living in the moment

My last post was written in the moment and against my better judgment, but I don't think I would take it back again. Everything I said was true the moment I said it, and it's still true now in some sense, but I'm finding that each new moment of every day has new things to say about what we thought our original thoughts were.

I had a long talk with my Dad today about being depressed, after my mom told me that I should reach out to him about it because he'd had familiar experiences. There's been a long history of family turmoil between me and both my parents, but for some reason more so with him. But the talk we had today was about two hours long and it reminded me of a lot of things I'd been neglecting to notice.

The first is that I live a blessed life, probably somewhere in the top of the top 5% of lifestyles on the planet if a stranger had complete freedom to choose.

The second was that every resentment I have or that any person ever has is a result of ignorance. While I was talking to my dad, I realized that in the present moment he and I were closer than we've ever been before. And that I'm actually tremendously similar to him in ways that I never realized until recently-- the implications of this are huge, because there is plenty in my dad that I admire and plenty that I'd like to steer away from. I think a lot of the things I'd like to steer away from are the things that make us similar in a lot of cases, actually, so again it's hard to completely disavow them. 

More broadly though, there is no defensible position from which you can defend resenting another person for anything. Nobody understands anybody, this is the other epiphany I had recently. Sometimes people can come close and your minds can overlap, but searching for someone who will "understand" you perfectly is a fools errand. And when you do find somebody who you think understands you in a special way, don't let anything get in the way of that connection.

Find people that appreciate you, and who you appreciate. And give more love than is necessary or reasonable.

As I said before in that last post, I know what my strengths are as a person. And I think they're really good strengths, because I admire them in other people-- I also think they're pretty rare, not that that makes them better, but they seem rare in my life.

But as a footnote to that, I've realized that another thing I seem to have an abundance of is forgiveness for other people. I don't ever want to harbor anger or resentment for anybody on the planet, and I really go out of my way to try and see the other side of everything. But I'm also realizing that I don't have this same capacity to forgive myself, for any range of mistakes no matter how minor or major. Maybe someone out there reading this knows exactly what I'm talking about.

So now I'm thinking that to be happy (and also "being happy" is one of those things that doesn't really exist-- it's all about the journey and the frame of mind you're in), all you can do is align your behavior with your values as consistently as possible, and grant yourself that your mistakes don't define who you are.

And lastly, you will make many mistakes in life. Sometimes you'll make a series of mistakes and other people will notice a pattern that you didn't notice, and will point it out to you. There's a good chance you'll burn bridges with people unintentionally because you're human, and your weaknesses at that moment in time overwhelmed someone else's ability or patience to deal with them. Their mental attitude will have shifted to define you primarily by your mistakes and not by your strengths.

Never accept this identity from other people. A "mistake" is an accident that moves from a place of impure intention-- we all know what our real values and intentions are, and this is our true self. It's the true self you should seek to identify in people, looking past their weaknesses. That's all. I feel pretty good about today.

Ryan

feelings

So it's been a while since I've written in here... I guess it's about time for another post.

I was trying to make this blog an outlet for pure positivity, but I'd feel inauthentic if I didn't write about how I actually felt in here. I have to be honest, I feel more depressed now than I've ever felt in my life. I read somewhere online that true positivity doesn't deny emotions but just accepts them as they come, so I guess I'm obligated to deal with this. Sorry, faithful readers (whoever you are).

I think it's due to a wide variety of factors, but who can really be sure. I think in college when we're all 'finding ourselves' we all have these moments, but in my case it seems kind of ridiculous how long they've lasted.

Earlier tonight I was thinking about who I am, like what kind of personality I've grown into. And I was really frustrated. And then I wondered if most people felt that way too or if it was just me. I guess before I go into the negative stuff I should start with the most positive, the aspects of myself that I think are unbeatable and that few if any can compete with.

