Once upon a time, I was born. It was an experience. I leave ‘experience’ free of adjectives because the first few I thought of sounded pretty gross and I had trouble (wasn’t willing to think about it for more than a few seconds) thinking of non-gross adjectives that I could actually confirm were true. You see, I don’t remember much about my birth. I do, however, remember a plethora of things that have happened since then. Turns out I’m alive, and when you’re alive, your brain captures and holds onto snippets of life that we like to call memories. In its capturing and general awareness, the brain is also pretty good at noticing things. Our ability to notice things and manipulate what we’ve noticed into self-awareness and observations and lessons and understandings separates our mental capacity as humans; our willingness to go through this process often and openly quantifies our capacity to live above the mundane. I like to think I’m not overly mundane, and I credit that to the aforementioned process, which is available to all humans, of which I am one.
Below you will find a blog post. I have written this blog post in honor of my birthday. This post has been posted a decent amount of time after my birthday due to lack of internet. It is still valid. I do this every year to recount important lessons I’ve learned from important experiences I’ve experienced since my last birthday. This year is no exception. Come and learn of my experience:
1.) True to yourself
In posts past, a common theme of my musing has been being true to myself. All of those musings attempted to approach the concept via the lens of integrity. Integrity is an intensely immensely important part of living a healthy and centered life, as far as I am concerned. However, this year, I want to muse the semantic opposite of this idea as originally phrased, and that means not being TOO true to oneself.
My integrity is something that I've always wanted to strengthen; and, no matter the level at which one’s integrity is found, can always be strengthened. Living with integrity involves, in essence, living according to what you know (or feel in the absence of unadulterated knowledge) to be true and right. If looked at in that sense, not being too true to yourself could fall under the spectrum of living with integrity. What I'm ultimately getting at is that sometimes our base desires go against our greater understanding or deeper feelings. And in those instances, we should try to be something a little different than what we are. Ejemplo: I am not the most proactive of people. I am not always outgoing or thoughtful or kind or social or understanding. And even though I can be these things sometimes, it’s not uncommon for my desire in any given situation to be to act in a way that is far from them. In short, I am human and am dross. My natural response in many situations is to take the low road. And were I to be unfalteringly true to myself, or to that desire, in all of those situations, I would be a pretty big douche.
I think self-mastery is one of the most important skills that we can develop. By definition, self-mastery involves overcoming (or maybe reconfiguring?) our base druthers. The very purpose of this would be to allow one to operate on a higher plane. Believing this to be the case then, my living in a way that discourages self-mastery is not living with integrity and is opening myself up to a series of feelings and actions that are perhaps the first to manifest, but the last to point me in the direction I know to be best.
So! I believe in being honest and patient with oneself and where one’s at, but I also believe in being discontent with the same. Honesty and patience are entirely different entities than lazy self-discipline, and should never be confused. I believe that we become better versions of ourselves when we exercise this honesty and patience in conjunction with aspiration and potential. After all:
“We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are.” - Max Dupree
I often like to look back and see how far I've come. That distance can never come to be if I continually stay where I am. Progress is made by being truer to one’s potential than to one’s present. Fake it ‘til you make it, because once you do, it's no longer fake.
2.) Creaturesque habit
Sometimes I feel like I repeat myself too much, and sometimes I feel like I don't repeat myself enough. The first is usually in terms of verbality, and the second in action. I'm a creature of habit. My Swype originally auto-corrected this to a creator of habit. That is something I need to be. And thus we embark on a new lesson. Thanks, Swype.
Forming good habits is a good thing—it's an essential thing in building towards a productive and fulfilling life. Forming good habits is hard. Forming good habits requires a lot of the things I described above, like self-mastery and large amounts of effort and uncomfortability and discipline and gumption and good habits and etc. But the nice thing about habits, is that once they they come to be, they become easy. A habit by definition is a habitual process or occurrence, i.e. one that requires little to no effort or comes naturally. Habits can only disappear when replaced by other habits, or habitual whatever. There's science involved in all this, but suffice it to say: It is important to form good habits. It is important to maintain good habits. It is important to avoid bad habits. Good habits maintained beget other goods habits. Bad habits maintained (even by inaction) beget bad habits. A series of bad habits compounded with more bad habits makes for a bad time, and is a difficult thing to bounce back from. I suppose in a way this ties in quite a bit to the previous section but I already wrote them separately and it would be hard to come up with a good segue. I choose to perpetuate my bad habit of taking the easy way out and promise to do better, and in doing so, simultaneously prepare for myself more opportunities to work on it in the future. I’m sure there’s a flaw in logic in there somewhere.
