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Manic-Expressive

My dictionary defines Depression as:

severe despondency and dejection, typically felt over a period of time and accompanied by feelings of hopelessness and inadequacy.

I wish I could say I have no idea what this feels like, but unfortunately I’m all too familiar. In fact, I’ve dealt with depression intimately ever since my early 20’s. Hell, maybe even before. I was pretty emotional even as a kid. Then again, what kid wasn’t emotional?

There’s a medical definition as well, but it’s basically the same as the one I’ve just given, with some more specifics. I’m not going to argue with Merriam-Webster, but I’d like to propose an alternative definition to depression.

Depression, as I see it, is exactly what it is: a depressing, a closing in, a shutting off. It is so debilitating because it causes its host to do the opposite of what it was designed to do: to open up, to expand, to bloom. All energy is by its very nature expansive, and wanting to go out. Depression is the perverse opposite of this: a withdrawing in – but not in a way that serves the Being, but in a way that blocks it.

I wish I could say I knew the quick and easy cure. I could go on about emotions being like storm clouds, about how it’s all in one’s perception, but what good would that do? I’m not here to solve problems.

I like to think I’m not alone, however. In this big, scary, wonderful world, I like to think there’s others out there who knows what this contracting feeling is like – just as they know what the expanding feeling is like. I’d like to connect with those people – to get to know them by name, and to see what they’re all about. Not so we can commiserate with each other, NO! But so that we can begin to help each other. So that we can get out of the unnatural closing feeling, and get into the natural opening feeling.

Maybe we could go all the way to the other end of the spectrum. To a place where we’re open and blooming. That’s the way we’re supposed to be, it seems to me.

Manic Expressive.

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The Map Is Not The Road

Yesterday I was driving home from one of my all-time favorite places, Denny’s, and I was using my Garmin, as I am in the habit of doing when I go almost anywhere whose route I don’t know by heart, and it struck me that I did know where I was going, but I was still intently using my Garmin.

I knew that if I just continued down the road I was on, in a couple of miles I would make a right turn onto the road that would take me home, but I was so used to using GPS that I forgot that I had my own internal GPS.

This got me thinking about Life in general. Sometimes we just don’t know when or where the next turn will be, so we look to somebody else’s compass to guide our own way. We get caught in a one-dimensional view of reality (like the screen on the Garmin) rather than take a look around and get our bearings. Ironically, we lose touch with the real reality in favor of a map that’s designed to represent it.

Maps and Garmins are useful, but they are by no means the real reality – they are by no means the road we are traversing. Sometimes the most useful means of navigation is the one inside.

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Practice is not always necessary.

If I am perfectly happy with my skills I already have, and am confident I can retain them without practicing, there is no need for me to practice.

If I find more joy resonating in what I’ve already accumulated, then the more important thing for me and for the world might be for me to start “being myself.”

I can “be myself” (innovate) purely and truly only if I am 100% OK with the skills and the information I have at hand. What this means is that I have an Inner Life that is at such a high vibration that whatever it is that I normally practice (piano, Portuguese, parasailing) resonates with that vibration.

Frequently, to be maintained, this Inner Life requires more than just the vibration. It also requires engaging with Life and with Higher Consciousness on many different levels and in many different areas. These could be anything from practicing yoga to eating blueberry pancakes.

So, as it turns out, “being myself” requires, for most of us, more than just “being.” It requires “acting.” It requires conscious and deliberate steps towards the things that makes us tick. Sometimes part of this is Practice, and sometimes it isn’t.

If we Act in the right way, we can start get closer to who we really are and what we can offer the world.

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What Meaning Means

The difference between a meaningful life and a meaningless life is Action. Action being taken, specifically, towards a connection with something greater than ourselves.

If, in the moment, no particular Action is being taken to experience “higher consciousness” or “state of Grace” or “God” or whatever you’d like to call it, Life is without meaning.

Actually, life is always having meaning. It’s just not so obvious when the person living it is not taking Action towards something greater than his or her self.

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The Cure For Negative Thinking

Anger is almost always a useless resort. It really has nothing to do with the person(s) or circumstance(s) to whom it’s directed, and much more to do with thoughts going on inside of the victim’s own head.

Once this is realized, Anger subsides somewhat. It’s pointless to be mad, because whatever the person or circumstance is doing is what they’re doing, regardless. They’re over there, and the angry person is over here.

At this point it becomes a game to see how long the Anger can be watched, or watched for. we are the only species on the planet, as far as we know, that can watch for our own emotions. When we do, interestingly enough, the emotion loses a lot, if not all, of its strength.

At least, this seems to be true for negative emotions. Not so much positive emotions. I’ve noticed I’ve been happy before, but once I did, the emotion of happiness did not seem to grow weaker.

This is good news because it means that the cure for any negative emotion is simply observation. We can observe all of our emotions, and once we do, once we “watch for” them, we can, if I’m not mistaken, start to feel good more of the time, and to feel bad less of the time.

Which must be what everyone wants.

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Information vs. Innovation

Real innovation comes from having the courage to sound like yourself. There’s a catch, though. Part of sounding like yourself is knowing what “you” sounds like. And you can’t know that until you listen to a few Others who already know what they sound like.

I’ve always been kind of envious of those who seem to be really good at assimilating bits and pieces of these Others. I guess that’s mostly because I always run into cats who seem to have more of a knack for assimilating than I do.

