Awareness, Part I

I'd like to think sometimes that, underneath this smothering fog of ignorance, I am aware. Everyday, I question and challenge and mull things over. I can't help it. I don't know if that is being raised in a family of academics or because, if you take things at just face value, the world is a ridiculous place. So I try actively to remain aware. Why is this happening? Who does things like that? Can we avoid this? Can we do this better?

So begs the question: Am I aware of myself? Can I turn these same questions and ask them of myself? The answer is, believe it or not, I do. Each and every day, I struggle with who I have become and what are the choices I have made to get to this point? Is my current situation (at all times, not just today) a result of a vengeful God more than ready to smite me at every turn for my sins or is it a consequence of a long trail of bad decisions? Either option is enough to leave me tossing and turning all night.

Starting with the former- am I currently paying for a life of sin and inequity? If so, what sins and by who's standards have I sinned? Have I lived a life of erroneous moral relativism or have I, by Judeo-Christian standards led a life of a heathen? Am I paying today for questioning my God yesterday or your God last week? Living in, what despite the best intentions of our Founding Fathers to ensure this country to be a secular nation, is a Christian country, am I to be held to the sins and standards of a Christian God? Or as a Jew, am I held to the laws of the Torah? Or as a person, am I held to the arbitrary belief system of whomever I am interacting with at the time? I honestly struggle with the answer.

As for the latter, this bears the asking, Did I think it was a sin when I made the conscious decision to act on my impulses? Or sins notwithstanding, did I just plain make a bad decision? Did that dollar I spent on a cup of coffee earlier turn out to be the dollar I needed to put in the parking meter that I failed to do that earned me the ticket that cost me hundreds of dollars and hours of grief later on? Did I violate no law but thumbed my nose at a social more that isolated me from the people I would need later? Did I take the last muffin without enough consideration as to whether you were saving it for someone else? Was that concert really more important than that class? Most importantly, if I had the chance to go back and do it again, have I sufficiently learned my lesson enough to do differently the second time around?

Yeah, I think about these things alot and it scares me. I have made ALOT of bad decisions. As my friend said to me the other day, "Am I paying today for transgressions I made twenty years ago?" Perhaps.

But here is my defense.

I have no recourse to change the past. What I can do is make right on the present and strive to be a better me tomorrow. Because, let's be honest- right now, I kinda suck. Krishnamurti said the awakening of intelligence is knowing your limitations. My uncle said that "If I learn from half my mistakes, I will be a wise man." So today I will find strength in the very fact that being aware of my flaws makes me a better person today-so long as I aim to do something about them. That, is the key.

I am fortunate to have a handful of friends who are not afraid to call me out on my bullshit, and who are secure enough to take it when I do the same. I have one or two who, through long late night phone calls or text messaging conversations, help me by holding themselves up to the same unwaveringly honest light and talking long through the night on all that our flaws reveal about ourselves, our upbringing, our mental states and our environments.

"This guy called me a dick today at Walmart. Oh my God, am I a dick?"

"Yeah, bro. You kinda are. I mean, I love ya and all, but you do come across quite dickish alot."

"I don't mean to be."

"C'mon man. Yeah you do. You revel in it."

"You think so?"

"Absolutely."

"Why do you think that? Do you think I'm a dick?"

"Sometimes. But I understand why you're a dick. Hey, I'm a dick too. And to be truthful, I enjoy being a dick probably more than you do sometimes."

"Well, why do you think it is that we so enjoy being such dicks all the time? I mean, I don't think it's really helping our cause."

"I don't know. But we seriously need to tone down the overt dickishness in our day-to-day actions."

"No shit. Do you think that's why God is smiting us all the time?"

"No, I think God smotes us all the time because God is a dick."

"So aren't we then acting in God's image by being dicks?"

"Yes, but unfortunately, we aren't technically allowed to just go around smiting other people."

"I know. It's really unfair. It'd be cool though if we could. I would totally have a list. If I could smote people tomorrow, I already know who I would smote."

"See? That's exactly why you're a dick. What I need to figure out now is why I keep getting smote."

"Why? Ten minutes ago, you called God a dick. You're coming down on my ass for hypothetically wanting to smote people and you called God a dick. I don't really think you have a lot of room to talk. "

"True. True."

I am lucky that have friends who understand my irreverence and are open enough to have these discussions and I like that about myself that I allow myself to break down my actions and intentions to try and understand why I do the stupid things I do. I like it about myself that I am willing to ask myself these hard questions and try to address these things on a regular basis. I sincerely hope you have that same willingness and ability to hold yourself under the microscope and diagnose your own flaws and then, have the same wonderful circle of friends who are honest enough with themselves and others to be able to hold up the mirror as well.

