I’m Going to Be Super Pissed if I Never See a Wendy’s Carvers.

 

                I’m not sure why this week’s writing started with the Chair Company. I made a New Year’s resolution to write once a week, and unfortunately, I have gotten stuck on this show.  Since Friendship, I've wondered how long Tim Robinson can ride whatever wave he’s on.  last.  Nobody has done cringe comedy this expertly since Andy Kaufmann. Jim Carey could do absurd, but his cartoonish gifts made it instantly recognizable as slapstick. Tim Robinson, on the hand, looks like he’s just catching onto the absurdity, only for the punchline to unravel into plausibility.

His response to events makes everything worse by a magnitude you can't appreciate until it’s too late. You’ve already followed the character down the rabbit hole. The Chair Company is like one I Think You Should Leave  sketch taken to marathon length. I’m not sure if it’s all the 30^th anniversary articles on Infinite Jest this week, but The Chair Company evokes a lot of the same feelings, albeit with a less tortured soul than David Foster Wallace. Infinite Jest was similarly prone to discursive tangents that were often gorgeous, sometimes funny, and often exhausting. Robinson has somehow managed to find the pacing. You are rewarded just enough to keep up with him as he goes right on digging, shame be damned.

Part of the magic is the writing, the casual asides like Wendy’s Carvers. It is handed to you with zero explanation. You are handed the next aside before a moment’s notice. It’s like watching your groceries bagged and not daring to ask the cashier to put something back because all hell will break loose. This is Aldi. There are ten equally miserable people behind you. You just bought whatever you did because you were following the process. Like I said, I’ll be pissed if I never see a Wendy’s Carvers, but for now I will shut up and move along.

I never found insult comedy all that appealing, but I do recall in the eulogies of Dom Rickles, it was said that he had a way of making you feel like you were in on the joke. I think that Tim Robinson manages to achieve something similar, though the mechanism is different, it’s the relentless asides. Something magical happens when you watch Tim Robinson in groups, especially with I Think You Should Leave. Whatever you didn’t find initially funny, someone else did. When you return to it, it is somehow funnier than you initially thought. You start to speak the language of the show, then you start to wonder why isn’t there a clothing store like Dan Flashes? I have never experienced anything like this.

In returning to the question how long can he keep this up? It got me wondering whether a rabbit hole can be bottomless.  Or, is that you dig enough that something resembling truth is eventually uncovered?  For Christ’s sake, we’ve arrived at place where Q-Anon looks like it was legitimately onto something.

In the case of Q-Anon it’s deliciously ironic. They will never be able to say “see, told’ya so” because they misunderstood the joke was on them.  I suppose there is a certain sadness to that, but I can’t find pity for them. They’ve done enough damage to the country. I’m not sure if Robinson intended to take on the conspiracy theory with The Chair Company, or if this is just how we’re all going to have to live now.  I suppose that I can feel some relief that nobody will fire a rifle in a Wendy’s Carvers any time soon.

Never would have anticipated this

    For a few weeks now, I had been planning to return to writing. The dissertation is in the rearview, the student loans are not. I have a few moments before the next thing swallows me. Yesterday, I broke up the Bourbon Trail to a pay a visit to the grave of Thomas Merton. It is quiet and unassuming, set amongst a handful of crosses distinguished by a satin cloth and rosary, and a few flowers someone had left. I read something that said the Dalai Lama prayed here. The abbey is adjacent to a bald hill that breaks into a field where you can see several rural roads running in different directions. It strikes me that it's an odd place for a Trappist Monastery, but I suppose any place is an odd place for a Trappist Monastery. 

    So, it is here that one of the century's great writers lived as he composed works that have contributed enormously to the spiritual literature of our time. If you are unfamiliar with Merton there is a nice introductory profile in the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/thomas-merton-the-monk-who-became-a-prophet . Someone, sent that article to me once, mentioning that I reminded him of Merton. I'm not sure I know what he meant precisely, but I was enamored with the comparison. Merton has been described as deeply conflicted. I get that part. I'm at the gravesite of a monk, and I stopped here with a car full of artisan bourbon en route to Denver for a conference on psychedelic science. 

    I could never have predicted this career turn. I'm certain that people who knew me in my youth would not see much contradiction here. I remember at a reunion, fifth or tenth year, who knows, that I shared that I was a counselor now, and I worked with "kids with behavior problems." Dustin Palmer laughed out loud. Dustin used to drive me to the beer distributor every Friday of our senior year. It is things like this that catch me in a coffee shop in Kansas City. Details like; Sean, or Beave, or Chris instructed to hold any identification that affirmed my real name in case the distributor would not accept my fake ID and I would have to flee into the woods. Palmer was headed to the Air Force, we couldn't risk fuck ups.

