This Day

Woke up at six tired from staying up until 1:30 am. Looked through Instagram searching for something, perhaps a field of useful knowledge, but instead finding only jokey and juvenile memes. A scene from the 1980s movie Aliens redubbed with obscene audio. It makes me question why I keep returning to look at all these things, wondering if modern social media is addictive after all. I sometimes think that it might be. Have I trained the algorithm to show me something novel and instructive, or has it trained me to waste my time and show me ads? I returned to sleep around 8 am, and dreamt of my ex-girlfriend feeling the pain of that loss and my helplessness regarding my inability to synthesize the meaning of it with regards to my future.

When I awoke, I made an effort to shower and take care of my basic hygiene. Said my prayers, and then found myself driving into the city. Why did I do that? I only end up spending money. Did I really need to go out today? Why the city and not somewhere else? The Coast? Part of me thinks that I need to get out so I don't become too insular or isolated in my own head. 

I had left too late to go to my usual weekend restaurant, so I tried something new. After depositing my check at the driver through bank, I drove to the other end of town to a corporate diner, and had steak and eggs, spending nearly forty dollars all told.

After my meal, I also stopped by the grocery store where I bought some food for the upcoming week. Tuna. Bananas. Chili. Blackberries. Salad. Fried chicken. Gatorade. I spent some time walking around and looking at things.

I bought some summer shorts, and shampoo aside from groceries. It also happened that I saw a one hundred dollar birdhouse for sale for fifty dollars. I eventually bought it after a brief phonecall with my mom who suggested Dad would like it very much. 

Now done shopping, I drove back home. I ate the blackberries in the car. On the way home, the cowling on the driver side wheel of the car partially came off and made a noise as it dragged on the highway and hit the wheel. I drove straight home for twenty minutes to deliver the birdhouse, but also fix the car by using zip ties to secure the cowling. The slapping noises had worried me, but I made it home without incident. I feared a cop might pull me over leaving me without free options to fix it, but mercifully I didn't encounter anyone.

The birdhouse was a hit with Dad. He couldn't wait to use it. I needed his help with my car, but he had to drive a granddaughter to the pool, so I waited with Mom in the living room for him to return. Mom read her book in the chair, and I surfed my phone making small talk about her day. I found out that after Dad had dropped off the granddaughter and returned home, he had gone to the shop to collect his bird seed, an indicator of his excitement. 

In the carport, he gave me the right wrench for me to fix the car (temporarily), which is unusual for me. I don't usually have the wherewithal to fix these kinds of problems by myself. I felt a strange pride and relief that the repair I made was holding up. 

I took my leave of my parents and returned to the shop by myself to drop off the food I had bought earlier, and was gratified again by the successful car repair, which was tested on the road at top speed. No noises.

There, I watched some videos, played computer games, marked my purchases in my special purchase book, and marveled at how much money I had spent today. Forty for breakfast, one hundred for groceries and clothing, fifty dollars for a birdhouse.

At ten o'clock, I decided it was time to leave, so I locked up and went to the other grocery store in town, buying ice cream and pepperoni sticks. One a carb treat which I shouldn't have bought, and the other a cheap protein that I hoped would help with night cravings. 

By the end of the day, I was in bed watching television and writing this down on my phone. I am somewhat disillusioned by my over preoccupation with games and social media. As a senior adult, I know it is all empty, useless time wasting getting me no closer to a secure future, but I don't know what else to do much of the time. I manage my feelings as best I can, holding to the hope that I will find a useful and fulfilling path that avoids ruin and letting other people down. Isolation is ramping up in my old age, and the "not-knowing" what to do every day is a stressor that is constantly increasing.

Tomorrow is another chance to try again. To make choices, to try and plan for the future. I fear calamities.

June Worries

Still depressed about the state of things and the immediate future. Being older means that you have more things to think about, if only because you have lived more life than others. 

I struggled to get out of bed this morning. Thinking about failed relationships while also surfing too much on the social media apps on my phone. I lay in dim light trying to pray for insight into my problems, and a vision for how to come back to a less lonely existence filled with the simple comforts of life without worry for how to pay for the basics of the physical minimum: food and rent mainly.

Eventually, I got out of bed, said morning prayers, and got dressed. Right now, my course in life seems to be to wait for disaster to change things. I wish I was more proactive, but my mood and physical well being, which I am sure are intertwined, is preventing me from doing anything at the moment. Maybe a few micro-changes will help me get the ball rolling. We'll see.

May Thoughts

Been thinking a lot about the ends of things, specifically my end. Things and projects I should do before my health leaves me and old age really settle in.

One: I've been thinking about writing a memoir about my life. Lots of thoughts and memories of my past, especially my earliest memories of home and school. The past certainly feels like another place sometimes. A place that no longer exists in a physical dimension, but locked in a time you can't go to. Childhood in kindergarten back in North Carolina. 

I also worry about maintaining my physical health. My biological father was only fourteen years older than I am now when he died. I keep hearing stories about my elders passing, in a way that I didn't hear when I was young. Struggles with dementia, mobility, loneliness, etc. It's worrying especially considering they're all from a generation that had better access to money, healthcare, and social services than I ever will. 

There is a park that I used to hike four miles through, that I would visit about two or three times a week. I haven't gone in several years. It was a bit of mental health and physical maintenance that I managed to do that I still think is beneficial. I would wake at seven, drive there, walk for two hours, and drive back. It was a big time commitment, but doable. My sleep problems are getting in the way of my doing that again. I can't wake up early enough to go. 

There are more worries about finances, family with disabilities, younger family members facing difficult futures, but it is all too much to go through here. 

I hoping to find a solution that works for all this.

Willpower

Today's meditation is about willpower. Strange to ponder, but willpower, often thought as solely a power of the spirit or the mind, seems to be significantly tied to physical well being. It increases with positive mood, happiness, contentment, and wanes with trouble, sorrow, and depression. I've noticed that a good meal, a meaningful interaction with a friend, and being rested, makes my determination to do something new, apply an effort, or continue to battle through ongoing difficulties stronger. 

