Bad actors -- or -- 'Everybody's a dreamer and everybody's a star'

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It’s easy to seek refuge in possibility. Possibility is boundless and infinite. If you were to list the personal difficulties of here and now, you’d eventually reach an end. This isn’t so with the permutations of possibility. 

We convince ourselves otherwise. Among the multitudes of possibilities, maybe there’s the silver bullet that’s going to fix everything. It’s enticing, intoxicating. We sign up to play one among limitless roles in the movie called What If, the movie that plays out in our thoughts in real time.

We walk around all day reciting the lines to this orchestrated script to ourselves. How often are we actually here? How often are we truly present, or just watching the movie of our life unfold in our heads?

Moreover, who is the actor in this movie called What If? Who is playing the starring role? Who is the speaker of these lines? Who is, as Sam Harris would say, the “thinker of these thoughts”? 

For many of us, the self, or the ego, plays the starring role in the movie that’s playing out in our heads. This thing that we call a self, where does it reside? Is it in our head, somewhere behind our eyes? Is it in our chests? Is it someplace else? Does it exist at all?

Contemplating this question has driven people to both ends of a spectrum of delusion. Some become beasts. Some become pacifists. Most of us, myself included, fall somewhere in the middle. We take the drug, change jobs, or move to a new state because it’s easier to change roles in the movie called What If rather than opt to stop acting altogether.

We change roles, but is anything really changing? Is person behind the role not the same? Maybe he is. Maybe she isn’t. After all, who is the speaker of these lines? Who is the thinker of these thoughts? Moreover, by selecting a new role, are we any closer to having an answer to these questions?

Thankfully, we don’t have to keep acting. There’s another option. We can ask these questions. By asking them, we disrupt the movie playing in our heads. We stop reciting the lines and maybe we check in with our senses. Maybe we truly see a sunrise for the first time. Maybe we notice the hawk perched atop the telephone pole as we hurtle by at 60 miles per hour. Or at a minimum, maybe we stop scrolling through dozens of Facebook status updates and Instagram postings. 

If the movie of What If has a theme, it’s escapism. Many of us are trying to avoid something. It’s easier to take a few steps backward, into the foggy, gray veil of thought -- to retreat back to the predictability of our role in the movie of What If -- than it is to be present with reality. We’d rather buy into the plot of What If, taking solace in the notion that there’s even a plot to be found in the first place.

Maybe we take a deep breath instead. Maybe we stop telling ourselves the story of how tomorrow is the day we finally slay the dragons that are breathing fire down our necks.

Instead, maybe we just feel the heat.

Mindfulness in Jiu Jitsu

I had to take some time away from the mats this week, due to a nagging ankle injury. I've noticed that my thinking changes when I'm not training. It's easier to get caught in the thought feedback loop. Before I realize it, I'm sleep-walking through life. 

I never understood what Bob Dylan meant when he sang, "I'm not there. I'm gone." Until I did. But by then, the moment had passed. Jiu Jitsu, like the Dylan song, reminds us that this moment -- here and now -- is all that we have.

To that end, the good people at Inverted Gear let me guest blog about mindfulness in Jiu Jitsu. Check it out, and let me know what you think. You can read the post here.

An education by fear.

The bones in my nose were beginning to splinter under the weight of my larger training partner, his sternum cranking my face and neck toward my left shoulder. I could feel my neck popping, but couldn’t hear it over the music. As I prepared to escape, I remembered the first time I found myself in this position -- the panic that set in, the frantic bench-press attempt to push my training partner off of me. This time, I waited and took stock of the situation. As I did, I felt my partner’s weight shift, and I bridged my hips and escaped.

Physical and emotional pain can be terrifying. Our instinct, hammered into our DNA through evolution, is either to run from what we fear, or to fight it. But what about standing our ground? What about just experiencing it? This, I’m learning, is certainly more difficult than running, but it’s also much harder than fighting.