 The song on the coffee shop is Beirut. I can still remember the image of it playing when the woman I loved stood in the center of the room and stated "I like this," pleased with the playlist I put together for her birthday. These are the things that haunt me, the episodic memories, the cerebral clutter that is always just close enough to the surface when you have ADHD. It's like a feng shui that generates as much disappointment and hurt as joy. You never know what box you're getting into. It wasn't until my early 40's that I finally realized what is wrong with me. This was hard because so much had also gone so right with me, and that feels grossly unfair at times. I have a difficult time finding a worthy justification for how I arrive at this moment, having spent a giant portion of my life trying to throw it away. 

    It is Father's Day. I'm in a coffee shop in Kansas City, preparing to slather myself in barbecue as I head to Denver for a conference on the enormous psychotherapeutic potential of psychedelic medicine: https://www.wired.com/story/the-psychedelic-scientist-who-sends-brains-back-to-childhood I have no idea if I will ever get around to writing that book that I keep telling people about, but I joked the other day that it was some sort of merging of Fear and Loathing with the Seven Storey Mountain. Grandiosity remains intact. 

Aaron calls to wish me a happy Father's Day. He's enamored with his flip phone. Allie wishes a happy Father's Day from the background. Aiden is in bed. One night ago, I slept in the Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky. You'd be grandiose too.

Just use last year's title.

Closer.  

(Read that how you wish)

the year of what the hell was that?

 

I will keep this short. I’m positive that words will be forever inadequate to capture 2020.  As for symbolism, 20/20 serves as an ironic metaphor for a world that lost all its bearings and consequently vision, a cosmic joke—where (God, or the universe, insert your own favorite) said:  you think you actually know anything?  (“hold my beer” as the kids say with their crazy memes!). 

I had a notecard on my desk that I wrote at the beginning of last year, when I am in these contemplative moods and write really grandiose shit. It said something about “study stoicism—this will be important this year.”  Was there ever a year that called for more stoicism? Rome is burning.  Fuck it, we will build something better.  Lest you thought I was slipping into cynicism, I will share that I am quite optimistic and hopeful. In fact, I study both hope and optimism and I’m confident that I have never had a firmer grasp on both, but, I would be lying to you if I said I wasn’t angry.  Here’s a secret to life--you can be all the above.  If you have to grieve a world lost, you’re entitled to all the emotions.  So, if you see me on the street (when we get our lives back) please stop me, because I probably won’t be paying attention, and I will most likely tell you that I have missed you, and that I love you, and that you will be cordially invited to some type of potluck in the future.

I will save you the time of asking, because this is what I get asked most frequently:

How are the kids—“The Kids Are All Right” (more resilient than I could have imagined)

How is work?  It is what it is.  Not that I dislike my work—I work in healthcare, and most frequently with those suffering.  2020 sucked.

How is school?  It is what it is.  I spent five years developing an applied design for the workplace. Global pandemic happened and everyone went virtual!!!!!!!!!!!! 2020 sucked.

Are you reading?  (everyone tends to ask this when they are deeply concerned about me, I suppose because I was always recommending something).  The answer is not really, and I’m ok.

Are you writing? No, that version of me is deep in hibernation.  The heart is in other spaces for now.

I said I would keep this short, and that 2020 had “no words.”  But, that does not mean I had nothing to say about it.  I’ll share one last thing.  I had a gorgeous moment this year where I realized I had gotten to this place:

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.  I will meet you there, when the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.”  --Rumi

“If someone asks, this is where I’ll be.”  --David Byrne

That was 41, or The Quiet Year

Love Letter to 41:

I have taken to closing out the year on my birthday, much like last year, but probably with much less to say.  I made a deliberate effort to practice silence, which will no doubt come as a surprise to mostly anyone who has shared my company.  I have managed to stay off of Facebook for most of the year (with the exception of my single parents group) and this has been a blessing.  No offense to anyone, it was just a huge time suck for me, a way to avoid the things that I was supposed to be working on.  Also, not missing the toilet it became to express political opinions better left unsaid. 