And, of course, it is also strange to think how thoroughly infused life is with difficulties and setbacks. Every stage of life presents a new challenge or obstacle to overcome, and plateaus of achievement or contentment seem to be fleeting. A teenage kid struggles in school, but finally graduates, only to be faced with new challenges at a first job or in new relationships, not to mention mental or physical challenges life presents us all sooner or later. One wisdom of being an adult is recognizing how fallible one's parents are, what mental or physical challenges they faced. If our parents faced life challenges from even before we were born, what hope do we have to avoid the same or similar challenges that they faced? Challenges never cease. 

So, willpower must, it seems to me, be practiced frequently and often, so it carries a person through the challenges; and that, dear reader, is very hard. 

I've heard that psychology asserts the idea that once an unwanted behavioral pattern is recognized, it is easier to overcome. To use a colloquial proverb, "when you know better, you do better." I guess that is true to some extent. 

It helps me to think of gardening: one may know how to plant corn, but it takes effort to go about doing it, and patience while you nurture its growth. I might know the benefit of a behavior change, but facing the lived reality of doing it, reinforcing it, overcoming internal and external pressures like angst, weariness, and sometimes outright oppression from the world is difficult. A resolve to be better has to be patiently supported and reinforced even through setbacks, to carry out an intentional exertion of perseverance that one may not wish to make. All summed up in the cliche, "easier said than done."

I want to captain my life smoothly through habits and recognition of universal truths as I experience the hard times of difficult emotions, physical and emotional challenges, and uncomfortable permanent, unchangeable realities. As old as I am, I'm still trying to find the balance. When I feel set back, I try to tell myself that a patient gets better by taking medicine. If I experience the impulse to give up, that is throwing the medicine away. I will not do that. I will give hope of positive change a chance. It's the only way forward.

Hope and Effort

Feeling like I have wasted a lot of time today in the digital world of video games, one game specifically. 

The joke about some games is that progress is simply "number goes up." No real discovery, learning, or achievement--just "number goes up." I've played this game that way too. It is not a story I am particularly interested in, partly because the lore is too vast, keeps changing, and does not have any real 'literary merit.' There are no grand lessons on either life or character. 

So, I come away from today, from escaping into a game whose only interest to me is that number, feeling empty. I could have done so many other things, but my mental health, moody reflection on my childhood, and my general uncertainty about the future, makes me feel like doing anything else aside from escape is too pointless and hard, requires a level of effort I don't have at the moment. I am still getting over a flu that lingers in my chest. I will change this time wasting behavior. I know I will change. But today? It's all down the drain.

Today's Thought

The insight for today is that world view controls emotions and attitude. Most of the despair I might feel over a given "situation" (deliberately unspecified) might be a result of my view of why it occurred, how events led to its occurring, and the significance or meaning I then assign to the event. And my world view, or outlook on life, will color all of that "why," "how," and "meaning."

For example, a peasant in medieval Europe might blame a plague on the turning of the Wheel of Fortune, being born under a bad star, or their being cursed by an evil eye, etc. Modern science, of course, would explain the disease carried in the flea living on a rat, and then would explain how we have an avenue to improve hygiene, living conditions, and reduce the occurrences of disease. But a peasant hundreds of years ago has none of that knowledge, so would therefore be unhappy at being sick, mad at the supposed evil person who cursed them with an evil eye, and feel despair for being treated wrongfully by fortune. 

Therefore, I make an analogy between myself and that peasant. Like him, I don't know everything, and I use my world view to fill in the gaps. As a result, I can assign wrong causes to any given situation, extrapolate meanings and symbolism, and give myself over to despair. A bad experience driving, might lead me to blame poor drivers, might cause me to over generalize which sort of people are bad drivers, and then cause me to feel anger at a blameless group. (A terrible example because I don't want to be specific about what experience led to my having this general thought about world view.)

Anyhow, I hated this day. I let myself down, felt despair, and struggled to adapt to experiences I cannot control, but could have tremendous impact on my life or the lives of others. I know I had a bout of depression today.

My glimmer of hope is the lesson of the day I mentioned at the beginning. I *could* view the world as a dark place that will only get darker for myself, but to have hope, then I must cultivate an attitude of gratitude for what I do have, the virtues I have earned and will carry with me. This view of gratitude will go a long way to helping me have a better world view overall, and avoid the pits of despair. Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude. Gratitude is not lying to yourself to feel better. It is acknowledging the positives and helping your brain see them in their proper place, integrated perhaps with some bad stuff, but not overwhelmed by it. 

I have health. I have family. I have options for the future still. I have had good things happen to me in the past. I have a perspective that gives meaning to these bad experiences as life does and will continue to present uncomfortable things that likely will not change. I will try to get better going forward. I will try to commit to myself again, and recognize some of the permanent improvements I have made. I will try to develop what is, essentially, a skill.

Troubled Waters

Self care is a "troubled" phrase for me. I usually suspect that when people say they need some "self care," they're usually trying to disguise self interest or selfishness as some kind of virtue. Service to others is really what we all need, and that usually requires sacrifice of time, attention, and sometimes money, a fact that is counter-intuitive to most people in my society, and often unexamined in their own personal lives. 

Still, depression can lead to "self-neglect." One stops showering, stops eating healthy, attending to necessary work, allows the quality of the tasks at a job slide, etc.

I fear I may have fallen into a self neglect trap, that in some ways, has lasted several years. Ever since the breakup of my former relationship, a relationship that was deeply meaningful to me, I have struggled to captain the ship of my life in a direction that would have had positive benefit in my life today. Some opportunities come only once, or not at all. I fear I neglected the proper stewardship of my opportunities, and sacrificed my prospects for other people's wants and needs. I wasted time by hiding, for fear of making other people angry or uncomfortable.

So, today, even as I hid from the tasks I have been dreading in a computer game that took seven hours of my time away from me, I thought about my need for true "self-care," because the opposite, "self-neglect," is getting in the way of service to others, or at least to myself--a neglect that would also have terrible impact for others, something I don't want. Strange to think that neglecting yourself leads to other people's eventually distress, but it is true.

