It seems like one of life’s big secrets is how to find your place in the giant clusterf**k we call humanity.

Some people are even creating graphs of social networks that are revealing – well – not much. But they are at least providing some scientific backup to long believed common sense.

DON’T RUN WITH A BAD CROWD

Obesity or at least social acceptance of obesity appear contagious.

Which means that you should avoid hanging with the big dogs and stick around healthier people?

Check out this incredible animation – less than two minutes long  – from the New England Journal of Medicine.

I sometimes consider myself a connoisseur of comedy, which is the only reason I would offer you such purely recycled content. Watch as Neil Patrick Harris and SNL reveal the humor in one of life’s most futile, yet painful emotions: nostalgia.

Note: If you do not remember the television sitcom, Doogie Howser M.D. you will not find this funny

There are are only two problems in life, (1) you know what you want, and you don’t know how to get it; and/or (2) you don’t know what you want.

- Steven Snyder, quoted by David Allen, p.251 of the incredible Getting Things Done.

I love this quote because if you begin to think about it, you begin to think about the Big Picture. Yet it is so simple. David Allen, the author of the famous Getting Things Done, goes a little farther, asserting that the solution to life’s two problems is simply:

1. Make it up.
2. Make it happen.

This makes me cringe a little, because making things up and making things happen can be incredibly complicated.

I’d rather not issue an imperative. Instead, I like to look at the questions that Mr. Snyder’s wonderful quote evokes:

1. What do you want?
2. What are you doing to get it?

One would think the whole world would be asking themselves and each other twenty-four seven -

• What do I want? How am I getting it?
• What do you want? How are you getting it?

They are THE questions to be asking.

Do you know what you want?

If you’re like most people, you aren’t quite sure what you want and you’re not one-hundred percent on how to get it.

The question, “Do you know what you want?” is really another version of the more dramatic, “What is your purpose?”

This post is not going to take that on. Sorry.

Instead, I’ll take a stab at clarifying (1)what purpose is and (2)why it is a good idea to have a purpose.

What is purpose?

Purpose is a slippery word, almost as slippery as “meaning.” We all agree that life should have meaning, but what does that mean?

I think the meaning of life lies within relationships – with others, with the universe, a higher power, and the relationship you have with yourself. When asked what gives their life meaning, most people say things like, “my children,” “Jesus,” “my connection to nature,” or “my dream of the future.”

Meaningfulness is the quality of relating well to something larger.

Purposefulness is the quality of being decided about your relationship with that larger thing.

We are in a relationship with the world. It can be a one-sided affair, where the world makes all the decisions. Or it can be reciprocal. Symbiotic.

The currents of our lives will knock us about, no matter what, but if we decide to look around, learn and decide which way we want to swim, we can find the eddies to take us where we want to go.

Why be purposeful?

• To decide instead of having decisions made for you – The first 24 years of my life happened without purpose. I found myself a broke college drop-out who had forgotten any dreams he once had, living in his hometown, addicted to booze, pills, and weed, having never made a real decision. When I decided to clean up, after much kicking and screaming, it felt like the first real decision I had ever made.If you do not have purpose, you do not choose. You are led by other people or your own whims.

  Whims are often unhealthy.
  Other people are often unhealthy.

  You are faced with choices everyday. You will either react to them impulsively or purposefully. Do I have to tell you which way is better?

• You are more likely to do what you want – A dreaded phrase of childhood: “If you’re lookin’ for something to do…” was always immediately followed by something like, “that woodpile needs stackin’,” or “the lawn needs mowin’.” (No, my parents weren’t from the South. I just don’t feel like usin’ Gs.)If you are purposeful, you will not have to do chores.

  Our culture is filled with activities that will keep you occupied but never satisfied. If we are not purposeful, we often end up gorging ourselves on a diet of television, fast-food, and consumer goods, doing what we are told instead of what we decide.