That said, I will offer you my unsolicited opinions (not political) for the past year.  I have acknowledged that I am an aging hipster. I am finding it harder to keep up.  Like that Losing my Edge song.  I am not even sure how to be pretentious anymore.  I say Dad things without registering the irony, like when I took my oldest school shopping the night before his first day of Junior High.  We’re in the Target and I guess he is either at an age where he cannot identify what the cool kids are wearing, or possibly who the cool kids are, and maybe that doesn’t matter anymore. God, that would be a blessing, if kids didn’t have to think about that shit.  I remember this time of my life as Lord of the Flies.  It was at this point that I said the most Dad thing of the year.  “Well do you want to go upstairs and look at Dicks?”  I could feel myself wincing mid-sentence, completely recognizing what I was saying, and unable to retract the end of the statement.  Fortunately, he is better kid than I was. He just sighed and hung his head. My Dad never would have said that.  But that’s just because my Dad never took us clothes shopping.  That was on Mom, and I guarantee you I would have yelled across the store “No Mom, I don’t want to go upstairs and look at dicks.”  I am fine right here in the Sears husky section.

Opinion 1:  Lana Del Rey made the best album of the year.  As an aging hipster, I just wait for Pitchfork to release their best of the decade list, and then I buy some of the stuff that I was supposed to be listening to if I gave a shit about being cool anymore.   I am also weirdly obsessed with that 212 song by Azealia Banks because of this list. She would ruin me.

Opinion 2: Cellophane by FKA Twigs is the most gorgeous song I’ve heard in years. Seriously, I may have had tears in my eyes. The last time I had that jaw dropping reaction to a song was the opening to Kid A.

Opinion 3: Big Thief is the best band playing right now.

Opinion 4: The Marriage Story is the best movie of the year, and easily the best movie ever written on divorce.  I know people that actually had to shut it off.  I know a lot of divorced people.  If you want, I will spend an hour talking to you about the Beatles metaphors at the end. You will tell me that I am reading way too much into it.

You might be wondering why I am writing and sharing any of this.  I am not sure that I have a singular explanation, other than that when I commit to something, I see it through to sufficiency. There were times where I was pretty sure this was a journal. Then I got the idea that it was some type of action research project that would intersect with my dissertation on Positive Psychology—some type of meta-dissertation that I was living out in real time, like Synecdoche New York.  Bahahaha.  I am blessed to have a certain level of self-awareness about my own grandiosity.  Don’t get me wrong, I still have a hundred ridiculous thoughts a day, but I only pursue about half of them now.  Some of the stoic literature sunk in.

I should give some space to the Tao.  That’s what triggered all of this quasi-mystical writing that began pouring out of me about two years ago.  As expected, I am still making sense of year 40.  I anticipated that in last year’s goodbye letter—the one about spiritual rebirth.  I won’t go into great detail in this entry about how that stream developed, it would take too long to sort it out, and I have journals I haven’t even looked back on.  I decided this year to spend more time with silence, allow revelation to come rather than trying to divine it.  It was every bit is lovely, maybe more so, sometimes the Tao is silent.  Otherwise it would not be the Tao.

Jess laughed when I shared that I attend a Zen meditation and Quaker meeting weekly and that both are held in silence. 

“How does that work?”

“umm, nobody says anything.”

“no, I mean how does that work for you?  I can’t imagine.”

“I think that I have spent years looking for a way to shut up.”

I suppose if there was a theme to this year it was mastery.  If you have actually found the Tao, what more is there to do with it?  If you want a laugh--ask me to show you the weekly tracking system, in which I award myself points for how faithfully I have executed the system.  Mickey insists that I am too hard on myself. She’s partially right, but only partially. I am nowhere near perfection.

This I will tell you: the journey you are on, may not be the journey you are on.  I write about this shit because the past two years have been more than I could have imagined.  I have no idea how practicing Zen brought me to the Quaker church, but I can tell you this--when Tree of Life happened a month later, I was in the space I needed to be to work out the agony and unrest in my soul.  There are things that can only be done in silence.

Highlight of the year #1: Mike and Haley entrusted me with delivering their wedding address. Crazy kids.  Still the best thing I’ve written this year.  This blog post won’t come close.

Highlight of the year #2: aimed for four potlucks a month, fell short. It was a worthy effort that will be resurrected in the coming year. The thinking behind this was that I am working too much, and I miss everyone and so if you build it “they” will come. And “they” will bring food and beer and then some of that leftover food will make it into the kid’s lunches.  And my dinners.  Me—I’m hanging by a thread. Still.

