do this -- and I have trained myself to do it, and do as often as need be, even now, in several areas of my life -- the more often I take the tenth road. Not once has it led me anywhere near the others.
The tenth road has led me to clarity of mind, financial success, incredible goals, gratitude for life and relationships, and excitement about what’s next.
The tenth road, finding it, traveling it, that’s what this is about.
And wouldn’t I love more than anything at times to have someone to take a stroll down through this amazing place with me? Yes, fuck yes I would. But I’m not going to find him hanging out in the others.
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