• You are more likely to get what you want – Sure, letting the tides toss you about might land you in a Tahitian paradise, but you’ve got a better chance if you plot a course and set your sails. Better yet, why not figure out how much a month in Tahiti would cost and start saving (dreamline style!).
• The ability to shape our future is a uniquely human gift, not to be squandered – To have a purpose is to have a vision of the future. To imagine a future, and to go about actualizing it, is the most awesome thing – it feels good and it is how the human world progresses.
• It leaves more time to be purposeless – If you are intentional about your actions, you can do the things that need to be done in less time. Without purpose, unimportant things will take up all your time and energy, leaving no time to play. Personally, if I don’t make plans for the day, I end up too tired and guilty to enjoy myself. If I work towards my goals for as little as one hour, I can go on any adventure guilt free.

What are the downsides of having a purpose?

Having to look at yourself – Spooky. Gets in the way of watching TV.

Getting caught in the rat race – “Always working towards your purpose” means “always working.” And we know what work does to Jack…………….(it makes him try to murder his family and chase his little boy through a hedge maze, with an ax).

Loosing your free-spiritedness – “Dude, you are always busy working towards your dreams. You never have time to hang.” People with purpose never let it all hang out. They are never spontaneous.

But what are the real downsides of having purpose?…….A bunch of bullshit and rationalizations.

I am still refining my purpose, adding dreams to my list, dreamlining, revising my misson statement, and exploring other ways of “making it up”, but I have acquired a few techniques, exercises, and tips which I will attempt to present to you, dear reader, in the very near future.

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I’m freaking out! It’s about my economic situation. I am broke.

To make matters worse, some idiotic decisions are coming back to haunt me. I have an awful habit of driving without insurance. A habit that caused me to accrue over $700 dollars in fines.

Luckily, I paid them off.

Unluckily, I got pulled over last week and found out my license was suspended and my tabs were expired. I had a court date yesterday, which I totally forgot about.

Now there is a warrant out for my arrest!

These tickets are probably going to end up costing me a thousand dollars.

I don’t have a job. I’m freaking out.

What now?

Well, the first thing I did was to call the court. They told me I could come in next Thursday and pay 50 bucks for an opportunity to explain why I missed the court date.

I’m still freaking out, but not as badly.

The problem is that the freak-out is self-justifying. It was triggered by my sudden realization that I spaced-out such an important thing, but it continues because it is finding tons of reasons in my sub-conscious to perpetuate itself, things floating around that feed it.

Here is what my freak-out is telling me:

• You are lazy.
• The economy is bad.
• You are crippled by fear.
• You are neglecting your responsibilities.
• You are lazy. (This idea is particularly hardy freak-out food)

My gut is tied in a knot and I feel like crying. Actually, the knot is loosening a little bit. I am starting to feel better.

Why?

I have identified what my freak-out is feeding on. Looking closely at piece of freak-out food, I see that it may be either true and within my control, true and outside of my control, or simply not true.

Not true:

I am not lazy, I am prolific. I am not crippled by fear, I am bravely examining my fear.

Outside of my control:

There is nothing I can do about the economy.

True:

Perhaps I have been neglecting my responsibilites. I can do something about that.

So, after doing what I can about the trigger for my freak-out, I proceed to eradicate the three flavors of freak-out food.

Neutralizing False Fears

I’m just figuring this out myself, but these techniques seem to work on the things that simply aren’t true.

Looking at them - most fears that are obviously false will shrivel under the light of observation. “Look how much I have accomplished in the past month, how can I be lazy.”

Affirmations – “I am prolific and productive. I am brave.” These cheesy statements are often quite effective, even if they remind you of Stuart Smalley.

I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me!

Writing about them - write a list, persuasive essay, (or a blog post!) giving all the reasons why the fear is a false one. Writing has always given me clarity when I’ve been overwhelmed by emotion, although it doesn’t usually produce very good writing.

Accepting things that are out of your control

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy. – Leo Buscaglia

One of the biggest things that we worry about that is completely out of our control is the past. I can not go back and make that court date, so, intellectually at least, I know I shouldn’t be worrying, much less freaking out about it. I find it helpful to remind myself:

I am not responsible for my past actions, only for the present consequences of those actions.

