living right

all over the world hearts pound with the rhythm
fear not of men because men must die
mind over body and soul before flesh
angels hold the pen, keep a record in time
which is passin' and runnin' like a caravan trader
the world is overrun with the wealthy and the wicked
but God is sufficient over plans they prepared
Mos Def, in the flesh, where you at, right here
on this place called Earth, holding down my square

-Mos Def, Fear Not of Men 


Hey again-

I'm at work again sitting at the front desk by myself... all the other interns are off doing random things so I'm here trying to find things to do. I'm finally over being sick I think, since I'm not waking up with a sore throat or anything anymore which is good.

I broke my new no drinking rule last night to go out with all the interns at Charleys for the first time. I'm glad that everyone I work with here is really cool and we all get along-- it was fun to hang out with everyone last night. Even though I didn't drink very much I still feel pretty bad today. It's weird that I've only been "in control" of everything in my life (eating healthy, exercise, sleeping well, etc-- living right basically) for like a week, but now anything I do that's outside of this new plan, my body and mind react so strongly to it. It's like I don't even want to go back to any of my old bad habits.

And after last night I know I'm definitely going to stick to my no drinking promise, probably for longer than a month. During freshman/sophomore year, drinking was really something I wanted to do and it was always a ton of fun. Now its something that other people mostly want to do and its just part of the social territory-- but most importantly is it's just losing its edge for me, and it's not that fun anymore. I mean maybe once in a great while but overall, not really. Its ironic that as soon as I'm legally allowed to drink and go to bars I no longer have any desire to-- I'm all drank (drunk? dranken? drunken?) out. But I guess that's life. Usually you never get what you want when you want it, and sometimes when you get things you don't know how to use them right away. Well that second part isn't as related, but the point is things come when they come. And often it's not in sync with how you planned it.

This summer I've decided that it's time to grow up and start figuring out what kind of person I want to be. And more importantly, it's time to figure out what I have to do and how I have to be to be happy. The funny thing is that being happy is basically the most obvious, transparent thing that a person can do or be-- somebody said that a person's most natural, organic state is joy. Joy comes with consciousness. The idea is that every second that consciousness exists, the possibility for joy exists because it's like everything coming in is reaffirming your existence. It's like a non-stop cycle of "I exist" running through your head if you can get in line with it.

We've all got primal needs, and the most primal is to live. So if you get into a primal frame of mind, you can keep drawing joy from everything around you and other things start to matter less.

So even though happiness is obvious, the path usually isn't somehow. But I came up with the idea that real happiness has to be anchored. It has to be thought of as a life philosophy and not a feeling-- basically, you frame happiness as an action rather than a reaction. So in other words, instead of happiness coming from money, cars, girls, vacations, or whatever, it comes from yourself.

And in order for happiness to come from yourself, you have to have value. Mos Def's song 'Fear Not of Men' has a perfect few lines about this that have been rolling around in my head for a few days:

...so how do people get better? Well, from my understanding people get better when they start to understand that they are valuable. And they not valuable because they got a whole lot of money, or cause somebody think they sexy, but they valuable because they've been created by God. And God makes you valuable. And whether or not you recognize that value is one thing...

 The God that Mos Def is referring to here I don't think refers to the Islamic "God," even though he is a Muslim. He strikes me as a spiritually enlightened guy who understands that religions are just pathways to truth-- truth exists, and you can get to it if you sort of "unlock" your head a bit. The language, codes, and rules of different religions help different people get there. Some people aren't helped by religion at all and need to internalize it all on their own. But regardless-

The point is, each of us sprang from the universe in whatever way that happened. And the probability that we would be wherever we are at this exact moment is so astronomically low that it starts to approach impossibility. But it happened, and it keeps happening-- every time we blink we cut out of the world and pop back in. Every time we breathe, we pull a bunch of subatomic particles from the mass of subatomic chaos that surrounds us, and pull it into our own little cloud of vibrating subatomic shit, and this keeps happening automatically unless you start thinking about it. But you forget it's happening a few minutes later.

Even simpler, its like we pull energy from the energy outside us into "our" energy-- when you start thinking like this, even the idea of owning energy (aka, your body-- its a bunch of stuff clumped together vibrating slowly, but at the lowest levels its basically just energy) is completely absurd.

And thinking about it starts to mentally separate you from it, which is really interesting.

Anyway, all of this is a roundabout way of explanation. My point was, we're here. And whether or not you believe the "granted value by God" explanation or not, the bottom line is you have to feel good about yourself to be happy. And you have to be proud OF YOURSELF in order to do that.

So how do you become proud of yourself? That's a question that's best posed individually. For each person, that means a lot of different things. With enough thought and pondering, you could probably become really proud of yourself right now without doing anything, but unfortunately many of us have been programmed beyond belief or control by everything around us-- even our biology in some cases.

But that's what I'm trying to do now. I'm proud of myself when I'm being creative, when I'm treating myself right, getting sleep, exercising, eating right, being social, and making others lives better. Basically, throwing myself headlong into the future (paraphrasing Dave Eggers here kind of).

Last thing-- what makes you proud is what's hard to do. So you won't want to do it. And that's how our mind actively stops us from being happy.

So set your standards for yourself, and if you want to be happy, meet them. And once your list of standards to be happy is reasonable, and all the standards are basically self-directed and not dependent on others, just realize that good enough is good enough. Peace,

Ryan