Death alone is certain

I think there’s an expression that goes: nothing is certain except death and taxes. That’s a bit f*cked if you ask me, but no one is (asking me, I mean; no one is asking me). The death part makes sense though, it comes for us all.

When I first started writing publicly I posted a koan that is particularly meaningful to me:

Since death alone is certain,
and the time of death uncertain,
what should I do?

I thought my answer was write and I guess it was in a way, that’s what I ended up doing, but when I mustered enough courage to go back and read the journal entry I wrote after meditating on that particular koan, I was surprised to find what I had actually written down was live. If there’s a chance I would die the next day, what else is there to do but live.

It’s a little open ended, isn’t it? I wonder if I knew then what I meant. Until I’m laying down in a pine box, I am technically living. Aren’t we all doing that everyday? I’d like to ask my past self a few questions about what I thought it was to live. I’m sure that paying taxes was a very small part of it. All the sage advice I’ve heard on the topic offers different versions of “be present.” Be there in the moment just as it is, don’t try to change it. But then almost in the same breath, I hear advice to be open, loving, kind. That’s not how I naturally show up in most moments. I am guarded and suspicious. I am anxious or depressed. I believe I will f*ck everything up. Most days in most places, I’d rather not be there at all.

I guess that’s what I meant when I wrote that I wanted to live. I wanted to want to be where I was. I wanted to feel satisfied and comfortable. I wanted more than anything to feel like I belonged. Instead, over the last few years I discovered I didn’t belong in that place at all. I didn’t need to change the way I responded to the present moment, I needed to change where I was showing up. The realization hit me like a truck. I was so dazed by the collision that I continued to walk around with shattered bones in denial that I had ever been run over. It’s isolating and a little mystifying to live your life in pieces and have no one notice you’re broken. I lost faith. I’ve had to set myself right.

It’s a difficult task, balancing healing and rebuilding. It’s hard to know when to lay down and rest, and when to get up and go. When you do it on your own (as most of us have to) there is no one to ask for advice on the best course of action, there is only trial and error. I can tell you from experience, the trials are arduous and the errors suck. Nothing is comfortable because it’s all new, and the giant void of the past taunts you incessantly. Remember when it was simple? How could you have been stupid enough to give all of that up? For what? This mess of a life you have now where every single thing feels hard and you are totally alone in it? It’s a challenge to endure the doubts when I can’t rest in faith. I guess I trust the process.

I want to live with ease and instead I compulsively run my tongue over healing gums waiting for the sharp edge of a new tooth to cut through to confirm there is cause for my misery. This much pain has to come from somewhere. In my darker moments I remind myself I once believed that life was worth the ache. In the grip of psychosis, I found beauty in the fall. We need sadness to feel joy. I understood that so completely that the memory of it stays with me now in the reality of my ordinary life. I have so much joy coming.

I’m not living, I am waiting. Maybe I’m waiting for an empire to fall, or for the climate to recalibrate, or maybe I’m waiting for a someone to show up at my door with a million dollars and a sack of puppies, ready to whisk me away from my problems. I’m not sure what it is I want to happen, but I’d be grateful if it’s something I don’t have to do on my own. I’ve had just about enough of me. Although I can say that if I died tomorrow, I would be proud of the way I’ve lived these past few years. I did the scary thing that felt true, rather than the safe thing that felt like a lie. I treated myself and the people I love with the respect that accompanies authenticity. I’ve filled my days with activities that are meaningful to me, regardless of how I look to other people. And I’ve been feeling my motherf*cking feelings. Is that what it means to live? Holy sh*t, did I do it?!

It turns out I may have stumbled into living. It’s not what I thought it was. It kind of sucks. Lately, it’s felt particularly difficult and I’ve wondered where I’d be if I had made different choices. Without a time machine, I can never know. Even with a time machine I could never unlearn the lessons that living this path has taught me. Time is weird that way. It marches on. I can, however, rest assured that I have been mindful of the decisions I have made. That’s the silver lining of being an overthinker. For most choices, I was so sure of what I wanted to do by the time I took action, that it seemed as though there was no alternative.

The time I spent denying who I was and what I wanted was exhausting and was never going to fill me up. I was trying to build a castle with sand that was too dry. The wind kept blowing it away and I had to continually go back and reshape the sections I had already sculpted. What I needed to was to carry my bucket down to ocean’s edge, fill it with water, and it haul back up the shore with me. I had to make the right kind of sand to build with. The work is harder, but it’s also easier. You have to choose your hard as the say in the manosphere, and I choose to bear the water. I want my castle to withstand the wind so that at the end of the day I’ll get the chance to step back to see what I’ve built. In a world where the tide will eventually wash us all away, I choose to spend my time creating art.