Being the sideshow in the circus of life

I grew up in a small town that accepted, or at least tolerated, character. I am not talking about chivalry, loyalty, honour and that kind of character. I am talking about the old drunk at the end of the street with an undisclosed and unmedicated  disorder who talked more or less incoherently about women and farm animals and pissed on the side of the local theatre in broad daylight. It was great.

We are a society that is all about empowerment and independence. Our notion of that seems to include a lot of conformity, denial and lack of acceptance.  “You can be whatever you want!” Uhm..no you can’t, in fact, what you do will more than likely be mediocre or slightly above average. ( All the super cool people, with super cool results, were just this. They were just really good at focusing their energy) If this were not the case, we would all be living our dream, and a lot of people aren’t and those who are, had to alter their thinking or views or dream to some extent. Dreams include nightmares and living one has it’s fair share of them, it is called life.  Even if your dream was to be an astronaut or a doctor and you are one, you probably are not the best one or the greatest one. Someone is, but it probably isn’t you.  And if you are one of these things and you are living your dream, you have seen death, and rejection, and pain as well as life and awe and wonder. But I bet you think a lot about changing all the things you hate about your dream, how to stop the nightmare.

Part of this is because you don’t  get acceptance or practice it, or both. Acceptance means you stop resisting what is happening right now, where you are, what is going on, hating it, cursing it, resiting it. That takes up a lot of energy, energy that could be used towards being the best or at least better at whatever it is you seek to create, do, become or cope with this moment, this situation, this experience.

Maybe I am anxious crossing bridges, maybe I am afraid I will panic and shit my pants. I could spend a lot of time trying to resist and change how I feel about shitting my pants on the bridge. Or, I could just say, “ Dammit, I feel like I am going to shit my pants. This fucking sucks but there really isn’t anything I can do.” Oh well, if I shit them, I shit them, fuck it.” And that’s it. That took 30 seconds of energy as opposed to the anticipatory thoughts of how to not feel that way prior to crossing the bridge, beating myself while I am on the bridge and hours, days, and years afterwards avoiding bridges. Accepting what is, makes it easier to change your reality. It’s positive reinforcement as opposed to negative reinforcement, which is not a good long term motivator. It creates avoidance and avoidance is good sometimes but not a lot.

Conformity is not acceptance. It’s denial. If your doing what everyone else is doing, then nothing can ever be different. For all that we spout about individuality and independence, we are a pathetic group of conformists. We LOVE to bash people who do things differently and I think this has a lot to do with our own insecurities and needing to feel approved of among our peers. We hate to admit that we are possibly one divorce, perceived failure, or death away from a trip to a liquor store and the nearest back alley .  This need for approval is a normal social human being need. I don’t believe though that it is necessary to hide all aspects of yourself in order to meet this need. I know lots of crazy fucks who are well regarded and even respected despite their eccentricities. This is because they accept their weakness, neurosis, brilliance etc and because they accept these things as well as their current situation,experience, etc.. they have more energy to gain the regard and respect that they have. They aren’t spending hours contemplating their craziness, they are spending hours on what is important to them on their journey through this life. And you know what, they make your life, my life more interesting as a result and just the fact that they are who they are with no apologies, makes it easier to not be a conformist. All of a sudden you don’t feel so alone and approval is out there, there is someone who is as crazy as you. Letting your freak flag fly is a service to all of mankind. So, let all that wasted obsessive energy go and save the world, piss on the side of a building, whatever it takes.

The Outcome is not the End

We are raised in a society with an apocalyptic mindset. Everything is the end. The end of a relationship, the end of a season, the end of a show, the end of life, the end of the world. Even though we will pause for a moment and recognize birth as a great beginning, someone will be quick to point out that as soon as we start to live, we also start to die.

When I sit to write, as many others do, I envision the outcome, the end. If I don’t push myself out of the way, I miss all the good stuff in between, the stuff that makes it all worth it, that makes it all so sexy.

When I hit close to what would be midlife, I envisioned the legacy I would leave, if I left one at all. I got stuck because in feeling that I had to be very careful with my time, I ironically started doing very little with it. Afraid that if I committed to anything and it wasn’t the big “IT” it was essentially wasted time.

We look at life and we note failures and regrets but what makes us feel that we have not lived a life well lived is that we feel we have failed at something we have not yet done. We haven’t become successful enough in our careers, we haven’t made all the right choices, we just haven’t got it right. We look at the big picture and fail to acknowledge all the details, which contain many great successes, that have been born out of mere moments. The moment I typed the last word in the last draft, the moment I signed my name, the moment I said yes instead of no, the moment I said goodbye.

All endings aspire to be great beginnings. 

Mirror Moments

The unofficial stages: puberty, party, marriage, have dinner parties, express creativity, try to figure out who you are and often just before the end, philanthropy.

Before philanthropy, often around midlife, there is the unspoken stage, the ever day stage, it’s just a little too routine. Somewhere between the first gray hair and the baseline mammogram, we wake up in a cold sweat or we are applying silicone primer into the creases of our first crow’s feet as we stare in the mirror, and we ask, “How the hell did I get here?” We can look around and see that we have all that we thought we wanted and/or blame circumstances for not being where we wanted; to only then realize that we know exactly how we got here but all of a sudden realize that it has nothing to do with who we are now, who we wanted to be. Our whole life has been inauthentic and shadowed by our beliefs and desires instilled through our earlier experiences and inhaled through societal osmosis. And we have no idea how to get out.

