I was close to leaving, I should be on the road in the next few weeks. Apartment packed, van finished, jobs completed. I was supposed to be wandering around the country for the next 6 months to a year. My life was going to change, I was going to live some half-baked adventure I dreamed up through reading Jack Kerouac and reading about Alexander Supertramp. Cooked up in my tiny garage room that I lived in at my grandparent’s house. I was going to explore, adventure – I was going to write and be in the moment. Experience a life very few get to, a life that most only read about, as I did. This was supposed to happen in my 20’s, it never came to the painted picture I had dreamt up while high on weed and coke. It was a sketch at best, I scribbled some lines across the west coast a few times, marked up Utah, Nevada and Arizona some. None of it came close to what was supposed to be. Now 20 some odd years later, healthy bank account and a new van conversion, I thought it was my time to go. I am sadly mistaken and all I can do is laugh.
They told me long ago, “If you want to see god laugh, make plans” and they were right. Planning out our lives is one way, sometimes the only way we can find happiness and security in the moment and have some type of attempt at controlling our future. We need to live for something it seems, the new car, the new lover, the new job, the vacation, the paycheck and so on. It gives us hope for something to make us happy when the moment is simple and unappealing, and it removes the fear of the future. ‘I have control over my future because this will materialize’ or ‘this will bring me happiness’ – these thoughts, these hopes give us the falsehood to deal with the moment. Like the pandemic we are living in, the uncertainty of how long this will last, who will catch it, who will survive it. The fear of this brings about two states of mind. One: I’m not scared this is not that serious. Two: This is serious business and we need to follow the rules. Neither is right or wrong, but we make some sort of plans to survive both. We live outside the moment in some type of ideal future we wish to be in. ‘When will I see my friends, when can I hug someone, when can I sit in a restaurant, go shopping’ we want our normal lives back, we look towards the future and desire what once was.
I came across all this in that room, in that garage, the desire to change my present circumstances and alter my future by dreaming up plans on how to avoid my present life out of fear and desire. ‘When’ is a question left up to god to ask you, not you to ask god. ‘When’ does not exist, ‘when’ is an idea, an attachment to change, ‘when’ is desire. The more we focus on when the longer it takes to find out. The minutes are the same, the hours and days no different but by asking when only prolongs the need and perpetuates the pain of desire. We ask when cuz we want to plan something, understandable. ‘I just want to know when so I can go and do this’, again setting ourselves up for disappointment, desiring to make plans for the future to change the way we feel now. If I have this to look forward to, I’ll be able to survive this moment. Isn’t that how most people ended up in this difficulty of surviving the last 6 weeks, not being able to be in the moment and powerless to it. Throughout all my years, using and clean I would always ask when, ‘when am I going to feel better’ or ‘when is this going to change’.
I learned asking when was only drawing me away from the spiritual path, it played havoc on my conscious contact. Going through my divorce I could not wait for the pain to stop, the insanity to leave. I couldn’t wait to feel better, to be happy, to get my way. I would run in the mornings, only sleeping 3 or 4 hours a night, sometimes 5 if I was super lucky. I would wake, put on 3 layers of clothing with it being the middle of winter in North County and 25 degrees out. I would step out of my parent’s tiny trailer that was parked next to an old barn and I would go for a run. I would start slow and break into a sprint on the way back, trying to run out all the pain, all the loneliness, all the regret. I would end my run in tears, walking back the rest of the way. Beanie in hand, sweating and wiping my face dry. I would ask god “WHEN! When will this pain end?! When will I feel better?!” I had no idea that I was prolonging my own sadness. Always trying to get away from the feeling, the present situation, thinking when this is done, I will feel better – always thinking something else would fix me.
I’ve grown beyond that since then, my questions of when stopped like my questions of why did many years prior. I do not like where I am at all the time, this vacant empty life I seem to be living in. I saw this trip as a way out, I saw this trip like it was my time to live my dream. I hadn’t attached myself to it, knowing full well god has a way making changes to my plans. I didn’t attach myself to it whole heartedly out of fear, to commit to something so life changing isn’t easy – especially for someone who likes to feel secure and safe.
I fool myself into thinking I have security and safety, it’s quite hilarious when I stop and look at it. Just because I ride my bike 20 or 30 miles a week and eat right will not prevent me from having a heart attack or acquiring cancer, but my mind thinks it will. My fear of death says it will. I welcome change, I welcome growth – on my terms right. I have change in my life, I am growing in different areas of acceptance and powerlessness, yet this is not what I want, this postponing of my trip, this humdrum life, yet here it is. Now what.