I think the best things about me are that I'm extremely compassionate, loyal, and patient. I know that for the people I truly care about (if you're a member of this group, you're among limited company), I will do almost anything within my power to help them. The sad thing is that usually I've found I care more about the important people in my life than they care back for me. But still. I still believe that if you give more than you get back, you'll eventually get back in equal measure from other people who really do care about you. And sometimes people just don't know how to show that they care about you, or they don't know how to express it. We need to be forgiving and understanding enough to realize that.

As much as I think these strengths are great, it hurts me to list them. Because I feel like my weaknesses are perfect counterpoints to them-- I have a tendency to live for other people more than myself, because I have a counter-urge against anything I think is selfish. And I have trouble living in the moment. I think people that are happy have an ability to accept the status quo without question, and I always find myself over-analyzing things and wondering what other possibilities are or could have been.

I'm not sure what else to write. I wanted to put something down on paper tonight because it's been pointed out by multiple people that I've been neglecting this blog.

I guess to wrap up, I just get this feeling that life is passing me by. Passing us all by, really. And I wonder a lot how I can stop that feeling. I care about other people more than I care about myself in a lot of cases. I want to be wanted and needed, like everyone does I think, but somehow it all starts with myself. I think a lot of people that I look up to have automatically realized these truths, but somehow I feel like I just can't internalize them like others can.

I'm starting my senior year at Michigan, and when I look back on the past few years, I really don't know what I can say about them. I'll always be optimistic, though. I've been shown love, and I've always tried to give as much love as I could, wherever I could. Maybe not enough in some cases, maybe too much in others-- but I'm trying my best. I think I'll look for extra help this year. Thanks for listening, whoever's out there. Goodnight,

Ryan

the Hollywood story; or, in defense of romance

I haven't written in here in a while because I didn't have anything I wanted to write about with any strength. The other night at the office, inspiration struck again.

At the production office, my boss Dave and I do the night shift and end up watching movies to fill the time. After plowing through the Harry Potter saga in a week, our selections have become less focused, more random-- but recently we've been watching chick flicks masquerading as guy-friendly comedies.

On a side note, it's funny the way Dave and I rationalize our movie choices:

ON 'THE SWITCH':

Me: Man, I love Jason Bateman. He's so funny.

Dave: Yeah dude. Well, I've seen 'Dinner for Schmucks,' so... (the other possible redbox choice)

ON 'LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS':

Me: Anne Hathaway's so hot. I heard she's naked a lot in this movie.

Dave: Really?

(decision made)

But anyway, I've had a conflicted relationship as an aspiring filmmaker with the Rube Goldberg machine-esque story grind in Hollywood, and all the formulaic movies that come out as a result of it. One of the genres most susceptible to this kind of hackneyed, ham-fisted corruption is the romantic comedy. More broadly, it's any love story--  but usually, for box-office reasons, romance comes served with a side of humor.

Maybe it's just the wavelength I'm vibrating on right now that makes me write all this, but I feel I have to become a defender of the romantic comedy, executed correctly (more or less). Side note-- the ending of 'Love and Other Drugs' was really forced. I like where your guys' heads were at, but come on. Close but no cigar.

It makes sense that these stories exist. They have existed, and will continue to do so as long as human hearts still beat, people still crave intimacy and affirmation, and our imagination has the range to imagine and dream about a perfect romance. To take this discussion to the next level and show how serious I am here, Hollywood romance-- at it's BEST, not always-- is a warm helping of Platonic Idealism.

And I like Plato-- his philosophy was metaphysical, mostly applied to describe the physical world. Or at least, most people that pick up Plato and read him will assume that his 'ideals' were kind of an abstract way of describing physical objects. But I think a better interpretation is to truly stick to metaphysics.

You can't locate love on Earth. It's not something that can be bottled up and pocketed, but it exists. It exists as a place in the mind-- and so does everything else, really. It's a field of possibility, and to each person or pairing of persons, some permutation of this field emerges and can be observed by others.

And to put it as simply as it can possibly be stated, love is important.

