Clinging to the Optimal

I spend a lot of energy wishing things were different than they are. 

More specifically, wishing things were without imperfection. I wake up every day hoping that this one will be filled to the brim with connection, creativity, serenity, play, satisfaction. Perfectly lit blooms in buttery sunlight casting soft shadows. The rhythmic soundtrack of life turning everything cinematic. The first few moments of ease, still warm in bed, before any harshness of the day has crept in, I feel the possibility that today will be a treasure. Maybe nothing will go sideways. Maybe goodness will befall us. Maybe the world fundamentally changed while we were sleeping, and everyone woke up and chose peace.

HA! That’s the emotional hamster wheel of delusion I choose to ride. The desire, the near demand, for life to keep getting better and better and better. It must do so in order to balance the scales. Why else have we endured so much? We’ll all learn from our suffering. I’ll learn. We’ll fundamentally change human nature. And the story will turn out to be a comedy rather than a tragedy. 

Right? 

RIGHT?

I’ve lived through much frustration, pain, devastation, and heartache. We all have in our own ways. Yet, rather than fostering a strength and discipline of acceptance, this has seeded in me an urgency to make up for lost time by SUCKING THE MARROW OUT OF EVERY MOMENT I HAVE LEFT in a way that’s a bit intense and frankly, exhausting. 

Chance, give me my one precious and perfect life right now, you sonofabitch.

I’m just starting to connect these dots.

In spite of my problematic attachment to everything being optimal to repair the fucked up past, I have cultivated a love for the ordinary. I’ve spent the last couple of years embracing a sensualidad de casa. My intent has been to embrace life as ceremony,  and create an environment where the daily tasks of life are rich and fulfilling in their own humble ways. We all have to chop wood and carry water. As the saying goes. So maybe I can do it with beauty. I adorn my nest with bamboo sheets. Japanese knives. Silk pajamas. Korean skincare. A stupid fancy water filter. A guitar I actually want to play. I recognize that each ordinary day is still precious and prone to being ignored, and so rather than grinding from one escapist vacation to the next, I’ve made my home into a sanctuary and I try to protect my time. I attempt to move through my space and my days as grateful and present as I can, even when I need to be reminded a hundred times before lunch: I am so very lucky. I get to inhabit a life many could only ever wish for.

But as it turns out, banning ugly plastic shit from my house doesn’t generate peace. Duh. :)

I used to spend a lot of energy solving problems. At work, at home, in therapy. Trying to meet basic needs and avert crises, real and imagined. Now that I've slowed down, all that energy is undirected. So rather than coping with my existential angst by addressing (often self-made) problems, I'm on a spiral ride around wish mountain.

Wishing the oceans weren’t heating up.
Wishing the moments of bliss weren’t so fleeting.
Wishing I would never let my son down.
Wishing my boyfriend was staying.
Wishing my parents were well. 
Wishing I could wake up every day beside the love of my life.

Wishing 45 would croak already.
Wishing we’d solve cancer and traffic and human greed.
Wishing I could become a great novelist or sculptor or musician. 

Wishing everyone had food in their bellies and shelter from the storm.
Wishing gravity would yield its relentless pull on my soft animal body.

Wishing we had more time.
Wishing I knew how much time I have left… but not really.
Wishing I believed in a god that gave easy answers.

Over and over. Running as a subconscious script underneath a convincing veneer of adaptability. 

Someone close to me called me upbeat recently, and it startled me. My insides don't feel that way. I think I’m just overcompensating against the hefty pull of nihilism. If I seem optimistic it’s merely a darling attempt to use my small powers to cast spells of beauty. To quiet the aggressive droning of despair.

Underneath it all, I stay restless. Setting impossible conditions for the peace that could be here right now if I’d just stop wishing. 

Here. Right now. Stop wishing.

When I do, I have to feel it all. The raw and ruthless and grotesque nature of this life. We're all going to rot and lose each other eventually, and even the greatest things we did will be forgotten. And sometimes, I think that current might carry me under. A dandelion under a bulldozer. 

At our core, we aren’t actually pleasure-seeking creatures. We’re pain-avoiding. Hate to break it to you, honey. It’s just that pleasure is the most direct route to not feeling our pain. For me, it's the pain that this reality is incapable of the scale of beauty and connection my mind keeps conjuring. At least in this lifetime. Imagination enables us to tell stories we'll never live through. It's kind of cruel. Fantasies are fun until they aren't. But what's the alternative? The monkey mind keeps swinging. I look tenderly on those brilliant little tricks and treats we've found to take the edge off.

So I light the cigarette, I ride the cock, I stand in the sunlight, I eat the chips, I linger in the hug, I wear the silk, I swallow the molly, I turn up the volume, I laugh freely at my silly little jokes, I kiss hard and wet, knowing that the kiss will end and night will fall and even beside my lover we’ll have to leave each other to sink into our separate dreamscapes, in each others’ bodily arms but away in distant worlds. That’s the paradox of life. We each have to traverse our own terrain. Union and intimacy will never relieve us of the rawness of the human experience.

Anyways.

Eventually, I’ll share about summer plans and my funk band and farmer’s markets.

More earnest attempts to quiet the wishing, apparently. ;)