I want to wake to a different landscape every other day, watch the sun set over different horizons, freeze on the cold nights and curse the heat that is trapped in my tiny van at 3am. I want to cook outdoors, ride random trails across America, listen to frogs and crickets by the moonlight. Stair at the stars that are infinite and forget all about the internet or the new hit show and my phone. I want to draw distance from this world and go deeper into what makes me happy, meditation, equanimity, altruism, writing, exploring what god is. I want the simple life, the small life – to meet abstract people, the ones that live for something more than the material side of life. I’ve never really wanted much for myself, I spent most my life devoted to others, it brought me a happiness incomparable to anything I’ve ever known. But now I want for me and this trip was going to be that, and this trip is now on hiatus. So how does one deal with it, the change of the change not changing. How does one drag themselves out of bed every morning with a smile and glow? Acceptance. I see no other option, but is acceptance defeat?
Someone told me the other day that they felt acceptance was admitting defeat. I guess it can be viewed that way at times, but what’s wrong with getting defeated by something? Maybe it depends on your spiritual connection, maybe it depends on your perception of self as to what is strong and what is weak. Do either exist? Is being passive being weak? I see acceptance as no longer having to fight, no longer having to seek change, willingness to be humbled. I see acceptance as acknowledging a feeling or situation you want to change or control and you choose not to, you accept it. But where’s the tipping point, when does it become my will or god’s will? How close am I to god and how far am I from ego to hear that inner voice.
I could leave, I could finish this last job and split, go live on the road with a ton of uncertainty as to the pandemic and the course the U.S. will take over the next year. Have hope meetings will start to open, state and federal parks will open, museums and all the cool attractions and sites I’ve been compiling a list of. I could leave. I could poll the masses, ask all that are close and concerned and caring, “should I go”? But what are opinions, but perceptions made up of people’s personal feelings and experiences. There is little unbiased or mathematical evidence in an opinion.
So what do I do? I make a choice right. Weigh my options and see what feels right, what has little to no fear or regret involved. Make a choice, choose a path, have conviction. I am quite horrible at that; I tend to be the one that stands still for too long waiting for thee perfect moment that never comes.
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And then I get in my van, I go in the fridge and grab some water, I put some clothes in the cubbies. I sit in that driver’s seat and overlook the world in front of me, behind that almost horizontal steering wheel and huge window that makes me feel like I’m driving a bus. Like I’m in a fish bowl and the world before me is stretching out wide and free. I turn up the music to drown out the squeaking of the cabinets and rattling of the sliding door. I like some Palo Santo, set the cruise control at 60 cuz there is no rush and bounce along the highway, as if I was driving over clouds. And I am in love and all my anxiety leaves and all my questions disappear and all my fear vanishes before my eyes. I am in love with my van, with the moment, with my self – the last being the most significant. I feel whole, I feel alive or not alive, but like I know where I am supposed to be. My whole life I searched for that feeling, that feeling of contentment, that feeling of happiness. Through woman, drugs, money – through all these things I thought would give me the love and admiration of self, would fix me and all I needed to do was follow my heart. The only thing that could compare is seeing my daughter smile, seeing her laugh and squeezing her till her eyes pop out her head. I mean can you believe that I could be so happy? Never in my wildest dreams had I ever thought this feeling in me could of ever happened and not because I owned anything or had someone or did something great. This feeling of happiness all derived from taking a 15 mile drive on a 2 lane highway to see my mother.
All this cuz I stayed clean. All this cuz I searched out true happiness and not the propaganda kind. All this cuz I stayed the course. All this cuz I trusted the process. All this cuz I followed someone else’s direction. All this cuz followed a dream. All this cuz I did the right thing over the thing I wanted to do. All this cuz I never gave up. All this cuz I was selfless. All this happiness and love inside me, who would have ever thought a little boy from a broken home with mental and emotional issues, addicted parents, addict himself. How some low self-worth/low self-esteem young man with no future, little morals and dreams of suicide on the daily ended up here. I made some good choices and the byproduct has been my happiness, like true happiness so many times over the last 20 years – how lucky am I. Like who am I to deserve all this, all these good feelings, these possibilities. I swear I am the luckiest man alive. I get all this for the small price… There is no price I am paying for this, I should be paying god for all this. I am literally high on the fact that I got to drive my van yesterday, that when I think of my daughter I am filled with a love immeasurable to anything I’ve known. How amazing is that.
I know what my head could bring to the coming day today, I know the possibility of falling into self-pity, desire, regret. I know how vulnerable I am to falling out of the moment and getting caught in the future, getting caught in when and why and desire. It is a choice, it is a daily maintenance on my part to sit still and be open and passive and free to love. To walk in faith and not fear, to trust that one day I will take my trip, one day I will fall in love, one day I will be broke, one day this will grow too be more and crumble to be less, one day I will die. I get so concerned about everything that is irrelevant, losing sight of the here and now. There is no right choice or wrong choice, choosing to stay or go. They are just choices, simple and inconsequential to my happiness.
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