While playing that game, collecting upgrades and finishing quests, I also watched a TV series online from the 90s. The appeal of that show, apart from nostalgia, is the easy/joking relationship between a gentle father and lackadaisical son. I think I am attracted to the idea of a gentle parent concerned about my well being, even as my own crazy life takes me in absurd directions that I can't predict, let alone prepare for. 

Of course, I know that sitcoms are not real life and that the relationships depicted in them are nothing more than fantasy. 

On the other hand, in the still and perfect waters of art, fiction gives us room to imagine little scenarios of a smooth and happy life of growth and care for others that is deeply appealing. If only one can mirror just a small facet of that appeal, life can be all the more sweet in that self-same degree.

Escape to Digital Adventure

Nothing has changed on the tooth front, except that it doesn't hurt like it did. I suppose that is because the infection is gone, but the loss of support around the tooth remains. No referral yet, standard denial of a treatment plan. No phonecall with dentist yet 

I remember in this Nick Nolte film from the 90s that his character had a severe tooth ache that was a metaphor for the difficulties in his life, even possibly for the trauma he had suffered in his childhood. I thought it was a fairly good use of symbol. I only mention it now because, while my tooth has been aching, really I have been suffering from so much more, both physical and mental. I can see a similar narrative device working in my case if ever I wrote a story about myself.

These last handful of days has found me escaping into the world of digital games, specifically World of Warcraft. Five hours or more in front of a screen making "progress" and the numbers "go up." Already exalted with the High Mountain Tauren in Legion somehow. However, it is hard to say that I enjoy playing it. 

Someone said that going back to WoW is sort of like having an ex-wife with whom you share a kid; in some way or another, she's always going to be part of your life because of that kid. I've quit a few times, only to eventually come back, partly because it feels like a harmless way to occupy time without thinking too hard. I do think I  need to not think for a bit. I find I need the escape from unpleasant realities increasingly necessary. 

I have been thinking about how social media and the "algorithm" lack true commitment to the moral values of basic humanity. Social Media will set your nervous system on fire with images, memes, and "content" to disturb your amygdala all in a single pointed drive to get money, the one moral value of our modern society that seems stable, above criticism.

Anyhow, lately, social media has not been the harmless distraction that I needed from recent events, so I turned to the old standby, WoW. I made a fury warrior that I took from lvl 1 to lvl 80 in just one week. The "remix" that helped this quick rise was the same content I was playing ten years ago. I remembered all of it even as I was feeling bad about wasting time. A feeling that grew with the passing hours.

Prayers, fear, distraction, and numbness are my life these days. I hope to get back on a plan to stabilize my future, forms to fill out, contingency plans to make. I know I have to rely on a higher power to get me through all the days, months, and years to come. It's the only refuge I have, or anyone has, in these trying times. All I can think with the increasing bad news is this: "God help us all."

Bad tooth

I left the house very early this morning to get to my dentist appointment. The bone on my back right molar has receded, according to the young dentist woman, who I overheard tell another patient was back from a vacation in Mexico. 

My choices, according to her medical opinion, is to either do a root canal that is expensive and has little chance of success, or to pull the tooth. However, by pulling the tooth, I lose my third adult tooth. I don't want to lose any more teeth. I indicated I understood the options, but that I wanted to do the root canal. I noted her disappointment as this seemed to be the less convenient choice. Supposedly, I will get a referral to a specialist. 

I'm frustrated because of my lack of knowledge. It feels I am supposed to make decisions when I don't have all the options or knowledge to do so. No one told me that my bridge, when I first got it, was going to be temporary. Indeed, it seemed like a permanent solution to a problem I had those years ago. I fear that this two bad options choice is similar, with the attending worry that, had I a million dollars or more, there would be other options.

Currently, there isn't a lot of pain, but I am still getting over a cold. Life has been difficult lately, and I worry it could get more so. I hope I heal. But more, I hope I find more comfort in the future when I continue to get older. Doesn't seem likely based on age and finances.

The Coming End of Things

The cracks are beginning to show. I told my mom, a week ago, that I felt old, by which I meant that my body isn't bouncing back as easily as before. I'm more tired, more derailed by illness, less able to power through minor physical setbacks as before. It's a concerning trend for the future. No one ever gets younger. And all those old insults to one's health, previous injuries and illnesses, accumulate into a metaphorical heap as old habits solidly ossify into truly bad routines. 

I try to keep my spirit up. I can't afford to mentally berate myself all day like in the past. For one, I know better. With age comes wisdom and all that. Too many in our culture want to interpret tyranny and oppression as our personal failure. Things we believe are in our control and therefore our fault aren't really. Lack of support, lack of assistance, outright manipulation and lies shape our realities. We're too individualistic to see it, and therefore, we conclude we've "failed" when we can't or don't achieve what we could have. In reality, society failed us.

I don't have a safety net, and the good graces of life that currently support me won't last forever. I say prayers, try to change behaviors for the better, but I worry I will be lost to the troubles when the shoe drops. I let too many years go by doing nothing but cultivating fears. I lack knowledge of the future. I want to prepare for it, but it may be too late. The future will be here before I am ready. If only decency in living expenses prevailed. If only we all truly believed every single human being was worth investing time and money in. If only we all had the same chances. The homeless scare me, not because I believe them to be especially violent or deranged, but because their presence, their tents along the road, remind me that I might one day be trying to scrabble a life of dignity and rude shelter as well.

Old Home

Strange to think that the coffee shop from my younger days is still playing the old hits from the seventies. Steely Dan, Fleetwood Mac, Little River Band. While most of the coffee patrons here are the college kids of generation Z, I could close my eyes and imagine I was in a basement fern bar of 1982. These were the songs of my parents that have been rediscovered by the youth somehow. Does generation Z find a more authentic, less purely materialistic, pop music in this music of the seventies? No AI tweaks, no auto tune, no focused group constructions of taste, no drum machine. Just pure musicianship in an era that is far enough away from them to feel cool and novel, wholly unattached to their own lived experience and therefore pure in imagination. I wonder if I'll still be hearing this music of my parents twenty years from now. Seems likely.