So here is the still life.  I still managed a number of good reads (thanks to the book club ^).  Finally, got around to reading Beloved, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and Gilead.  I read a bunch of theology, it’s really the only thing that makes sense to me anymore. Of those books the one that will have an enduring impact is The Cost of Discipleship.  I confess that I had entirely misunderstood faith until this reading.  I am still not sure I understand grace.

I am still writing, and accumulating a first-rate collection of rejection notices!

I am still obsessed with T.S. Eliot’s final passage in the Four Quartettes and Corinthians 13, both of which were essential to the architecture of the Tao I speak of. 

I am still obsessed with Walt Whitman.  So was Allen Ginsburg.  For good reason. There is something transcendent here.  I remember in the week that I laid out the Tao I quoted him, I believe it was the lines from Song of Myself—“you will hardly know who I am or what I mean.”  This proved true.  And then the year followed with all of the “I contain multitudes” writings, and my obsession with the psychology of self.  Would you believe that I undertook a systematic effort to eliminate my ego through meditation? Seriously, I read about a neuroscientist and practicing Buddhist who was trying to eliminate his conceptualization of the “I.”  I am not sure if he did.  I’m not even sure this is what I was attempting.  As you might guess, I think I fell short of eliminating the ego.  But, who knows, things might look differently a month from now…next year’s entry…all I can say is that around two years ago I set a fire, burned down everything behind me, and went about rebirth.  I write about this shit because it forces something in me. There is a Gandhi quote about happiness being when what you say is in harmony with what you do, and what you do is in harmony with what you think.  I write because I want as I want as little daylight as possible between these versions of selfhood.  I find hypocrisy intolerable.  Dissonance is a sorry state.

If you want to know miracles, as Whitman said:

“This is what you should do: love the earth and sun and animals,

Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,

Stand up for the stupid and crazy,

Devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants,

Argue not concerning God,

Have patience and indulgence toward the people…

Reexamine all that you have been told in school or church or in any book,

Dismiss what insults your very soul,

And your flesh shall become a great poem.”

Wedding Address (For Mike and Haley)

I am honored to speak here today for Mike and Haley.  This is the part where we typically read First Corinthians 13, love is patient, love is kind...  We know this passage well, and very little can be added to it because it is true, every single word of it.  Return to it at difficult times, its mysteries abound, because there is always more to know about love. My Freshman English professor required us to write on a topic, with the warning: “do not pick love, St. Paul said it best and I have never given a 10 to anyone who attempted”  In honor of Mike and Haley I will assume the risk of a poor grade, because today they undertake one of life’s great risks.  And this is good because one of the Sufi poets has said “we were meant to risk everything for love.”

When I asked Mike what he might want in an address,  nothing overly religious, was his response.  This is good.  I am not qualified to give that address.  But, I can speak as a psychologist and counselor who has observed much.  I can also speak as someone who has loved his way into enough catastrophe to speak confidently of this subject, and I will share that I can speak confidently only because I misunderstood so much in the first forty years of my life.  In fact, if not for one of my catastrophes I wouldn’t even know Mike and Haley.  And that is why I am here today, to attest to the multiple definitions of love. And to offer you a few words about what I believe to be essential.

The first thing I will say is this. It is incredibly easy to get things wrong about love.  This happens not because love is complicated, but because relationships are.  We often misperceive love as a stand in—something to be possessed and held onto, when in fact it is the byproduct of loving. This causes us to insist upon a definition or a standard or a notion, that exists solely in one's own mind. If you want to attempt a truly pointless exercise go try to debate someone that they are not in love if they have told you that they are. They may or may not be, not the point.  But, I can tell you that I am concerned when I encounter someone who protests or insists. Love rarely requires proofs.

The Buddhists recognized centuries ago that it is our desire to grasp and apprehend objects that causes suffering.  If you insist upon pinning love down to a single definition, insisting that you are the only one who ever felt this way in the course of human history, and that nobody could possibly understand your condition, you will find loneliness, pain, disappointment, fear, and the other opposites of love. You are seeking a material possession in place of loving. You have allowed no room for growth. And, I guarantee that you will from time to time feel these things, even in a loving relationship. Your challenge will be to stop and ask is this love, and am I loving?