I am not responsible for the actions of others.

and, for good measure…

I did not break the economy.

Acceptance is also a key part of the serenity prayer, another great thing I learned from 12-step programs:

“…grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference…”

Doing something about legitimate fears

Break them down into parts – What are my responsibilities? They are creations of society and my own personal morality. I am responsible for keeping my word, keeping myself fed, paying taxes, and doing what is best for my well-being, which includes helping rather than harming the people I come into contact with. Which of these responsibilities am I neglecting right now? And what can I do about it?

Take action – The only real responsibility I have been neglecting is the promise to myself and my readers to post regularly on this blog. So, guess what? Here it is, a new post! Taking action feels great.

Oscar Rodgers put’s it simply:
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And don’t over-analyze, you can never predict what course events will take, just do the next right thing and know that you are doing everything you can to vanquish your freak-out.

PS – 48 days with no booze!

Today is my 26th day without drinking. I haven’t felt inspired to write a great post, so I’ll serve up this essay I wrote several years ago. It is, perhaps, an answer to the question, “Why smoke cigarettes?”

Cigarette

The first fifteen minutes of my drive to campus wind past a field which is topped, for a second, by a glimpse of Budd Inlet and Cooper Point beyond. There is a horse lying down, a sign in front of a Lutheran church that says “Anger’s best solution is delay.” There are some goats that I noticed for the first time a couple days ago, there are two parks, a lonely Shell station with a convenience store that is stocked more like a general store, with bacon, nails, coffee beans, cans of soup, video rentals, copies of a locally authored book about geoducks…

I often have my first cigarette of the day on this drive—the nicotine creeps into the back of my neck, my stomach, my nervous system, my brain. Nicotine initially causes a rapid release of adrenaline, the “fight-or-flight” hormone. It also causes increased release of acetylcholine from my neurons, leading to heightened activity in cholinergic pathways throughout my brain. This in turn promotes the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine in my brain’s reward pathways. The nicotine also causes the release of glutamate, a neurotransmitter involved in learning and memory. My first cigarette stimulates receptors in my hypothalamus, hippocampus, thalamus, midbrain, and brain stem, as well as my cerebral cortex. Besides acetylcholine and dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin,vasopressin, growth hormone, and ACTH neurotransmitters are released by the nicotine’s actions.

Many smokers enjoy their initial cigarette more than any other, but I consistently feel sick after the second puff. My nausea is always accompanied immediately by an emotion like depression, but it comes on with more urgency, with the sharp edges of terror.

McCain's Hero.

Whatever tide of neurotransmitters and hormones washes through my system, it pushes me up against a familiar, yet mysterious shore. It is a low-lying place where I’ve lost shoes in the sucking mud. I stuck my kindergarten teddy bear under a bush there. I had accidentally carried it halfway to my first grade classroom, suddenly seized by the fact that I was way too old to have a teddy bear at school. When I returned, the stuffed animal was gone. When I visit this foggy place, I am still the shortest in my class. In the murky air, I pass an anguished earlier self and know I can’t help. I can’t stop him from asking that girl to marry him, from throwing dozens of pages of horrible poetry at her feet and crying on no sleep. “You don’t really love her,” I might yell at my earlier self, “You are on amphetamines, or in withdrawal from all that Codeine and Vicodin. You are just desperate for some meaning.” I can’t make him hear, no matter how urgently I whisper, “You are embarrassing yourself!”

When this sharp edge of self-pity, this familiar amorphous violence, hits me after the second drag of my first cigarette, when I am suddenly balanced precariously on this side of tears, it takes me a moment to realize that this happens every time. Every morning I smoke a cigarette. Every morning I am momentarily washed away, spun around, sucked up. Every morning this bad tide quickly recedes and I forget that I was drowning a second ago. The day comes crowding in, happily, and the moment is forgotten.