Today, I took refuge in this coffee house to drink chai and read Steinbeck's book "Travels with Charley," a travelogue of sorts about his trip across America in 1960. I find it interesting he wrote it when he was in his middle fifties, an age close to my own. I can see a rich, educated man's point of view in this book, especially one who wants to mythologize his vision of himself and America before he is forced by death to leave it. Interesting to me, looking back on his view of 1960 sixty five years later, is the whiff of his "old man grumpiness" in his prose about the era in which he lived. No American-Vietnam War yet; no Internet bots, arguments, or controversies; no global threat of climate change like there is now. Did 1960 deserve his critique, mild or not? Maybe. I never lived it, or had his years before. He was a veteran, so maybe the insidious traumas of war and exposure to intense sufferings like poverty accumulate over time and injure the soul's natural predisposition to happiness. Somehow, though, I think every age has its disappointments, and it is better to not look with too critical an eye on the world in which we live. To repeat the famous tautology, "it is what it is." Life exists on its own terms and change inevitable. The fault lies in ourselves and not the stars after all.

In any case, this book is helping to pierce my personal and somewhat unconscious concept of perpetual youth a little bit. He saw himself as old, a senior, at fifty-six. Contemporary society wants that to still be the upper end of middle age. In my case, I still hope to reach that confidence of a settled middle aged adulthood, to finally realize the unfulfilled dreams of youth and hope. But, achievement and modest material accomplishments always seem so far off, as if I were still somehow in my late twenties. I certainly am not. I haven't had the traditional markers of success: wife, great job, house, kids. Seems impossible to get all that now. Maybe I have to accept I am actually old, a senior, and that the many opportunities of my youth are permanently gone, no matter how mentally and emotionally difficult that may be to accept. The brain is subtle and clever when it comes to self-deception.

I'm not a kid. I'm old to the world that keeps changing. I don't want to be irritated by the manifold changes of culture and time, but as a man in my fifties, like Steinbeck then, it creeps in now and again at the edges of my emotions, ready to pounce in a flash of criticism, both inward and outward. For example, I don't want to have to download an app on my phone to pay a bill, have most of my information harvested and sold at every turn by the 'rewards card' at the gas station or grocery store. And I definitely don't want to pay seventy dollars for one casual dress shirt, etc.

When I was a teenager, I heard a story about my then seventy year old grandfather who didn't want to pay more than twelve dollars for a pair of jeans. I laughed at the absurdity of his indignation, as good jeans back then were at least thirty dollars or so. Now, all these years later, he's in heaven having the last laugh at me when I balk at the eighty dollar pair on the shelf at the local store. I've become him.

For men my age, the default to all these perceived encroachments to dignity and the thousand little changes to how life is lived can be grumpiness. So, like Steinbeck and my grandpa, I feel all those same grumpy impulses. 

But, I also really hope to learn by their lived example and try to be detached instead, to acknowledge the emotion and set it aside if it is not useful to the situation. It's the better way. The world will always be bigger than myself and my petty opinions. My transient feelings, no matter how important they might seem to me, often won't actually change anything, and maybe aren't even based in reality. These grumpy impulses of irritation aren't the blaring alarms of injustice going off, but rather manifestations of a misperception of reality that I no longer completely understand or master. I'm slowly, inevitably becoming irrelevant to a world that ultimately leaves us all behind in the grave anyway. Things move on, and youth accepts these changes with the grace of not knowing any different. Insignificant as I am in this living-life process, I would much prefer to bend like the young fresh flower and not break like the tied old oak. As the modern cliche says: "Feelings aren't facts." Difficulties abound for us all, young and old alike, and they will ever continue to do so. The timeless unending universe will never be impressed by my (or any other's) twinges of grumpiness, justified or otherwise.

My goal, as far as I can see it, is to accept the passing of time with the manner of a polite guest who can't repay the incredibly generous favors already given him. May God give me the strength to do that.

What Can Be Done

I go back and forth between feeling like the future is already set to a limited degree in a negative direction with consequences for myself, and still having the hope that positive change in my personal life is still possible.

For example, I am having some night time dreams that feel like premonitions. These dreams are ones where I am grappling with the fall out of a great societal calamity, a change to the laws and social order, imperfect though they are now, but completely unworkable in the near future with personal drastic results for the vulnerable, especially within my own family. Or the dreams are of the nature of my experiencing the results of an unpreventable global war, my being called away to fight in a long-suffering intolerable mess that drags on for years until I am ultimately capable of getting reunited with the remnants of my family.

I know, especially having written them down, that these dreams could be seen as manifestations of my age old anxieties and difficult emotions surrounding my insecurities. I've literally spent years writing about them in my blog. Still, it's hard not to feel like maybe they actually portend something terrible. Logically speaking, I suppose it is possible they could even be both premonitions and irrational emotional expressions of my current state. The universe is a mysterious place. 

But, the strange things is that, at times, I allow myself some emotional space to admit, for hope's sake, that these dreams may not be premonitions at all, finding the small feeling of hope telling me that my dreams are symbolic rather than temporal. Maybe, for me, the future both in the physical world of 'here' as well as in the 'hereafter' will not be as bad as I think. Maybe my fears have created their own reality to justify their existence. 

With that said, it doesn't take a genius to see the world struggling with dark forces and negative behaviors that could result in a lot of global regret and overnight calamities arising from a few poorly timed choices and miscalculations.

I'm caught in the middle. As I said before, I feel like I am waiting for some kind of shoe to drop. I told my mom today that I had always tried to avoid failure, but maybe what I should have been doing was trying to build success, the one being passive and inert, and the second being proactive. The two are not the same. My finances being an example of passive avoidance versus active exertion.