I will share two things that I have learned.  Since love is the byproduct of a process, it is cumulative.  It does not take away, it moves in the direction of growth not subtraction.  When I had my third child, I did not love the other two any less, I loved them more.  Love does not “complete” you, it magnifies everything that you do.  When I recognized this I scrawled it in a card, and I can tell you in no uncertain terms that everything I have suffered was worth feeling that insight alone.  The second thing that I will share, is that you cannot learn or experience love without each other.  This is the hard part, because as I said relationships are hard, and loving another person can be hard at times and over time.  I have observed countless couples, and I have experienced firsthand how we lose the ability to see each other because the person opposite us becomes so familiar.  This is where all the “you always” arguments come from, and if we continue that path to its end we eventually arrive at “you don’t even know me.”

There is an African word Suwabona, which roughly translates to “I see you,” but has a far deeper meaning.  It also implies honor, and because it is a greeting and reciprocated, you see me also, and that we come into being through each other.  Descarte’s famous line “I think therefore I am” misses something essential.  Tich Nacht Hanh’s quote “you are, therefore I am” is closer to reality.   So, this is the challenge—to look at your partner, and again and again, remind yourself often, amongst all of the frustrations, the insults, the illnesses both mental and physical, all of the baggage and boxes—to say these things are not “you,” these things are wounds.  “You” are the person here now right before me.  In the final lines of that Corinthians passage this is stated—for now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.

Finally, our culture fills our minds with a lot of garbage, and reinforces the commodification of love—the materialism I spoke of earlier.  If it is correct that loving is a process and love is the byproduct, then it must be cultivated.  The Greeks actually defined love in multiple ways.  When I think of this I imagine a far richer world. My recommendation is that when you struggle, do the opposite of insistence, widen your practice. Find a place for:

Philia—this is the love at the source of friendship.  Plato and Aristotle debated whether it was the most important, platonic love, the brotherly love, why I am here today.  Philia is taking in a guy going through a divorce, and keeping in touch after he moves out, and dragging him back out again when his heart was crushed again.

Eros—we’re going to skip that.  There might be kids here.  But this, I will say—it waxes and wanes, don’t fall for the trap that it’s the one and only definition of love.

Storge—the unconditional love.  You may choose to have children, you may not.  Find something and love it unconditionally.  Dogs are awesome. The planet could use it.

Philautia—love of self. Understand that this is difficult because of the ego, which tends toward narcissism.  But it is essential. It implies honoring your words and commitments, integrity--doing the right thing even when it is hard. Without this you will do dishonorable things.

Pragma—this is the love that comes from commitments.  A friend of mine posted on Facebook that he told his Grandfather he didn’t understand how he did it, day after day visiting the nursing home.  His Grandfather looked at him, baffled and said “I love her.”

Ludus—playful love. For God’s sake please don’t lose the ability to play.

Agape—the type of all-encompassing love often associated with Christ.  Add the other six up, I think you get close.

Mike and Haley, I love you guys and I wish you love in abundance.  thank you for bringing me into being here today.

This Was 40 (The Year I Was Right About Everything)

              I was intending to write a big piece for New Years day, to wish everyone well and tell them how important they were to me this year.  Time did not permit it, but my birth date is close enough that it feels the same as a passing year.  Plus, it is way more personally symbolic.  I can comfortable say that 40 was the single most significant year of my life.  This year closes in nowhere near what I had imagined or anticipated.  When I got divorced a few years ago, I had this odd feeling—what the hell was that?  That entire decade?  It felt like a lifetime.  I remember telling people that I had never given much thought to David Byrne’s lyrics in Once in a Lifetime, but here I was in that decade with a beautiful house and a beautiful wife, and there was never enough time ponder—how did I get here? 

              Later in that song the lines change to “you may say to yourself this is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful wife?”  That is the feeling I was trying to explain to people.  How is that I ended up with a beautiful house and a beautiful ex-wife? How did I get there?  Year 40, ends in that space, exhausted and realizing I lived an entire lifetime in the past year.  I can say this because I lived an entire lifetime from birth to 40.  It was this year that I recognized how fundamentally mistaken I was about almost everything.  I credit Buddhism with this revelation. Meditation revealed layer upon layer of things I mistook for reality. The world is a lie, as the John Dickey biography title suggests. I saw that on a bookshelf one day in a moment of synchronicity, which is what happens you realize that you were sleepwalking through the first half of your life.