I had a kind of mini-epiphany the other night when I was watching (POSSIBLE SPOILER) Jake Gyllenhall flying up the freeway in his Porsche, chasing a tour bus with a Parkinsons-disease-riddled Anne Hathaway on it before she leaves for Canada. Side note-- oh, Hollywood.

But as I was watching, I went through several mental gear-shifts.

The first was cynicism. Every romantic movie ends like this. After all the trials and tribulations, the man (less commonly, the woman) has to chase the woman (less commonly, the man) before she gets away. A dramatic, heart-rending expression of passion is displayed, the two are reunited.

The second was acceptance. You know, you have to give it to Hathaway in this scene. She's really crying... well, Jake is leaning into his lines a little hard, but alright. Man, he knows what he's doing though. Or the writer does at least, that's literally exactly what she would've wanted to hear.

The third was identification. I know these tears.

As a man, it's hard to admit some of the pull these stories have over me. Not because I'm afraid people might call me a pussy or something-- I mean I love tons of quote-unquote gay shit. I have a burning love for pop music of all shapes and sizes, I enjoy reading poetry occasionally, I own a pink striped shirt. I honestly couldn't give a fuck what people think about me.

The real reason is because these movies teach things. Movies like these get in your head with a mix of well-intentioned idealism tempered with conditioned social values that you swallow without noticing-- and this clashes with the natural instinct that actually helps men get what they want.

All straight men think about women constantly, and about sex-- but the percentage of men actually getting the amount of sex they want is probably ridiculously low. I'll go further and say that I don't think most women are getting as much sex as they want either, but for different reasons. Socially, men have learned how not to get sex and women have learned to avoid it. But I digress.

You have to square this as a man. One way is to cultivate a hate for women. Not a hate that spits and scowls, but one that slowly seeps in deeper with time. Every man has felt this at some stage, but not every man has had the presence of mind to quell it. This kind of mindset is a sneaky world poisoner-- it will twist and warp every perception you have of everyone around you in subtle ways you'll never re-examine. It's like a burglar breaking into your house at night and moving all the books on your shelves a quarter inch forward, or pivoting all your picture frames two degrees to the left.

Despite a natural frustration that comes with learning how to actually deal with women, I’ve learned to love women. I think that the road to viewing women as prizes only is a short one to drive down as a man, and often it somehow pulls women in despite better instincts—but emotionally it’s a dead end.

It's been said that romantic comedies teach men to let women get away with murder. For a romantic, these movies sting. There's always scenes where the male romantic lead is a Man. The onscreen couple has been through the fights, they've gotten into their petty arguments which escalated, they've had the blow-out fight where the secret motive from Act I has been revealed and the girl storms out angrily.

And the Man comes back, maybe with flowers or chocolates or some other sentimental gift. He looks the girl dead in the eyes, completely hang-dog in appearance-- on the VERGE of tears but not actually crying (usually). He steps up and stops being stubborn. He accepts responsibility for his mistakes, but now He has this feeling. He knows now that his life will never be the same without this girl. He will go to the ends of the Earth and the depths of Hell for her. And the girl will try to push him away, saying she's too much work, it'll be too hard, too much has happened between them-- and the Man will dispel all of these petty thoughts with one fucking powerhouse line that encapsulates an ocean of emotion.

The girl will smile and cry, jump into his arms. They'll kiss.

Everyone romantic man dies a little inside remembering at least one time they tried to be Noah from the Notebook. The guy who never gave up, and suffered beating after beating and either pushed the girl away or watched her turn cold to him. The truth is, these tactics really don't always work. Lots of women love a guy that will fawn over them-- for a little while.

But again, all of this is avoiding the deeper truth that everything starts and ends with the mind. Life is really just a giant blank and you get to scrawl in your answer. And the truth is it’s not impossible to be Noah—it’s just fucking hard.

In these movies, you get a lot of what being a man means to me-- you just have to be smart enough to put the messages in perspective, just like anything else.