If I make friends with God, allow myself to change belief into behavior, and acquire the practical virtues of patience, long suffering, wisdom, and restraint, maybe I will feel as if my life is turned around for the better. An old man needs hope as fish need water. The world does not need another bitter old man waiting around for an end and the elusive dropping shoe.

Not Doing So Hot

How did things come to a pass like this? I'm living life like I've gotten my diagnosis and found out it's terminal: trying to connect with my sisters, relate kindly to my parents, spending money for treats that I can't really afford, and preserving my energy for coping with the news of another horrible blow to come. Why did 'helping' become something to be hated? A media drenched society is drowning in a sea of bad news, at the mercy of a pervasive evil. 

I'm really trying to cope without losing myself in hopelessness. I realize I can't save my family, and I am not sure I have the skills to support myself alone. United we stand and divided we fall. 

Took my vulnerable sister to breakfast and paid for it. Wanted to bond in a way that went beyond work or typical family nonsense. Trying to say through memory for the future that despite our occasional disagreements and misunderstandings, we're a family. 

Thinking about doing something similar for the other sisters.

Argued with Mom briefly. Can't really say for the hundredth time that I am worried, indirectly ask for the reassurance none of us feel, or describe my fears in a way that doesn't weary our ears for the sheer routine of the complaints. 

I keep my deepest fears hidden because I know the futility of expressing them to reach a satisfying conclusion is impossible. Words are weak. In these days before the stunning blow, I try to connect. Feel the moment. Create the memory. And above all else, I pray for mercy for us all that the divine chastisements that await us in justice will not torment us overlong.

Update on the Now 2024

Still worried about the future, but not as attached to the feelings of inevitable disaster as before. For example, I still believe, with evidence I think, that the future will be incredibly difficult in the next few years. And, I hold no illusions that I will somehow be exempt from the jaws of tyranny, of cruelty, or suffering. But, I think I am resigned to whatever happens.

My reasoning is this: as it would be impossible or foolish of me to try and resist the will of God, as long as I act as righteously and as faithfully as I can, then whatever must be must be. I am not declaring defeat, of course. I am merely saying that there are only so many things that are within my ability to either influence or control. If I do my best, and continue to try in my efforts at improving myself and my circumstances, then perhaps I might be guided to where I need to be. 

It's still hard to accept sometimes that my suffering and struggle might be the inevitable consequences of living my best attempt at life, my coping with previous life choices, but I can rationally see no other alternative. It is what it is. 

Currently, I live with my parents, work at their business, and serve their life needs as they age. (Buying groceries, giving rides, taking them to doctor's visits.) This also sometimes includes tasks for my disabled sisters and their extended families. Through all of it, I try to develop into a noble soul as best I can see it. 

With the global tragedies unfolding before us in surprising ways, I can imagine a circumstance where global events reach a point of causing more sorrows than people's ability to endure. My nation, so enamored as it is of material things, is especially vulnerable to this kind of grief. I only hope to survive the difficulties, so that I live to serve as long as I can, and so that, when I face the Lord, I truthfully can say that, when I matured, I did the best I could.

Cassandra's Worries for the Future

 

It's been five years, maybe? Not sure. But, maybe that doesn't matter. What is time when everything is uncertain? It used to be that I had a plan for the future, a design on which skills I could gain, which path I could take, in order to bring myself closer to an ideal circumstance, but the only things that seem certain are difficulty and challenge. I am not looking forward to living life alone on my own terms. Right now, I do not have the financial means to support myself, and it doesn't look like I will for a long time. No retirements for me, no inheritances, no windfalls—just continued poverty as old age creeps around the edges of my life. I worry about homelessness, but I know I also make moral choices to support the people already in my life, and maybe that means they get more money and attention than I do.

I've been a little charmed (perhaps beguiled is the right word) by the overly sunny video blogs about the vanlifers, the people decades younger than me having grand outdoor adventures in vans that cost as much as a house did when my parents bought one. Like some people who imagine what they would do with lotto winnings, I sometimes imagine what it would be like to live long term in a van. Somehow, that seems more obtainable than owning a home, retiring with a significant savings, and providing a meager support for my family and friends. I have no illusions. I know this is all social media where the ugly parts are hidden, the hidden supports are concealed, and the 'facts' are only true in terms of entertainment. Still, it feels emotionally relaxing to consider this as a possibility, even if I acknowledge that, intellectually, it is a fantasy. 

Note for the net: I am still exercising my esperanto language skills with web apps. Youtube doesn't have as much videos as the used to, which is a shame. I have also started to learn clawhammer banjo. I am getting better with my rhythm hand, but I tend to play the same five or six chords in the same tuning. Should I put more effort into it? I hope I become a superlative banjo playing with the grace of God. With the same fervor, I hope that I can increase in personal virtue, wisdom, and knowledge to accept the unseen challenges of the future with the aplomb and dignity I wish. 

In a strange way, I am thinking a lot about the Harold and Maude movie from the early 70s. In a weird way, maybe I want to be a male maude, a vibrant, almost emotionally exuberant person celebrating every inch of life with the wisdom of a lived experience. I'm not a libertine like her character was, and I will not cause conflict and contention if I can help it, but I am thinking about conscious spirituality in the face of a world intent on descending into horrors and cruelty that people can't envision at the moment. 

How did Cassandra, from ancient Greece, and who was cursed to know the troubles of the future but also not to have anyone believe her or listen to her admonitions, not go insane with worry, frustration, and anger at the willful blindness that absolutely surrounded her. The answer seems to be a radical detachment from the outside world, and a powerful connection to the inside font of spirituality that directs her steps.

Reaching for Reason and Hope

Most of my posts seem to be me exploring my inner emotional life in one way or another, and that exploration, in some form or another ends up with depression. I wish I could say "most of my posts lately...", but that is not the case. It now seems to be a permanent facet of my adult emotional life. Of course I worry that is had been so long that it is more of a habit than a reality, but I am not sure that is the case.