3. Brain Drain
Above, I said that something sufficed to be said. Apparently it did not, because herein I will expound on the aforementioned talking point. This is a section wherein I might discuss the glory of the human brain. An aspect of the brain in which I have particular interest is neural pathways. Neural pathways are the paths through which signals travel in our brains. The part of this process that is most pertinent and fascinating to me is the plasticity or adaptability of the brain and these pathways. Essentially, this points to how the pathways that are used or accessed more often become easier to… use or access—this is the science behind habits. Herein, then, lies the importance of proper brain maintenance. If one stops using neural pathways that have been developed by doing insert good thing here, those pathways get devoted to other things. If they were devoted to a good thing, you don’t want them to be replaced unless it’s by a better thing. It's easier to retain than to re-obtain. There are lots of ways to keep one’s mind fresh and growing. Do! It affects more things than one might realize! There are lots of easier ways to let your brain go. But don’t. It affects more things than one might realize.
4. Hail to the buttress
I think I’ve failed to make a secret of the fact that I feel relationships are important. For the longest time, I’ve had so many amazing people that have supported and inspired me throughout the years. Life, however, is not arranged in such a way as to be impervious to change. In recent times, a lot of close, amazing, closely amazing friends finished whatever brought them to my vicinity and moved on. I, however, did not, leaving me in whatever state I was in, but without them.
This was a difficult transition. I’m sure most have gone through a period where they have suddenly found themselves at a diminished level of support. The very definition of support is that it buoys and fortifies and uplifts. When that support is lost, a feeling of the opposite is sure to follow. Being affronted with a form of solitude, I chose to use it as an excuse to try and be more independent. I tried to use that time to refine myself as an individual. And that was good. But I realize now more than ever that it’s when I’m with and touched by others that I’m far and away at my best. Time that I spent trying to refine myself by myself was aight, but was also time that I could’ve spent practicing refinement in and through my interactions with others. And no matter how much I focus on and fight myself, more progress is always made when my focus is outward rather than inward.
Not to say that independence and autonomy are not important—on the contrary. But in my experience, I've found that it's easier to be independent and autonomous when I know that there's someone there to support and encourage me through it all. When we are independent and make independent decisions, we are bound to make poor decisions. It's easier to go through the whole process anyway when we know that there's someone to lift us back up when we've taken a spill. The way you get to have people in your life that are willing and able to do that is through being interdependent. Relationship-based investments pay the highest dividends.
5) Clever headline
Remember the past, but just enough to be grateful for the present. Old struggles may not be gone forever and may resurface when circumstances change. Be grateful for progress and for growth and for those struggles as they will help you be ready for whatever comes next (or at least to handle whatever comes next), which could be anything. Really.
6) Conclusion, of sorts
I like how these always start off detailed and descriptive and poetic and then trickle off into simple (more) to the point things. If you’ve made it this far, you probably understand the associated feeling because I wanted to be done writing as much as you probably wanted me to be done writing.
But! That in no way diminishes from the weight of these writings. A lot of bad decisions and thought processes went into them, and a few good ones. So they could potentially mean a lot. Life often takes unexpected turns. It often takes undesired turns. It will continue to twist and to turn. I’m happy about the things I get to continue to learn through the turns, though they may burn and feel stearn. I learned a lot last year, and I’ve already learned a lot this year. Our willingness to openly and frequently go through the process of learning from our past experiences quantifies our capacity to live above the mundane. Sometimes we end up being unwilling participants in this process. But willing or not, I’ve found it best to always be grateful for having participated, because: 1.) if you don’t glean the good from the bad, you end up with only bad 2.) something about never wanting to willingly do hard things because they’re hard, but also about some of the most precious moments coming from these times because they teach us what to value most.
That seemed like a powerful note to end on, but also seemed cliffhangerish. I don't know how to end this.
