Missing out on life
And "being with" things
Today is one of those days—I’ve gotta get stuff done. At least, that’s how I feel.
But how could I feel this way? I just woke up!
Perhaps it’s because I didn’t get as much done yesterday as I would have liked.
But what does that mean, anyway? To have to get stuff done? What is this stuff? Why do I have to do it? And under whose authority am I commanded?
I recall noting earlier this year how much I wanted to “be with” the seasons . . . The fall, the colors, the pumpkins, the apple cider & whatnot.
I can’t say I succeeded.
There is a great effort, a pressure now inseparable from what is historically, or what seems always to have been, a jolly season of celebration.
Maybe it’s the movies I saw or the stories I read as a child, but when my imagination traverses the holiday season of times past, I see an entire village made of brick and wood living more slowly.
I see carefully crafted, passionately worn hearths from which glow comfort-giving fires, around which loved ones gather, thanks to which games are played, conversations are had, and spirits are nourished.
I see children perusing the forest, not far from home, in search of gifts, trinkets, magical regalia forged by Mother Nature, refined by Father Time, to share with their neighbors and families, to decorate their homes and town in a widespread thank you to the Divine for Its blessings.
I see groups of people, after harvesting and storing for the winter their summer’s yield, in a now barren, bleak—though far from sad—terrain that sprouts trodden brown grass and rough skeletal trees—a landscape primed, eager for a hallowedly blanketing blizzard—embarking early in the morning, warmed by fur coats, on a celebratory, ceremonial hunt, probably for turkeys, grateful yet keen, in harmony with their hibernal surroundings.
But perhaps I have been deceived.
Perhaps it is the case that people never found joy in the hunt, nor in the preparation, but only ravenously in the feast.
Perhaps everything’s always been a means to an end—a hedonistic, short-lived end—separating us, in the name of hunger and ambition, from what’s before us.
Perhaps everything has always been an imitation, an attempt to cheaply and quickly replicate mythology, those immaterial idols who command our imagination.
Perhaps all these things we hear, these stories I speak of, are, have always been, and will always be mere hopes and dreams, fugazi.
Perhaps we have altogether stepped forward, having overcome, thanks to our great and wonderful advancements in technology, the need to slow down, prepare for winter, and give thanks to the summer.
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I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. But I do wonder: how far above survival must we rise before the return on subsequent efforts starts to diminish? Have we not already reached that point?
If only more people read books, they’d know.
We live in a time that may one day come to be called The Great Advancement—a time in which more was never enough, in which the future always stole the present, in which gratitude was hardly ever more than a word plastered on some industrial-printed piece of wood at Homegoods.
Made with love? My ass!
Do you ever wonder where all this shit comes from? I’ve wondered many, many times how remarkable it is that one can find salmon practically every single day in nearly every single state at hundreds, perhaps thousands of different grocery stores.
Where are they all coming from? Are there really this many salmon? And how do they get here? Surely, they must be fake!
It’s a wonder our jaws don’t drop the second we walk outside. If only we read more books.
I’m starting to realize—meaning embody—that the way of life is the way that flows. I cannot write what I am not willing to write.
This doesn’t mean, as some might assume, that I believe life should be easy; instead, it means that I must simply be myself. Now, that is a little more obscure.
Some might also assume this means you ought not to try new things since—you could say—to try new things would necessitate a movement away from oneself.
But this take fails to acknowledge that identity is both static and dynamic . . . We are the same person across time, maintaining the same consciousness or uniting experience, and we also change in a variety of profound ways. And therefore, to resist novelty is to resist the flow of life itself.
On the surface, when my brain is probing, there are many things I want to write about. But I can only pen one letter at a time.
In my posts tab on Substack, I have queued twice as many drafts as posts I have published. I thought for many years I’d eventually come back to these ideas in one way or another, but still, they sit, untouched as ever.
The harder I try, the more I yearn to direct my words, the worse my writing is, and the further I’m driven from a state of love.
I encounter many good ideas—things that I want to write about. I write them down in my notes to return to later so I may share with my audience this wonderful idea I believe everyone and their mother would be so much better for hearing.
But not once in my five-plus years of writing have I ever returned to one of these ideas.
I’m struck; I hurry to capture the idea, in essence, so I don’t lose it, and then continue on my way, satisfied with having trapped and caged it for later use. I return, each time, to a dead animal, rotted away . . . A skeleton of what once was a lively thing.
Or, better yet, the cage is empty; the idea broke out and ran off . . . I did not know such a being could never be captured, nor that any cage, no matter how big and strong, could ever contain it.
I realize eventually, as in right now, that these beings are not mine to keep . . . That I may not, in any sense of the word, possess them . . . That I may only, if they are willing, play with them.
I’m forced to consider, what sort of being would want to possess them? What sort of being am I?
I went to pee this morning at about 6:30, just as the sky started to glow dimly, and I felt, on my expedition, a very profound—not piercing, but pervasive, though far from malicious—love. I’m sure, I was sure at the time, that it was God.
How weird! Why am I so happy right now? Is it the light in the sky? My newfound gratitude?
For the past month or two, I’ve been getting to know Him.
I think satan wants us to rush, to be in a constant hurry from this thing to the next because he, or it, knows that if we slowed down, we’d look around and wake up.
We’d stop and marvel at the world’s intricate beauty.
They say, “The devil’s in the details.” But this must have been subtly spurted not too long ago by the devil himself.