Today I know the terror passes, but I didn’t always. I haven’t always been able to visit the darkest spot on that gloomy shore. At one time, those desperate memories were inaccessible, even though they were fresh. From the flat uncomfortable place that the people in the recovery business call “post acute withdrawal syndrome,” I couldn’t quite believe that my paranoia had been so imaginative, that terror was a thing I had actually felt, sharply and recently.

There are thoughts I had in the days before I went into rehab that I still don’t want to write down, thoughts that I would imagine a schizophrenic might have: parasites, poisoned water, someone hiding in my house…everyone knows, they all know…One night I collapsed face down on my couch, every light in my house burning, my mind was still racing but I hadn’t eaten or slept in days, so my body collapsed. As clear
as if it was in the other room, a voice called my name, a voice I was sure belonged to someone playing a trick on me, maybe the neighbor across the street was hiding in the basement. I am sure, now, that I hallucinated this voice, but I was as sure, then, that the voice was real when I answered it: “What? Leave me alone.” All this was insane, but what strikes me as more insane, more pitiful, is the fact that I did not get up, I just remained face down on the couch, allowing the conspiracy of killers in my basement free reign.

In the rooms of NA and AA—that is what they are called, “the rooms”—you hear a lot of things over and over; the experience of the addict is universal and clichés proliferate: One day at a time. You’re right where you’re supposed to be. My best thinking got me here. Let go and let God. Most recovering addicts insist that they
never want to forget what brought them to the rooms, their “bottom,” their last high. This is the redemption that my first cigarette of the day brings me: the reminder of how bad it got. Addicts don’t know much about what feelings are. They have suppressed them for a long time, pressed them into the feeling of being high and the feeling of not being high. So, when Bernard, the drug counselor at my outpatient facility, a big black man who had a weird kind of non-greasy jerry curl haircut and fingernails that had some type of fungus on them, demanded of me how I felt about an experience, I was often at a loss. He helped me out by saying, “There ain’t but five,” pointing at piece of oak tag on which someone had written:
F ear
L oneliness
A nger
P ain
P leasure
S adness

There ain’t but five. In one way, the reduction of my emotional range to an acronym has been a good thing. It is a comfort to be able to grasp my feelings, write them down, safely label them and place them back on the shelf, certain that they will all make an appearance at one time or another, that no matter how they mess up my apartment and demand my attention, they are only here to visit. Nevertheless, my emotions are calling the shots, even when they linger in the background. I’m not sure, but I think that all my choices are dictated, in the end, by my desire to comfortably balance my emotions. I try to live so that sadness doesn’t dig too deep, so that loneliness doesn’t penetrate as sharply, so that pleasure doesn’t leave me washed up, writhing.

But there is more to a thing than its name. I cannot describe all the things that happen when I am on that morning drive by looking at an oak tag poster or researching the psychopharmacological effects of nicotine. That sudden drop, that shaky dark vision that the cigarette brings on is something more. It serves several functions. Its transience assures me of its transience. Its darkness shows me light. It is contrast.

I have a warm apartment, fifteen minutes from anywhere. I am looking out window at the water and the hazy silhouette of the Olympics. I have my neighbor’s beagle curled up on the couch. Spring is coming quickly. I will never run out of good books to read. I have a good stereo and my favorite radio station comes in clear. I am my parent’s prodigal son. I have goals. I am in college. I am incredibly happy and light. I will float away.

This is why I thank gravity. This is why I do not want to give up my daily moment of darkness, of heaviness. My moment of nostalgic terror is a glimpse at what my life is not, what it was, what it could be: contrast. When I smoke my morning cigarette, it is the beginning of my prayer of thanks, my ablution. My moment of terror is not just payment for my blessings, but reassurance that all things pass, and all things return.

Pep Boys are part of the Matrix

I am a fairly scientific guy – agnostic. Nevertheless, I tend to believe in synchronicity, that coincidences aren’t always mere coincidences. Or maybe I just believe that, in the right frame of mind, happenings fall together, meaningfully.  Writer Amy Tan explains this phenomena in a great lecture at my favorite website, ted.com.