To me, being a man means being stoic. It means being passionate and caring, being loyal, being positive and unafraid of challenge. It means having the confidence to show yourself all the time without fearing the perceptions of others. It means you impose your own reality.

You can get all this from good Hollywood movies, from so-called "trash," digestible genre flicks. But we have genre to remind us of the most primal things in life.

I think that as a man, you respond to love by feeling it fully or pushing it away. The kind of risks you take when you let yourself feel are a lot scarier than the safety you feel by being weak and pushing people away. We all know that there's a special kind of pain that only those that we love the most can inflict, sometimes intentional and sometimes not, but standing up to it is really the only possible option. And this goes beyond romance.

This even goes beyond being a man-- it's about being a good human being. My philosophy is that you love harder than anyone else in the room, you die a thousand deaths for the people you care about, and

you don't stop pushing against the world until it's rearranged itself to your liking.

As I was watching the end of that movie, I considered that the ending was bullshit-- but then I reconsidered. The ending was my bullshit.

I'm a fucking romantic. Peace,

Ryan

creativity

Hey everybody-

Writing again today, took a break for the weekend but I think I'm still pretty much on track to keep writing on here about three times a week or so. Although, I'd like for this blog to be a place to write when I have things to write ABOUT, and not just something to keep dumping in in order to meet the three times a week goal.

But there's a school of belief that says to be a writer you just have to keep writing, just keep pushing through and putting words on paper until something good hits you. And today it kind of worked because I wanted to write about creativity (I'm getting self-referential I know, god forbid).

But where does creativity come from?

And I mean that in more of a metaphysical sense-- for example, different artists draw creativity from different sources. For instance, Tarantino draws his creativity from movies, basically-- he draws on an existing body of work and spins variations on it until it resembles originality.

 

Somebody like Woody Allen is creative in a hyperreal way, since his movies resemble reality but they're infused with a kind of impossibly academic tone. And he often uses farce and fantasy elements to tell stories. But his range is fairly limited as well.

As a more extreme example, someone like Salvador Dali was inspired by the absurd and by dream images, and tried to confound typical interpretations of "meaning" and how that could be depicted.
 

Without getting too heady, the main question I have is how to click into the creative process in a real way.

A good parallel to use is meditation. There are a ton of techniques available to people in order to meditate, and they all leave to a "state" or frame of mind/existence that is accessible to everyone.

So in some sense, that state of mind exists as a universal field, regardless of if anyone is actually in sync with it.

It makes sense that a surrealist would draw creativity from dreams-- that must've felt like drinking from some kind of spiritual source from those artists, because the dream world is another kind of universal field that unites everyone. Dreams are pregnant with symbols and obscure meanings, and even though they're generated by our minds, they seem to exist separately and apart from ourselves.

But there are other ways to be creative, of course-- the main question is, to get to that creative "state," is it easier to stress a method or process or wait for a spark?

What I mean is here, I just started writing, forcing myself along until I was able to make SOMETHING worthy of being written down and possibly read-- but I don't feel that great about it.

But it's rare that a true original seed just plants itself in my mind and I start sailing on creative autopilot... and you want to stay in practice all the time, since your skills will dull if you don't keep sharpening them.

Form is a combination of structure and content, and you can go either direction-- focus on content first or structure first, or ideally, a balance of both, but I believe this is rare.

So I've just got to find some method that works a little better for me to keep being creative and putting stuff out in the world. Because we can't be sure of anything in this world, even our thoughts. And our thoughts are in constant flux and flow, like a river.

With a river, you can't stand in the same place twice. But capturing creativity with words or pictures allows us to keep traces of that place in the river we once stood in, to freeze a moment or feeling so that others can see and feel it, crystallized and frozen-- and maybe able to be understood better, because of it.

Philosophically, all of this rambling relies on the premise that the truth is out there (X-files reference). More broadly, everything you can imagine is "real" -- it exists as a possible field or path in the universe. And it's up to you to figure out how to materialize it, if you want to. Peace,


Ryan