The secret to life

Where it went and how it may return

Ice cream in Lake Geneva.

I’m sitting here in my bed on this slow and frigid night, reading and writing once more. I lean back, close my eyes, and listen to my heart beat.

With all the caffeine still coursing through my veins, it pulses voraciously. When my fan is not on, its rhythmic lub-dub is disturbingly audible.

I’m starting to love this silence, this stillness, this more quiet way of life not afforded by today’s standard pace, one that has come to permeate nearly every moment of my waking experience.

I didn’t like being home as much at first, since there are fewer people my age, fewer adventures to be had . . . fewer things to captivate me. But now I like it.

I don’t want to, and I can’t, stay forever (and perhaps I’m just enjoying the fact that I don’t have as many expenses); but I’m no longer rushing, as my younger self once was, to hightail it outta here, for each day, I grow more pure, more sober, more clear-minded.

Rising early each morning to a cold room and a glimpse of the day’s first light, I skedaddle like an antelope crossing a croc-infested lagoon from the warmth of my bed to the warmth of my shower, departing shortly thereafter via Outback for my town’s most prized café.

Seeing there’s not much else to do, I’ve managed, in this routine, to slow down. God knows I needed to.

I write and read myself through almost every single morning. When I get home, I eat, clean, and then, around 4, head to the gym, from which I later return to cook dinner, enjoy time with my family, and fall asleep to a book.

I want now only to live even more slowly . . . To minimize, rather than optimize, the number of things I must do and places I must be.

Though I see how much more fulfilling this deeper, more saturated way of life is, I know it’s easily lost to the alluring gravity of young urbanism, an environment in which most of my friends revel.

It is from here, right now, that ruptures my greatest inner turmoil:

For as much as I love this slower way of life, I so too love other people, if not more.

And while I prefer my independence—as does any “introvert”—I also deeply need relationships . . . While I need time alone, solitude in excess bears down upon me like an intangible but piercing plague.

There’s no easy way to resolve this conundrum, though the Tao might say it merely is, and therefore requires no resolution other than to be and continue being.

This too shall pass.

---

I’ve realized that I often lack a clarity in my writing. Though it comes in moments, they are fleeting and depart as briskly as they arrive. At least when I’m in a rush—when I’m living fast.

I had it today; I felt it. I was with it. The pressure lifted, rendering clear my mind. But instead of dropping my task and dancing upstairs (where my journal sat ready) to ride the wave, I persisted in my chore, instead noting the idea in my memos.

Why don’t I dance?

The secret to this whole thing, writing and all else, is to enjoy it. But I struggle on some days to enjoy the craft and industry of writing. While this hardly hinders my efforts, I do wonder—why do I continue? Why do I persist? What is it about this toil that I so love?

Right now, it is late, and I want to sleep, but I am instead writing.

Do painters, and guitarists, and comics all endure the same pressures that writers do? Is this love-hate relationship universal to any creative endeavor?

It’s a weird thing, isn’t it? This pressure? Because it takes me away from clarity . . . The same clarity I cannot write—or write well—without.

---

If you’d like access to the paid version of Ryan’s Newsletter for free, you can refer other readers.

---

It is this urge to publish that undermines my ability to do what I need to do in order to publish.

I become displeased when I don’t have a variety of rounds in the chamber . . . When I’ve got no munitions to back my façade.

Perhaps it is for this reason today that many “content creators” have “content calendars.” How artsy.

My displeasure undermines my industry. But why? From where does it originate?

What it really is, what it really must be, are these pressures outside of myself. These distractions. To be and do things I want neither to be nor do.

Perhaps it is for this reason that many of the greatest writers feel compelled to embark on retreats when creating their great works. Perhaps it is for this reason that many of the greatest writers are of times past . . . In which distractions and pressures did not permeate their truest, deepest recesses . . . In which every moment of their day was not dictated by a clock, by the wanes of others, by plans.

---

My hand and wrist tire as I write. For what reason do I clutch this light pen so tightly? Why, in all my years, did the teacher not teach me to hold it more delicately? Why aren’t we taught that the degree to which we clench inversely reflects the ease with which we flow? Surely, the first thing anyone must learn when learning how to write is how to hold a pen!

I think I’ve got it now. I think I see what’s going on here. This is what I’ve been after. This dance. It’s like I showed up to Prom in workout clothes! Doing pushups while everyone else did the chacha!

All these pressures, all these things that my country is becoming, they are toxic! They are thieves who break into our minds and steal our sanctity in the name of profit! Why didn’t I see before that I, in my flesh and blood, am not so dissimilar from anyone else? No matter how much money, no matter how many things they have!

You see, I see, it’s all a game. It’s all for fun. They say there are rules, but there are no rules. They say we need all these things and that we need money—a lot of it—to buy them, but why do we need to buy these things? Why should we lose ourselves in the name of inanimate objects?

Why should I not do what I want to do, despite the fact that it’s not what most people do? We work, but for what? We toil, but for whom?

---

The more time I spend out here, at home, in the suburbs, the more slowly I move. It is like I was thrown into jail following surgery and became restless, having been stolen away from the urban pace to which I’ve grown accustomed. No matter how loud I cried, nor how hard I shook, I would not be set free. And so, I settled. What choice did I have?

I see now: I’ve been in fight or flight mode. I cannot return to that life. In which we must spend and consume each and every day. In which each moment is an effort to get to the next . . .

---

I still find myself, on occasion, longing. For what, I’ve often wondered. It seems, though, at the core, to be this thing we humans call love.

Where it went, I hardly know. Though it returns, though I still find myself often in its presence, it seems to have taken many a recent road trips.

I sense a tribalness missing from the world. A tribal love, if you will.

I remember when I was a kid just how excited I was to go to school. Especially in the early years when we weren’t assigned much of the sort of work students come to hate, school, for some reason, lifted a weight from my shoulders. In my classmates, I found this tribal love.

While the home, the family—despite (or perhaps for) the pain, the conflict, the strife—is the greatest, most far-reaching, most deeply-rooted place of love, humans seem to need a communal interconnectedness . . . To be a part of things.

Now that I’m out of school, it has become apparent to me more than ever before just how devoid our world has become of this connection—this tribal love.

It is solely this, I hypothesize, that bothers me about being home, for many of my friends have moved away, and I “socialize” no more than once or twice a week.

This way of life is increasingly a reality for much of the world—or at least my world. People don’t have time for others. We’ve become separated. And even if we may live nearby our peers, our hearts remain distant.

Love has run off . . . Or, more accurately, we chased it off, replacing it hastily with these things we’re told we need.

Perhaps it is simply the case that I may not know until I do not know . . . Perhaps this period I am enduring—these late teens and early 20s—has been bestowed upon me as a gift since only through suffering may we become truly familiar with—able to distinguish—its opposite. Perhaps it is the case that the Universe, or God, knows I’m not ready until I have contended with, can identify, and am capable of staving off—like a lone wanderer would a pack of wolves—the desperate madness that may plague an existence suddenly devoid of blessings, having never been aquainted with a lack thereof. Perhaps only once I learn to spark, stoke, and maintain the candlelight within, adding in due time a dry timber that’ll turn it into an inferno, will I be returned.

If you want to support my work but aren’t ready to subscribe, you can leave a tip with Buy Me A Coffee!