In the scenario I described above, the common error for the rookie Jiu Jitsu player is to attempt to shove their training partner off of them, freeing themselves from the crushing weight. But this shove only creates more trouble. It either causes their opponent to come crashing back onto them, or it sets them up for an armbar or other submission.

I’m discovering that the same is true off the Jiu Jitsu mat. Running from an unpleasant feeling or situation defers the discomfort. Shoving it back escalates it. But why is doing nothing except observing so much more difficult?

I think it’s because observation -- being present with the physical or mental discomfort -- forces a reckoning. It forces us to accept the present, not seek the convenient escape hatch of later or tomorrow. While it’s far more difficult at first, eventually, by waiting out the discomfort, it loses its power over us. It breaks itself over our patience and resolve. There is no need to try and break it.

By observing, fear and discomfort become our teachers.

Where are you?

I had a cross country coach in high school who would calm our pre-race jitters with two refrains. The first, which he rattled off in his North Jersey/Italian-American accent, was, “Get psyched, baby!” The second, which I find myself repeating 15 years later, was, “If you don’t know where you’re going, don’t take the lead!”

How often has that message been lost on me in the 30 years I’ve been on this planet? I’ve missed that point in one way or another daily, that admonition of direction and purpose. 

I haven’t missed the point so much because I didn’t know where I was going. I know that. I’m a goal-oriented person, and as a result, destinations are not in short supply. The heart of my problem is that I don’t know where I’m going because I don’t know where I am.

The most valuable skill I learned in Boy Scouts was orienteering, or using a map and compass for land navigation. The heart of successful land navigation is first, knowing where you are. Without knowing where you are, where you are going is irrelevant. Without knowing where you are, you could be going in a damn circle, which, as I’m learning, is more often the case for me than not.

The destinations I’ve navigated toward, or the goals I’ve pursued, how often have they been influenced by a poor understanding of where I was at? Was I running from something that the reptilian part of my brain perceived as a threat, that was really just somebody’s bad day? Was I avoiding difficult life experiences because I perceived them as too much to handle, that perception being a direct result of clouded judgment?

I write this because it’s taken me 11,024 days to realize that I haven’t paid enough attention to my location, to where I’m at -- physically, emotionally, intellectually. If I’m stressed, I need to be stressed. If I’m afraid, then I need to be afraid. If I’m happy, then I need to be happy. I need to ride it out, experience whatever has come my way, observe it, and then use it to set a course. Maybe you need to do the same.

If you don’t know where you’re going, don’t take the lead. And if you don’t know where you are, don’t go.

'Lost time is not found again.'

Image Source: Library of Congress

I've lost so much time that I will never get back. I whiled it away chasing shadows and vague notions of right. Sometimes, I chased wrong, too, just for the thrill of misbehavior.

I took a quick life expectancy survey just now. I have no idea how scientific or reliable said survey is, but it puts my life expectancy, based on fitness level, socioeconomic factors and bio-metrics at no less and no more than 101 years. That's 14 years more than most people my age.

I'll take it. I can't recoup the time I've wasted, but I can maximize what's left.

I start to think in terms like these when I analyze just how much unproductive time I've spent. How many hours have I swiped blindly at my smartphone? How many weeks worrying over the opinions of others? How many years working on everybody else's dreams but my own?

The quote in the title of this blog post is from a Bob Dylan and The Band collaboration called "Odds And Ends." What I did not realize is that Dylan most likely borrowed it from Ben Franklin. I've been spending time with the Walter Isaacson biography of Franklin, and the amount the founding father accomplished is staggering. He seems to have never been idle.

Isaacson recounts how Franklin's "Poor Richard's Almanac" was one of the printer's most profitable endeavors. The annually published book featured homespun wisdom in the form of quips and sayings that praised the virtues of industriousness and frugality that were so important to Franklin. One of them was, "Lost time is never found again."

Franklin lived to be 84. He understood the value of time. Though time can be lost, thankfully, wisdom can be timeless. It can be rediscovered in a basement in Woodstock, N.Y. in 1967, and again in repurposed bedroom in 2016.

Best-case scenario: 71 years left. Better make them count.