              I can assure you that I am fundamentally different person from the one you knew at the beginning of the year.  I feel confident in staking that claim, because it has been my direct experience.  Today, I am not sure I even believe in the self anymore.  I believe in the ego (the Buddhist conceptualization as opposed to the Freudian one)  Today, I believe more in the idea that there are multiple versions of the self because identity is multifaceted and that these versions are cleaved and born, often dramatically—a child is born and your identity as parent is new or expands, you lose a loved one and your identity is transformed instantaneously.  In the early months of my separation and divorce a friend said to me—“you’re a single Dad now.  You have to establish a new identity.” Not long after that I joined a single parents group, recognizing that the move to the suburbs and leaving a job that helped to destroy the previous life had left me in a position with about zero friends.

              This notion of identity and selfhood is complicated and probably consumes a lot more thought than it should.  The only thing that I can share is my own experience as accurately and authentically as language will permit. There was a version of myself that died somewhere during the year. I cannot give you a time or place, this is figurative and qualitative.  I can share with you that his funeral was well attended.  A lot of people loved that guy.  I thought he was ok, at times remarkably good and kind, dedicated, willing to believe the best in others. But, he was also way too externally reinforced—wanting to be seen as good, kind, dedicated.  And rather than simply being those things, he questioned whether he truthfully was those things.  He found out he was because he was encouraged to follow his gut and stay out of his head.  These are practical techniques, I recognized their correlates in DBT which was my professional training, but I don’t know that I had every had to live them so intensively as I did this year. Like any techniques, they are not enough, or they work half of the time.  I am a Taoist at heart, so I will go only so far as to say that they work to bring balance and harmony, until they don’t, otherwise they would not be the Tao.

              I mentioned in previous writings, and herein that I have been studying psychology relentlessly.  Dissertation and comprehensive exams forced me into a place where I had to reacquaint myself with foundational texts.  The consistent meditation and the application of positive psychology caused ideas to fuse in a way they had never done before.  I said to Mickey, it’s odd that I am reading all of the stuff that I was reading at 23 and that it’s like I had never even grasped it, even though I understood it intellectually.  When I tell you that the first forty years feel like I was living a lie, it was because I lacked some of the direct experience to situate many of these ideas that have been swimming about aimlessly in my mind for decades.  As a compliment I was once told I had a kaleidoscopic mind, it never felt that way, it felt more like a mobile strewn with garbage.  It may have looked like I had a mental model, but I confess now that I was winging it.  We all are.  But, the T.S. Eliot line to arrive at the place and know it for the first time is this experience.

              I was struck by a line in Peter Senge’s the Fifth Discipline.  This is my new reading, and I anticipate that it will be another one of those massively influential readings.  The book has proven enormously popular in the area of organizational science. The line that struck me was “we live our mental models.” The subject matter of this book is systems thinking.  And this connected with my recent Buddhist and Cognitive Psychology studies on the self.  If there is no self—no singular entity that we can regard as the self, and if indeed the mind is more accurately modular (the more prominent view in cognitive psychology these days), then I might be better off thinking of the self as a system.  This is one of the things that helped enormously when my suffering was at its most acute.  I was not thinking of it as a system yet, I don’t even wish to go that far because I have not read enough of the book to apply any of the insights.  It did introduce me to the new term metanoia which I will probably be using more frequently to Senge’s consternation.

              In hindsight I do now recognize that what I was doing during the summer was a conscious act of reconstructing a mental model.  Identity and selfhood were necessarily a part, but not the only part.  Both the Buddhists and some of the later psychoanalysts recognized the trappings of the ego, and that it is a part of our being that we are most prone to identifying as the self.  But, the social psychologists, since Goffman have regarded the self as construct that is represented by dual entities: there is the self that you recognize as the self and the one you present to the world.  Social psychologists later elaborated on this model, recognizing that there is a powerful dynamic between the actual and ideal versions of the self.  Cognitive dissonance is experienced when these two dimensions are misaligned, and especially when those involve features that are salient and important.  Nobody likes feeling like a hypocrite, it feels even worse to be outed as such.  Unfortunately, cognitive dissonance theory and motivated reasoning increase the likelihood that you may find yourself doubling down on methods that do not work, because they feel familiar and comfortable.

              So, recognizing the situation I was in I thought about what I liked and what I did not like about the most recent version of myself.  I confess, that at first, I thought only about the recent best version of me.  I liked that I was enjoying parenting and thought of as a good Father, I liked that I was learning and that people appreciated my knowledge and help, I liked that I was concerned with the upkeep of my home and wanted others to notice.   I now recognize that I was neglecting other areas of life, which is far too easy when you are as busy as I am.  And when I found myself in hell, I recognized that I needed to do certain things to leave hell, as I had done in the past.  When I was going through divorce I began exercising and developed a new routine.  In an early stage of life, writing was what carried me out of hell.  I also recognize that a great amount of life is marked, and always will be, with the “shit we don’t want to do.” 