Because this idiom was first “God’s in the details.”
We are all, thanks to these “great and wonderful” technological advancements, no more than a few seconds away from one another.
Why does it seem, then, that our hearts are so distant?
In one month, there are a little more than 2.5 million seconds.
I get frustrated when people I care about don’t make an effort to keep up. I try my best to. I don’t always succeed.
My father told me that relationships take a great deal of work to maintain.
The older I get, the more understanding I become . . . The more I see that if I wore someone else’s shoes, I would, in all likelihood, be nearly the same as them. We all want to believe we’re special, but we’re not. At least in the colloquial sense.
I believe in free will, but I also believe God has a plan. Our choice lies only between fighting the current or rejoicing in it.
It is night. The wind howls like a jet engine on takeoff. I’m tempted to bundle up as warm as possible and sit on the front porch with the lights off. Perhaps I’d see a coyote.
When I went upstairs an hour ago—well, just before I walked up the stairs—I opened the front door to see whether our wooden Christmas snowman cutout had fallen.
Snow dusted the street.
I find in these slower times something so peaceful, yet simultaneously, something so barren. Though I love the stillness—for it nourishes my desperate soul—it seems I must relish it alone . . . That I may not share it, as I would the experience of school, or soccer, or a party, or a vacation . . . The most fond sorts of memories.
I wonder to myself, “Must I choose? May I only have one or the other? Friends or peace?”
Something within, though I’m not sure if it’s really me or a Peter Pan compulsion, itches for companionship, for shared adventure.
I ended up bundling myself in warm clothes. I had no choice. There’s something about snow that relieves me, purges me of worldly concern. Just as it absorbs sound, it absorbs my worries, my fears, my trifles.
Though very little gathered, it managed to make it through the night, greeting the early-to-bed-early-to-risers with wintery cheer.
I was quite inspired last night; eager to write but too tired to focus.
It’s interesting how it always takes me a sort of warmup to get into writing. Unless I’ve taken some time away from the craft, my first several paragraphs tend to come reluctantly and hesitantly.
I’m reminded of what it feels like to be excited for the first several weeks of school or soccer season, only for an eventual weight to attach itself to these things I at first so loved.
It is only this begrudging persistence that further cultivates and nurtures the charm of novelty into the fulfilling depth of passion. The question is, always, how do we know what to stick to? Wherein lies the key to consistency?
I once thought there was to this question, a sort of quantitative, you-ask-I-answer, teacher-to-student response. That is, after all, how we’re trained to think. But these questions cannot be pondered in the confines of a classroom.
It is something, like the moment, accessed only in the most antithetical way. I used to call it “trying without trying.” Now I know it is just “being.” Because in this state, there is no end. It is all right there before you. All you’d ever need. The past and the future fade, what’s happened and what will matter not, for they simply do not exist.
It is, at least in our language—in what we are capable of perceiving—not just inarticulable but inconceivable. For we do not possess, we are not born with the instruments that hold the key to these gates. Though we know roughly and sparsely that they are there, it’s only through a process of triangulation.
Then again, some think, and I am not entirely skeptical myself, that we do, in fact, wield these instruments and have, in this so quantitative world, forgotten how to use them.
We think we are so smart. See, touch, taste, smell, hear. Apparently, the scientists “discovered” a sixth sense! Wow! Thanks to them, we’re now granted access! But is that it?
What a bunch of monkeys we all are. Just because we’ve, on a number of occasions, surpassed our atmosphere, we think we deserve a throne. In reality, we’re hardly a gene or two away from butt-scratching chimps. If we think we’re so smart, why do we give ourselves to such wasteful, empty endeavors?
What are these other senses? Well, I don’t know. If, however, you cannot, or will not use them until someone who spent a decade of their life in the confines of some concrete building to “study” puts a name to the unnamable, then I reckon you’ve got no need for them anyway.
If you listen closely enough, they’re still there. But you’ve gotta listen, you’ve gotta be quiet.
Magic is real, and science killed it.
If you seek, you shall find. There’s always something to look forward to. It just depends on your perspective.
How can you see what you cannot see? In other words, wherein lies the problem for people, the solution, the key to their prison? For what reason might we look around if we know not to look nor what to look for?
Curiosity, of course!
It seems most people these days are naturally, or perhaps willingly uncurious . . . And not in a mindful, monkish sort of way, but more of a hedonistic, uncaring sort of way.
That is that. There is no more to say other than the fact that it is a fact and nothing at large can be done about it. And why should there be? People are either interested or they’re not. It’s their own decision to rotate their neck and look around.
You can’t force a horse to drink water, but these days, you can hardly get the horse to the river in the first place, for it’d much prefer to sit on its ass and stare at pixels.
Life is a series of mini-missions splattered over the course of a select few larger missions, which all come together as an amalgamation of this layered portrait.
It’s hard, especially in the beginning, to know when one mission is up and another must start because the borders often blur and blend. But as you mature, your eyes become skilled, and your heart becomes more decisive since it cares to waste no time, having been acquainted with finitude.
Saying “no,” knowing when to say it, how to say it, and why to say it, is one of maturity’s great markers. For wisdom knows all too well the side effects of the word “yes . . . more.”
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Ryan, your writing blows me away. You may not know this but I'm a huge reader, reading all sorts of different genres. I see your words able to fit in many different genres. The insight and depth you share in your writing is amazing. Have you thought about writing a book? What would the direction be? I look forward to reading your future work!