I’ll give you two of my own examples of synchronicity:

I was preparing to take my 1989 Chevy S-10 pickup cross-country from Long Island to the great Northwest. I needed tires and a few other fixes before I left. It was the last day of my job, which was in a strip mall, next to Pep Boys (an auto repair chain). I was over one year clean and doing all the right things.

When I came out of work, my car was in a different parking spot, with four brand new tires. I immediately called my mother.

“Did you get me tires!?”
“What?”
“Did you buy me new tires?”
“No….What?”
“I came out of work and there were four new tires on the truck! Who do you think got them for me?”
“I have no idea, but that is great!”

I called my dad, my grandparents, and several friends, they all had no clue. I started to feel weird about it when I still had no idea who the secret philanthropist was. I felt like Pip in Great Expectations. I called Pep Boys.

“We’re glad you called…a gentleman with a 1994 Chevy Blazer came in for tires.  The mechanic saw ‘black Chevy’ on the ticket and thought it was your truck.”
“But it was locked”
“The key fit.”

I was prepared to negotiate with them to see if they could take care of a few other things wrong with the truck and maybe get the tires at cost, but, for some reason, I opened like a lawyer.

“I’m getting ready to drive to the west coast. I’m not under an obligation to pay for these tires. After all, you guys basically broke into my car…”
“Okay. It’s our mistake. Enjoy your trip.”

Recognizing a good deal when I heard one, I thanked him and hung up.

It could have been a coincidence. Many old Chevy keys fit other Chevys. Pep Boys changed tires every day. It could have been a coincidence that my ignition key was so worn that I had taken to leaving it in the column and locking up with the door key. So what if it was the last day I would ever park in front of that particular Pep Boys?  And so what of the coincidence that I needed tires?…And that my Chevy was black and of a similar model to the one that should have gotten the tires? Coincidences all.

The problem is, if you add all those things together, the probability is about one in a trillion. I choose to believe that there was a reason all these factors came together – I was doing the things that the universe knows are right. This is still a leap of faith but it seems more logical than saying, “One in a trillion events happen all the time.” They don’t. They happen almost never. One in a trillion is as close to impossible as you get. And what is a miracle but an act of the impossible. It just makes more sense to explain these coincidences as a benevolent alignment of events that become apparent to people who benevolently align themselves with the universe.
The concept of a “higher power” appears in six of the 12-steps. My working definition of a higher power is “the thing that makes doing good things good for you” – grace, synchronicity, or just that warm feeling that you get for acting with compassion (even when there is no one there to witness it).

My next example of a higher power acting in my life is…

Day 4

Yesterday was so incredibly full of good things that I cannot help but think of it as a reward from the universe.  The only thing that marred the day was a slight headache and about three brief but strong cravings for beer.
Here is a partial list of the great things that happened:

• I went on an informational interview and it turned into a regular interview. It seems likely that I will have a job as an SAT coach in the near future.
• I spoke to my Dad about his girlfriend’s mean emails to me. He agreed she was being irrational and unjust and the small knot in my gut untied. (I feel it in my stomach when people are mad at me, even if they are totally whacked.)
• I spoke to my Mom about my job hunt and my sobriety and got the encouragement that only a mom can give.
• I sent an email apology to a girl that I had cut it off with rather abruptly and rudely a few months back. (This isn’t really something that happened to me, but the further untying of my gut was certainly palpable.)
• I spoke to a friend who I hadn’t spoke to in a while.
• I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a fantastic book of essays by Stephen Jay Gould on the library shelf. (An evolutionary biologist, master craftsman, and bringer together of amazing details to illustrate fundamental truths, Gould just plain rocks.)
• I received a call from an amazing woman who is a life coach by profession, but also works for an organization called Enterprise for Equity. We talked some my small business ideas and she said that she would fast-track me in the organization’s business training program. The non-profit will supply me with all the skills and guidance needed to create a viable business plan…(I just need to pick one. Easier said…)
• I completed about a dozen things on my to-do list. (P.S. I am one of those GTD junkies)
• At our regular Tuesday poker night, I walked away the big winner. (20 big ones)
• All this and beautiful weather.

So far so good!