Validate Your Life

I like to swim upstream. What this means? Life is a circular mote flowing downstream. Life’s a gigantic circular mote. Most people float and surrender to the currents’ of life’s river. And the unaware people don’t pick up on the fact that it’s merely one gigantic circle they keep revolving in. I’ve surrendered. I’ve let life’s river take me, twirl me around, slosh me into addictions and fixations incredibly dangerous places, and spit me out on the bank of nowhere with Nothing. I’ve touched my shadow. I’ve done all the truly challenging, heroic, adventurous stuff in the circular river of life by surrendering. I understand now that surrender is a waste of time. Because life is a circular river. Once you understand the cyclical nature of life, you realize that to truly live you change your relationship with the flow of the current. You can’t change the current, but you can change your reactions to it! Focusing on the destination is about as intelligent as focusing on getting your toothpick at the end of a 5-course gourmet meal. To me, I understand life is the meal; life is the journey, not the destination. And I grow by swimming upstream. Swimming upstream does not mean fighting and experiencing toil and randomly jumping into dangerous situations in life; i’ve already done that. Sporadically jumping into the danger is the surrender. And I’ve done that so frequently it’s become bland; Swimming upstream is just the opposite. It resembles smoothly growing stronger and simpler and simultaneously more aware internally. Swimming upstream is how the intelligent aware people change because they know how you approach the journey, the circular river of life, is all that matters. So while many people “surrender” to the flow of life and preach the wonders of that magnificent “ease”, I’m going to be doing what I well and best and that’s swimming upstream and that means I’ll become a MUCH better swimmer than those who aimlessly surrender (as I have already done).

My future will consist of my past. Reconnecting with my past — people from my past, events from my past, past memories — will be moving forward. I’ve traveled the world. I’ve reached the end of life. But I did it too quickly. I skipped parts. I still have to finish my high school soccer and swimming and chemistry. There’s friends from elementary school I skipped over, relationships from college I sliced by to get to the finish. I have uncompleted work in the past and I’ve completed all the work in the future. Every time I move forward in life it will be because of successfully completing my work in the past. (Note: This is not everyone’s relationship with life. Most people do “new” things to move forward.) Their exist no “new” things for me. Ask someone who knows me well. It’s true. There exist no “new” things. I’ve done everything. The “newness” of life emerges in a shocking and galvanizing adventure from connecting with and completing those exciting joyful fragments of my past! The further into the future I’ve gone with my life, the more diluted and nihilistic my life became. Poignancy and meaning become instantly interjected into my life upon connecting with my past, however. My future is connecting with my past.

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People dream of me.

The dream of me nonstop and want me. The can’t stop thinking about how much good I’ll do for their life, their dreams, their future.

Without me people may feel deprived, but even with a ton of me people may feel more empty than before.

Not the right amount, but the right utilization and respect of me can open tremendous doors of ease in one’s life.

Having too much or too little of me or worse, the wrong relationship with me, can cause tempests of doom and gloom to emerge.

Everyone on the planet — shrink, savior, saint, serial killer, serial entreprenear, surly or surefire — has a relationship with me.

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This is some fairly old school psychology stuff, but worth remembering. Regarding Learning and Punishment. Radical behaviorist, B.F. Skinner, the father of operant conditioning, says, the only thing people learn from getting punished is how to not get punished the next time (i.e. we don’t learn from punishment. period!)