              See, if you like back to the statements in the first few sentences, you will notice that my problem was that a great deal of this was externally motivated.  I hate keeping the house up, it sucks, and I did it because I wished people to think I had my shit together.  But, I don’t, a lot of the time.  But, I know that it is important or my ex and my family will start complaining. This will produce counterproductive stress because one needs less, not more concern, when they feel like they just stopped drowning and got into the lifeboat.  What was different this time around is that I developed a mental model aimed at establishing the ideal self, as opposed to what was present before.

              I want to also get to this notion of the shadow self—an idea advanced by Carl Jung.  When you have one of these moments where you recognize how massively wrong you got everything it is both crushing and liberating.  Jung’s notion of the shadow self is the self you do not want to see, the negative qualities of the self.  I think there is value in the concept, but it has limitations.  What years of working as a counselor and my own personal experience has taught me is that it is a necessary and incomplete version of the self.  One of the heartbreaking facts of life is that we often are forced to confront this inadequate version of the self violently thrust on us as in trauma.  One of the heartbreaking things that I have observed in my professional practice is how dominant this version of the self becomes in cases of prolonged and repeated trauma—especially the type that goes back through childhood:

              “It sounds like so much of your life was just built around survival, and that you had to construct this version of your self, that told the world you were tough, all was well, that whatever it was didn’t really hurt.  But, it’s not really you, and “you” didn’t get to grow.”

              “That is exactly what it felt like.”

              There is a lot in Zen about the master and the student.  It is said that the master that cannot see himself in the student, is not a master and that a student that cannot see themselves in the master, ought to reconsider his instructor.  I am not suggesting that I am a master at counseling, but I am lucky enough to have learned from what others have felt vulnerable enough to share.  I was no master at supervising, but I was fortunate to have some incredible people that trusted me enough to guide them. I am no master at parenting, but I try to learn from these kids who are stuck with me, not knowing that I am winging half of it.  They ended up part of the mental model.  Yes, the model that I have been promising you.  My model of the ideal self, that dragged me out of hell. (crap, my fancy diagram won't cut and paste, it had bubbles and lines, it was not sophisticated but pleasing)

                                                                                        1. Exercise
                                                                                        2. Shit I don't want to do/deal with

                                                                                        3. Meditation

 Ideal Self                                                                       4. Be a good Dad

                                                                                        5. Give back to others

                                                                                        6. Study

                                                                                        7. Do art/creative work

        I selected 7 domains, not for any specific reason other than that I felt that these captured me at times I either felt at my best or they are the things that got me to those places.  I don’t believe that I have ever been my best.  Best is “fixed” and past tense.  There is only better.  That does not imply that the best version of you is not ahead.  Somewhere in March I was told by my uncle that I had to find my Tao.  These are the things that have kept me balanced, I schedule all 7 on my daily schedule and do my best to hit them.  I am human, some days I get 5/7.    They correspond with physical health, emotional/spiritual health, important roles, and responsibilities.  I am lucky that my profession allows me to give back to others daily. I am lucky that I live in a moment of time and space where I have the support to pursue school.  I am lucky that I have three children who provide purpose. There were days where that was the only one that got me out of bed.  All of those 7 are subject to change, otherwise they would not be the Tao.

       I still have no idea where any of this is going.  I can only share that it got me to a better version of myself.   I did a lot of ranting this year. I’ve been on a tear.  I’ve jokingly been told I was high or manic at times.  I assure you I was not.  I was often in pain.  I sometimes experienced ecstasy.  I had some experiences that I cannot comfortably classify, but resemble experiences I read about in the Buddhist literature.   I told Mickey that I figured out the shadow self thing, for my model, and that I then went and drowned him in the bathtub.  She said, “please tell me that you did not tell victim of trauma to do that.”  I can’t remember, she is convinced that you must love every part of you.  I am not sure how I feel about that, but I reluctantly invite this self to dinner.  We laugh.  I say to him “remember that life you were, where you got everything wrong?”  And he says, “My God yes, I could be such a pompous ass at times.” And I say—“yes, but you were also kind, and generous, and I really see only a handful of things that I did not like about you.”  And he says:

“oh, do share…”

“well, sometimes in your exuberance you interrupt people that’s a bad habit, and because you are extroverted and impulsive you can come off egotistical.”