I feel anger slipping out every once and again. When I think on something that concerns me, something that seems amiss, I worry it like a stone in my pocket, until I find myself having angry conversations with imaginary people in my head. Not the schizophrenic conversations, as in hearing voices, just the everyday scenarios people play in their heads about what should have been done or said or felt, etc.

At the root of it now, all of it, all of the depression, worry, anger and whatnot seems to be frustration with the course of my life and my feeling of helplessness over things and upcoming issues that I do not think I will be able to prevent. Imagine a ship's cabin standing on a bridge and seeing an iceberg slowly approaching—one that will definitely sink the ship. It's too late to change course, the engine room isn't responding to directions, you're just drifting to disaster, unable to stop it. That's a pretty good metaphor for much of what I think I am experiencing.

We live in interesting times where chaos and contention seems to be a rule. Everyone and everything is caught in a whirlpool of anger where they project their fears and concerns into a ball of concentrated hatred. You see it happening all around you. You know it's wrong, but you can't seem to be able to stop it. No one listens to you. They're so wrapped up in their fears that nothing breaks through the cocoon.Sometimes, I am the same way. Except that I refuse to hate anyone else except sometimes myself.

And that might probably be the root of most of my trouble. Part of my own frustrations, angers, etc. is my belief, as solid as any, that I am not worthy of acceptance or praise. I feel like I have tried my best and lost. I was naive and let opportunities fly by thinking that I had an unending series of chances. Frustrated then, I fought against what I thought were injustices or unfair circumstances, only to make choices that did actual harm instead choosing to let those imaginary harms go.

The thought I have in my best moments is essentially this: if I nurture positive, humble beliefs about myself, maybe I can forgive my own mistakes, learn to be detached from the imaginary outrages that seem so real, and be the man of virtue I wish to be. Easier said than done, of course. It seems that this is a daily battle. And one thing about my personality that is a long-standing issue is that I easily give up when I perceive I have failed, when all my negative biases about myself are confirmed, and then, feeling like I have slipped back to the beginning, have even less resolve to continue to fight against bad habits, negative thoughts, less motivation to make good choices based on reason and hope, rather than fear and anger. 

Fires Continue to Burn

The fires in the Northwest continue to burn making most of the valley smell like a campfire, or the inside of a barbecue pit. The weather apps on ones pocket phone notifies us of "smoke" as our local weather. Not "Cloudy." Not "Chance of Rain." Not "Freezing Fog." But, "Smoke." That's a new one for me.

It also happens that just as these fires pour out the ash into the atmosphere, fires that are hundreds of miles away and largely unseen except for dusty atmosphere along the horizon, I have been thinking about my own life and how it feels that something hidden in me is on fire somewhere, pouring out the haze of smoke into my thinking, clouding the normal hopes with a dusky uncertainty about whether or not I can overcome the challenges I perceive.

Therefore, I have been thinking hard about the many choices that we make, how despair is the paralysis of the spirit, and that keeping oneself healthy emotionally and mentally better equips us to face the difficulties that we encounter each day.

Another thought. Today, I was trying to think of a metaphor. For example, a man may be such an expert at building a house that there is nothing he does not know about the subject, and there is nothing he is not capable of doing in regards to houses. He may have all of the money and tools he needs to accomplish the task. Every material may be laying at his feet. There is nothing stopping him from building a house. But if he doesn't want to do it, he doesn't start. Then, imagine him standing there, a time passes.Then a day, then a week. After a time, guilt and worry about not doing something he could actually do sets in. The worry and guilt build, and the task which could have been simple, seems harder than every. Eventually, the worry and the guilt are replaced by shame as he tries to hide from himself. The job becomes a reminder of his failure. Then, that shame and failure becomes despair, and he is spiritually paralyzed by the whole affair. Maybe even lost.

Of course, one who is healthy, and not haunted by those inner weaknesses wonders why he did not just do it. It was a simple matter in the beginning after all. But, life presents us with problems and challenges before we are even clear on what those problems are.

End of History

Yesterday, I had the strong feeling like I was living at the end of history. The red sun because of the haze from the fires in California, the bizarre news stories and contentiousness on the television, the heat of the day (hotter than it has been), and all of the artificial ways we use to mitigate the heat with air conditioners, and avoid the conflicts on television with denial, gave me this odd feeling. I know every society on earth has believed themselves to be the pinnacle of history and development, and for a time, they were. The 1100's, 1762, the middle 1830, 1982 - each were the most advanced for their day, and had difficulty imagining what was the come.

And here we are, living in this science fiction reality, where the earth seems to be burning up with either fire, heat, or anger.

My realization that I cannot prevent any of this societal drifting into trauma is humbling and sobering. My life of insignificance and wasted chances make the same thought utterly laughable.

It really does feel that we're out to sea, the waves are tossing back and forth, land is out of sight, and all we can do is keep floating, sailing, fighting to remain upright as we are tossed back and forth.

A Meditation on Failure

The past three days has me trying to think deeply, often when I am in the car, about all of the ways things do not go the way we intellectually intend them to go. I really chew on some of these thoughts trying to pin the thought thread down as best I can, but the markers will only go so far until I have to retrace the thread back, repeating the thoughts again, trying to push them farther. Writing them down is better because I can follow the breadcrumbs so to speak. I still have not trained my mind enough to think solidly alone like I want (or seem to want to.)

Right now, today, considering the past three difficult days, I've been thinking about illness as a metaphor for some spiritual maladies. I know that, physically, one can come down with a minor cold or a terminal disease. Everyone, no matter how long they live, is bound to have at least one illness in their life. Yet, if they care for their physical condition, they can usually avoid the most serious illnesses and diseases. However, if a person actively seeks out unhealthy conditions, lives in mold or is always covered in dirt, eats the wrong things, and never exerts themselves, they will more easily ruin their health and maybe end their life.