I’ve done a bit of assimilating, and I’m sure I’ll do more. But right now what intrigues me is the idea of working with what I’ve got. In other words, sounding more like myself.

It can be all too easy to have a hard time finding out what you sound like because you’re so concerned with properly sounding like someone else. As far as I can see, the only antidote for that is stopping acquiring more information – getting back to a Space inside of us that is uniquely ours.

I imagine it would go in a Cycle: Learn, Forget, Learn, Forget, Learn, Forget. The more complex the task, the more there is to learn – and therefore, of course, the more there is to forget.

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Money Or Time?

A friend told me about a study done showing that most Americans have next to nothing in their savings accounts.

The actual statistic: 69% have less than $1,000 and 34% have no savings at all.

In other words, if your savings account has more than a grand in it, you fall into the unbelievably small 21%.

This got me wondering, is this really all about unwise financial decisions? Or could it have something to do with the actual ability to save? Having worked my share of odd jobs myself (TV salesman, cashier, waiter, dishwasher), I know something about how challenging it can be, having certain levels of income, to actually save money.

Saving money is not just the act of putting money into a savings account. As far as I’ve seen, there is really one major factor: Time.

Though I can’t cite statistics, I know that car payments, rent, mortgage payments, food, fuel, utilities, and insurance of all kinds, are facts. Never mind any expenses that do not fall into insurance, or recreational expenses of any kind. In order to account for all of these things, it seems safe to conclude that every American below a certain income level must devote a fair amount of Time to, well, Working. (And unless you’re very lucky, your job is not perfectly aligned with your creative or Artistic talents or Vision.)

Ironically, some of the very activities needed to save money (cooking at home, minimizing travel, designing and keeping to a budget) can be hard-pressed to fit into Time that’s already spent Working.

Maybe these far-out numbers reflect a deeper problem than poor spending habits.

Source: Yahoo!: “Here’s how much Americans at every age have in their savings accounts” by Kathleen Elkins

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Why Intimacy Is More Important Than Music

There is a lot of Music, but not a lot of true human connection, in the world.

Open a streaming app, like Spotify or Pandora, or an online media store, like iTunes. Go to a hub for independent music artists, like SoundCloud or Bandcamp. Visit any sites or services (and there are hundreds) where music, new or old, is simply a click away.

Now walk down the street. Go to a coffee shop. Peruse the aisles of a grocery store, or even a bookstore. Grab a bite at your favorite restaurant. Go to a public park. Go to work. How much actual relating is happening?

I think you’ll notice that what you’ll be hard pressed to find is two or more humans interacting in an authentic, vulnerable way. What you’ll easily find, however, is a lot of smart phones, a lot of laptops, a lot of “blinder vision”.

Of course, smaller towns might elicit more familiarity, but that doesn’t necessarily imply connection, relating, or what I like to call “Intimacy”. Cities or areas with a more expansive urban or cultural sprawl might be more likely to host venues or spaces where people with like minds can meet to share interests, but such places are also known for large amounts of loneliness or isolation in spite of, or indeed because of, the sheer amount of people residing there.

Deep, honest Intimacy – and I’m not just talking about bedroom Intimacy – is rare. Of course, that’s what makes it special. But does it have to be rare to be special? Music is easy to dive into; there’s obviously no shortage of music or musicians. Anyone can put their headphones on – but can anyone venture out of the bubble and start to engage on a deeper level with another human being?

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Should You Quit Your Job?

In Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest For Work You Love, he provides an algorithm to be used in order to find out whether you should quit your job. I’m quoting from memory:

There are three criteria:

  1. You really hate the people you work with.
  2. You feel that the job is not helping people or doing anything good for the world.
  3. There is no room for innovation.

The first criterion is more or less black and white – you either do or you don’t hate the people you work with. The second two are far more subjective. Who’s to say if the world is being made a better place? And as far as innovation goes, are we talking within the confines of the job itself, or innovation outside of the workplace as well?

Most people aren’t interested in the second two criteria. They’re most likely already good at their job, or they don’t have any other source of income on which to fall back. But for those of us who are, it might benefit us to contemplate them if we’re not entirely certain that our current jobs will hold much promise in the long run.

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The Sweet Spot

There is a place where it’s best to hang out and see what happens. To sort of just kick back and observe. In the learning process, this is especially true.

The trick is balancing this observation, this almost non-action, with the conscious striving for whichever effect is desired – the pushing of the weight, the hitting of the note, the fluidity of the line. The hardest thing about Learning may actually be achieving this balance.

At times, the best policy may be to grunt and push. Other times, doing less and “getting out of your own way” is most effective. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which side of the scale to jump to. Other times it’s not.

On any path to mastery, there’s a Sweet Spot. It’s here that a beautiful balance occurs, where reaching and observing meet and start to overlap. Here, Life seems easier, for a moment. We could be at the dry cleaners or we could be doing rocket science, but all of a sudden, for an instant, things just makes sense.

Of course, as soon as things start to make sense, they fade back to where they were before, and we’re back to the Game of pushing and pulling and grunting and observing. I guess the whole point is to get to where those moments of Clarity are not only more frequent, but last a second or two longer.

Once we’re there, of course, part of the fun is this feeling that we could have gotten there at any time, and we always knew how. This may or may not actually be true – but who cares? It’s the feeling that counts.