As we approach mid-life things like our “biological” clock are labeled as a sign of a woman’s desperation. But male or female, the biological clock is only one manifestation of many that hits us all in what could be more simply described as our desperation to check off the boxes of a life well lived.

It appears that ultimately, when we all review that list, and see how many boxes are left to check off, we feel we have failed. It seems universal that no matter what we have done or not done, we still hear a phantom voice that asks us all, “Is this it?”

Logically, I know that I am more than my experiences. My inner self though, as many of us on this earth, has been defined by them and I haven’t been able to let all of my stories go. Some are so old I cannot even remember them but they have left behind a thought, belief or pattern to which I have come so accustomed it is painful to not allow them to continue.

I have found that as we go through life, our conditioning often inhibits us from having experiences from which we could gain great lengths in our personal growth and well-being. We put up barriers to potentially painful experiences, which really could be any of them, as expectations often do not match outcomes. I remember when I was about twelve, reading a plaque in my father’s kitchen that said something along the lines of gaining wisdom at a time when you were too old to use it. It was meant to be funny but I took it rather seriously ( the unfortunate start of a lifelong trait) and I determined then, that I was going to get wise when it was still of use. It’s a good thing I thought about it then because I am now much older than twelve and the wisdom thing is still coming rather slowly.

I have learned to move forward by staying present, becoming aware that the present would not only be my past, but would make up my future. Over a few years and some meditation practice I began to feel and understand the concept and importance of awareness. I realized that I had missed out on much, as without awareness, I allowed my conditioning to run my life and my choices without any questioning. As I was just starting to feel a little more relaxed, a little more connected, I saw that for me, awareness was important as I had to catch old patterns and thoughts and make a conscious decision to set forth in certain endeavors. There were many things that had I not made a conscious effort to let go, into the experience, I would have never noticed that I even missed the opportunity. My life would contain a void even larger than the one that still exists as I grow, had I not come to this realization.

I remember one spring day, close to this time of year but years earlier. I stepped onto the unstained deck and I leaned into the post and gazed peacefully through the orchard. I didn’t look at it but rather through it, at nothing but the beauty and spaciousness of the universe before me. I labeled nothing and I felt intensely present, I was full of awe and was acutely and intensely aware that memories are made up of mere moments and that my current endeavour, just as that very moment, would not last forever.


The sun was warm but I was not aware of the sun, only of the sense of warmth, both inside and out. My acute awareness, I thought later, would have normally brought about a flash of shearing pain as I came to the realization that things, not only bad but wonderful , must eventually change and things would never be the same as they were right then. However, this time, the pain never came and my mind was free. I had made a choice, consciously, that I was in control of very little and that it was incredibly liberating to give yourself up to the experience and not the outcome.

The wind whispered, “Don’t tell me you hear the birds singing, listen again, tell me the song that they sing.”

Ordinary is extraordinary. Each small step in awareness leads to many small steps that offer experiences that allow us to reach these bigger moments and to do so in a way that doesn’t require any longing at all, for what was or might be. What a gift there is in both pleasure and suffering. The pleasure is often in the intensity of the experience and the gift in the suffering. And it is only suffering as long as you deny the gift of the lesson of the experience. When the lesson is realized it will generally transmute into pleasure also.

A life well lived can only be defined by the one living it. Accept the possibility, the probability of failure, since once you do this, you are free to move in the direction in which your real self, your aware self is called, pulled, cajoled. Growth is experienced by trial and error the ebb and flow of life. Without failure or error there can be no success as it will have no foundation on which to compare. A better barometer for a life well lived is that which feels and flows freely from somewhere deep inside. It requires no analysis or approval it will show naturally on the outside that which radiates from the inside.

I thought for a long time that I knew exactly what I wanted, to only find myself in the everyday stage, knowing nothing but the anxiety of wanting out. How did I start to get out? I used my awareness and just keep putting on foot in front of the other, even when I am not sure about where I am going and there is no end in sight. Sometimes it will hurt, the fire that had burned in my belly and propelled my life passionately forward no longer burns the way it once did. I know now, that to stop moving will only extinguish that flame completely. I am looking for the stage that is mine, my platform to perform. I am my own manager, agent and critic. I believe that when you regain that connection to your true nature, it is the reward, your Oscar. Only this one goes with you wherever you go, it influences everything you touch and does not only stay on the shelf for superficial adulation.

Somewhere along my path, awareness has slipped in and out and I have presented with many moments that lacked awareness and moments when my sense of attachment won over. I made mistakes with those moments, that eventually led to some BIG moments in which I forced the universe to make me swallow a very big lesson and to become present again. And so is life. Sometimes we learn the lesson, long after the experience is over.


Each day I awake, I take time to look out my window at the world and day that awaits and make a choice to walk my path in pain and pleasure in much the same way I chose to walk the forest whether I may encounter birds or bears.