“yes, but it’s actually not egotism, it’s egoism—more like Walt Whitman.”

“well that’s another thing Shadow, aside from a penchant for grandiosity, you have a habit of trying to explain everything.  I know, I know, you don’t want to be a nuisance or hurt people, and you really hate it when people misunderstand your intentions.  But, other people perceive this as anxiety and defensiveness.”

“makes sense, I never felt that I was doing enough. I

  “Shadow you did enough, you’ve lived some incredible lives in the last 40 years.  Can you forgive me for trying to drown you in the tub?”

“For sure.  This Tao thing is working for you.  You have some weird type of confidence I have never seen in you.  Keep up the writing, keep at the dissertation, yell at the kids less, keep at this mindfulness meditation. For God’s sake just please do me a favor, and be better than me, and ok with just that. This is hard on the psyche.”

"I am at least aware that neither if us leaving here is the actual true self."

"you son of a bitch."

        The title of this essay was an obvious joke, the year was replete with failures.  I quoted Beckett once this year—Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail Better.  But, this was also the year I ended up right about everything, in so far as it was the Tao.  It proved right because I have arrived at the later lines in that T.S. Eliot passage—"A condition of complete simplicity, costing not less than everything, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”  I remember quoting Whitman this year too—“you will hardly know who I am or what I mean.”  I am often unsure of who I am or what I mean.  The lines are from Song of Myself.  It also contains the lines “so, I contradict myself” and “I contain multitudes.”  He’s right.  When I was going through my divorce, and I was prone to angry ranting, my Father often said “to whom much is given, much is expected in return.”  At the time, it was often more than I could tolerate hearing, but he proved right.

       Once in a lifetime (see what I did there) you will reach 40, and if you were lucky enough to have good parents you get to realize how right they often were, even if they were winging it half the time.  Once in a lifetime, you will pass 40 and if it has been as rich as this life has been, you will need a lot less, you may get to let go of a huge chunk of ego through this idea of not self, and you will find (at times) that you are just heart, and that the more you give away the better off you will be, because more will come to you in return.  A couple of years ago my Sunday School teacher Mrs. Zug passed away in her 90’s (I believe).  My mother said she visited her in the hospital and the first thing she did was ask about my son, who was diagnosed with one of those lopsided heads which require a helmet--something so insignificantly trivial relative to the matter at hand.  That is what I want to be, so utterly satisfied with life that I am only concerned with you.  I want to be Aunt Shirley who passed away this month, who up and got married in her 90’s.  I want to be Albert Ellis who saw clients well into his 90’s, cursed constantly, and was known to say I will retire when I’m dead.

      I owe a lot to a number of people who helped with insights and ideas that contributed to the model I outlined.  There is still a lot more being worked on, this is actually a side project to the dissertation. But you contributed and you probably have no idea when, how, and where. You will have to take my word that you did: (Anna, Dena, Mickey, Melissa, Dev, Meghan, Kanishka, Sean, Derek, Sonia, Uncle Clay).  Once in a lifetime you get people like this.

Once in a lifetime you get friends like Jen, Jessica, Brett, Shawn, Sara, Samantha, Laura, Ryan, Zen, Jim.

Once in a lifetime you get to be in the Hip Single Parents group.

Once in a lifetime you may find your self in writing group, or a sangha, or a Quaker meeting house, with a bunch of beautiful and talented local people, and you may ask yourself how did I get here?

Once in a lifetime you get people that believe in you when you have lost all ability to believe in yourself.

Once in a lifetime you get a family like this. Then they all start to feel like family

It’s always right here, as in Zen it is right before you.  It is always right here because it is now, and now is the only thing we experience in our human lives that is eternal.  It is the only place you will ever be right about everything.

If you lost the thread, it is not your fault, I am all over the place, but I was trying to convey that feeling that you live multiple lives in multiple versions of the self.   I don’t know that I convinced any of you, and that really wasn’t my undertaking.  But, I am convinced that I did none of this without you, because I believe that the only thing that one can claim to know as true comes through direct experience.  I know nothing but through my relationship with others.  The Gestalt Prayer:

I do my thing, and you do your thing

I am not in this world to live up to your expectations

And you are not in this world to live up to mine.

You are you and I am I,

And if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful,

If not, it can’t be helped.

And this is how you fall in love with anything.  See you in this lifetime.