It seems to me that this is a metaphor for our spiritual difficulties. Everyone, no matter how long we live, will experience a problem or a moral dilemma in their life at least once. My biggest ones so far came in my late twenties and all of my thirties. Perhaps, if one is of a mind to care for themselves spiritually, they might be able to recognize the spiritual principle at work, or discover the missing virtue and try to remedy the problem. Maybe the practice of meditation is necessary to help recognize these problems, or to reinforce the healthier thoughts. However, it also seems clear that chronic neglect of spiritual health can lead to more serious trouble, or maybe even spiritual death. How else could one describe a person who is consumed by selfishness, bad behavior, and things such as causal lying if not as a person who is gravely ill spiritually? A chronic lack of compassion or self-awareness might even lead to a permanent state of spiritual death? Is that how far this metaphor goes?

Could someone, gravely ill in this way, find remedy and recovery? It would seem that if we use life as model, then the answer could be also yes, but it also suggests the seriousness and the difficulty. Such remedies often need careful, regular, and determined treatment. Bones need to be set for casts. Surgery scheduled to remove a cancerous growth. Sometimes, it  also means a new diet. Sometimes, it means better exercise.

But then, sometimes a person afflicted by spiritually illness lacks the means to heal themselves. An unconscious, physically ill person isn't really able to eat or swallow a pill by themselves. I suppose this would mean that, in some cases, it is necessary to reach out to the spiritually ill and help them find the strength to recover, advise a course of treatment.

I often lose hope when I find that I have not lived up to the standards I have set for myself. Mom has told me in the past that I am too hard on myself. I cannot believe that. If anything, I have been lax in some of the things I know I need to do. Many times, I turn to the family trait of psychological denial. If I pretend there isn't a problem, maybe it will go away. Also, if I know that I have failed in some regard, I lose the necessary motivation to continue forward in my efforts to counter the behavior or impulse, lose the will to change. Of course, perhaps it is a sort of arrogance to assume that I can know when all is truly lost when the standards for judging are not up to me. Although I may know myself best among my fellow human beings, I am not the Divine Judge. I have to consider that thought more closely. God knows that we fail. Otherwise, why would their be a need for prayer, healing, or redemption? Why would we need to be forgiven? Ideally, we would carefully protect ourselves spiritually by heeding the Divine counsels and advice and not need to be forgiven. But then consequences are educational are they not? A loving punishment is a punishment that is meant to instruct a being on the seriousness of the error and reinforce the will not to recommit it. A cruel punishment, which God by definition would not do, would punish only to increase suffering.  

I have a hard time separating the suspicion or the feeling of being condemned from knowing that I need to persevere in my spiritual health efforts. For example, perhaps my already low-self esteem falsely tells me that there is no hope, then assuming that I can know for certain there is no hope, I lose motivation to continue, which reinforces my conviction that all is lost because I no longer try as hard. Thus, I add the early "feeling" of failure to the actual reality of failure when I let things go through lack of effort, when I do not do what I know I should or what is right. Then, knowing I have actually failed, I add that knowledge to the early feeling and feel even worse. Which in turn, leads to a sapping of motivation, which strengthens and amplifies the distress, and weakens the desire to try. It is a vicious cycle.

Can I really know that I would be damned, condemned, or beyond help? Perhaps no. Based on my reading of spiritual texts, even the most condemned on Earth still had the opportunity to repent and atone (at least to some degree) while they lived. Of some, that knowledge of opportunity to atone accompanied the knowledge that the person in question never would. However, theoretically, the chance was still there. Therefore, if I want to transform into a better person, I should not dwell on the past that cannot be change, but focus on the future for hope of change.

Other thoughts along these lines: the reality of having a human body, with its capacity of being bored, tired, angry, or having any other animal emotions, complicates the noble desire to be a good person who always acts correctly or transform into a better person. I usually frame this problem in terms of will-power. I tell myself that, in occasions where I am bored, tired, angry, etc, I need to suppress the urge, sometimes shockingly sudden and unconscious, from doing things like yelling at the blameless, or taking it out myself or on someone else. But also, even IF another person yells at me unjustly, I should resist the urge to respond in a similar unkind or unjust manner. Stopping myself from responding in equal unkindness is frighteningly difficult.

Furthermore, it is always easy to be and do good when we're happy and relatively content, but it becomes frustrating difficult when we're not.

I think that the solution, in light of some of these thoughts, might be to try to practice the habit of happiness and contentment, even in difficult circumstances. This provides the natural resiliency of spiritual health in the face of difficult problems.

If I am not entirely wrong, I think I should believe that Happiness and Contentment should not rely  on ones outward circumstances. All of humanity's best spiritual literature seems to tell us this. Happiness and Contentment are not merely passive gifts of God (although they are that). Instead, human persons should consider them as skills to practice. (If light can be both a particle and a wave, according to science, then virtues can be both a gift and a skill.) My challenge then, as a person with a cultural background that tends to see things materially and not spiritually, is to try and recognize how to practice Happiness and Contentment. I think Plato touches on a similar thought about virtue: how some are passive traits, but others are actively practiced. Justice is not justice until one performs a just act. In my life, filled as it is—as everyone's is—with an occasional angry person, minor injustice, unfair circumstance, or outward unhappiness, this challenge looms large. How, do I inoculate myself against these triggers no matter how difficult they may seem, how angry another person might be? (I think of our modern day news reporters who seem to struggle with maintaining inner composure when they ask a person in authority a question, and the authority responds with a lie, attack, or similar unkindness. I want even more than they would "spiritual unflappability.")

This is one of the things I have been thinking on the edge of my life that I suspect I must reinforce: how most of the change I want, changes based on my reading of spiritual texts, is often just a change of perspective: a constant, daily awareness of the real (spiritual) things in life. How do I always remember to carry Happiness and Contentment with me when faced with difficult problems, like where do I live in the next ten years, how do I feed myself, how to I cope with health that is not the best. Yes, there are also practical steps I need to take, and I should think about those, implement them as best I can, but above those two things, I need to have the perspective of happy person working contentedly to becoming a better person, who perseveres through trouble, no matter how bad it is. Who is not unsettled by any event, no matter how large the storm on the horizon, no matter how terrible the lightening bolts are. I know that grief chills hope and effort, even grief about one's frailties and weaknesses. But every step forward ultimately brings us closer to what we want or need. In the world of time, in which our physical lives ultimately appear so short, taking no step at all is the same as falling back.

Gardens and Airports

Spent most of the day in the car. Dad was in Florida for most of the week at a science conference for work. My mother, aging, and not as able to take care of herself as before, needed my help for most of the week. She was sad and depressed most of the time he was gone. Today was the day that he came back.

I had to be at the shop at around 9:00 am, so we could leave at 10:00 am. I ate a terrible breakfast at McDonald's consuming way more calories than I should have. I am having a difficult time figuring out how to do the basics of caring for myself in an appropriate way. I eat too much, eat the wrong things, don't sleep well, and hardly ever exercise. Now, in my forties, I am paying the price for years of bad habits. I know I need to change, but I am way less certain about what those changes are. How should I go about fixing things when I don't know which path will take me to where I want to go. Life and its demands, does not seem to provide easy answers, and our society is very dis-inclined to provide any for free.

The drive up to the airport, about a two hour drive with traffic, was pleasant enough. Mom and I spoke about history. Family history, history of the nation, and the various calamities the world is afflicted by and, like me, does not seem to know what the cause of the trouble is, or how to go about fixing it. Mom was tired. Worn out by her week without Dad. She insisted on accompanying me on the journey, when I could have very well done it by myself. Initially, she intended to have lunch along the way, but as traffic increasingly became heavier, she decided it was better to have lunch at the airport.

Finally, we made it, and I made sure that we used the terminal's short term parking. The day was bright, warm, and gradually becoming hotter. The airport terminal was cool enough though. Mom was in her grandmother's wheelchair, so I wheeled her over to the big electronic screens announcing the arrivals and departures. Dad was scheduled to arrive in less than an hour. She was hungry for lunch, and most of the restaurants weren't not suitable to her. She didn't like "Beaches," nor the Bar & Grill on the other side of the vendor area. We settled on Panda Express, cheap Chinese style fast food. I wheeled Mom through the line while she made her choices, and then, for convenience sake, I paid for everything.

We were surrounded by people everywhere. It was interesting to see the mix of people passing by, young and old, tall and short, fat, skinny, rich, poor, in every human shape and color. Mostly, I was focused on Mom. I was having the kind of quality time with Mom that I am afraid of one day not having any more. Again, always at the back of my mind, I am conscious of being on a type of life precipice, slipping towards the edge of a disaster, I do not know how I will cope with when it comes. And yet, every human life will one day have to face a challenge like this. We cannot avoid the harsh realities of life. Perhaps, if more of us were committed to exercising more compassion towards one another, the harshness of life could be lessened. Giant societal changes aimed at softening the hard blows life aims at our hearts, chilling us, wounding us to our deep hurt. Homelessness, Lovelessness, Compassionlessness, Callousness: all of the ills that afflict a human soul.

One of the things I regret about being poor, having financially ruined my own life, is my inability to make my parents life easier. They have much and would not accept too much help from me in any case. They have helped me beyond any ability I could have ever have to repay it. I know this. Feel this deeply. It makes these moments where Mom has been so sad and depressed this week, tired out from her knees hurting, unable to walk for very long, difficult for me to endure when I think of what could have been had I more money to alleviate some of the trouble, or make them pass a bit more smoothly.

Lunch passed pleasantly, and it was time to wait for Dad. The TSA had taken over a significant portion of the airport since I had last been there, and the waiting areas had changed. As Dad had flown on Delta, we had to wait by the Delta ticket areas, in a make-shift waiting area by the windows, under the afternoon sun. I spoke with Mom a little about the people passing by, about how nice it will be to see Dad, and wondered with her about the various facets of his trip. 

He texted her when he landed, so we moved up closer to the aisle where people were arriving from their planes. I lined Mom up in her wheelchair to a prominent corner waiting for the moment when he showed up. When he did minutes later, he was already on top of us. I did not see him pass through the doors, and only noticed him when he was feet from us. Mom and Dad hugged, and we made our way back across the airport, stopping at the restrooms first before leaving.

The traffic back was horrendous. Various bridge and freeway work had made travel through the city achingly slow. Most of our trip on the highway that skirted most of the city went along at ten miles an hour or so. There was not many moments where the speed got above that. Questioning Dad, I discovered that he had not actually had lunch on the plane like Mom had thought. Therefore, I took mom and dad through a detour to McDonalds for a hamburger. Dad also ordered a chocolate shake. I ordered an Iced Tea.

The rest of the trip home was mostly uneventful. There were various things that I had to do later that day. Deliver something to one sister, take another sister downtown to the city festival, close up the shop and turn off the water. But none of it was important enough to really remember or note.

Mom and Dad had determined to go to bed early. Dad to catch up on sleep from his jet lag, Mom to catch up sleep from her difficult sleep this past week without Dad. I left town again for an evening obligation to draw (a regular Friday habit to try and improve my life), perhaps my last drawing event for awhile. My mind was still pondering my struggles with trying to transform my life, and the impermanence of the future, and the finality of the past. The worst thing about human life, for me, for my thoughts right now, is how every mistake is firmly locked in the past. How things I did or failed to do are locked into an unchangeable past, and seem to me like streaks of india ink spilled onto a beautiful carpet. I have tried to scrub out the worst of it, but it refuses to fade or go away. I often pray to God to help me transform and become the person that I consciously want to be: to be more worthy, to be good, to be useful and help people make the world easier and better for those who struggle.I often fear that I will be locked into habits that will not change, impulses that will not fade and die away. After much thinking, I believe that the best I can do is have hope for the future, to persevere. Even if I do or did bad, I will only truly and finally fail if I give up and stop trying to make it better. Please God, help me become a true, worthy human being, and not just a physical creature afflicted by fears and failures, seeking only to satisfy my impulses and selfishness, but instead to become a spiritual being moved by heavenly-gifted virtues that serve to make the world better, to become a fragrant flower of divine attributes, lending my uniqueness, whatever that might be, to the flourishing garden of a better humanity.