I am a deeply flawed person who has made a lot of bad decisions in my lifetime and somehow how, I feel much better today for saying that.

Day 2

I like to have fun. I like that I like to have fun. You know...'cause it's fun. Like Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke (my all time favorite movie), making a game out of laying tar in a chain gang, no one can stop me from having fun. They can tell me what to do, when to do it and how to do it but they can't stop me from wringing every ounce of joy out of whatever is in front of me. This I have learned so far. Have to do the dishes? Fine. But me, I'm putting on some music, pouring a glass of wine or a cocktail and taking my sweet time. Time to think. Time to listen to some old forgotten album that I haven't heard in a while or just time to make the world around me, or at the very least the kitchen, a little less cluttered. Now I use this as just one example. I say this only because I'm sure there is no shortage of people out there who would challenge my assertion that doing dishes can be fun or even the very fact that I actually do dishes. Again, this is merely an example. Please do not inundate me with frivolous requests to do your dishes. I have a hard enough time doing my own in a timely manner. I am merely suggesting ways to make a unpleasant task a little more fun. But I digress.

Sometimes, I like going grocery shopping with friends. For those that know me, they will tell you I approach such stores as the grocery store, Target or Walmart with a sense of joy and wonder. Rows and rows of exciting things just waiting to leap off the shelf into your cart, soon to become a rewarding meal with all sorts of flavors bursting in your mouth. For instance, there are like twenty six different flavors of Orbit gum that you can rearrange in all sorts of rainbows and pallets of color when the check out girl is not looking. There are flavors of Pop-Tarts and breakfast cereals that are just crying out to jump into your basket. Cereals with marshmallows, little oat clusters that are happily endorsed by friendly talking squirrels, stuff that changes the color or flavor of your milk! How can you not stroll down an aisle like this without a certain amount of childlike rapture? There are wonderfully provocative things in the grocery store like Bone Suckin' Sauce which makes you just want to shout out at the top of your lungs every time you pass it, "BONE SUCKIN' SAUCE?! HEY, HONEY LOOK, THEY'VE GOT BONE SUCKIN' SAUCE! WANNA DO SOME BONE SUCKIN' TONIGHT? OOH, CAN WE? CAN WE?" The grocery store is like a big edible toy store with amazing and exotic things in it like Bone Suckin' Sauce and little chicken nuggets shaped like stars and dinosaurs. They have fanciful places in there like the popsicle aisle. Ever been to the popsicle aisle? It's like twenty feet of pure wonder. And the popsicle aisle is always at the end of the store. Kinda like the prize booth at Chucky Cheese where you go to cash in your Skee-Ball tickets at the end of the day in exchange for something new and exciting. At the end of a long exciting day of shopping, you should get popsicles. Or at least some ice cream. Or a bottle of Magic Shell that you can pour all over the frozen peas when Mom's not looking and then convince your little sister later on that they're Raisinettes. Scooby Doo is in the popsicle aisle! And Dippin Dots and those little weird half ice cream, half popsicle cones with the gumballs in the bottom. I mean, if you are just running in and out of your grocery store and not taking in all the amazing sights and scents and thrills that your local Publix or Food Lion can offer, you're missing out. Where else in the world can you basically have anything under the sun you want to eat on demand? The place is awesome. Except for the gnomes. (We'll talk about the gnomes at a later date...) Table after table of fresh fruits and vegetables and a tiny little electronic produce god who hides underneath the shelves and makes it rain. They often have coffee and tea in little tiny cups (the grocery stores, not the tiny produce gods) - like the kind you drank apple juice from in kindergarten. It makes you want to drink your tiny coffee, munch on some of the tiny tasties from the deli and crawl underneath the apple bins and take a nap while you dream of wild exotic Pop Tarts and the House On Pooh Corner. Then there's a whole section of cakes and cupcakes and cookies and pies and and...they even sometimes have books, magazines and toys. Often, if they have them, I like to grab one of those super light bouncy balls that they keep in that big cage and bounce around the store with it until its time to check out. Then I throw it really far or kick it over to the next aisle and then blame it on my friend who is currently ten to fifteen feet behind me hiding behind the Nilla Wafer display and explaining to the nearest co-shopper that they don't know me or something snarky about my not taking my medication. Oh, how my heart aches for those poor people who miss out on the pure joy that is grocery shopping. The excitement. The thrills. The BOGOs. I love BOGOs. It's like having that surging adrenaline rush of secretly shoplifting something but doing it legally. It's like you're checking out and right when the unsuspecting rube of a cashier swipes your food with the fullest intent of charging you for it, you go AHA!, but I too am crafty, Ms. Cashier Lady. That is BOGO. It's like you're going "Ha ha! I am going to just take this box of Pop Tarts, no! Make it two- no, six boxes of Pop Tarts and I'm only going to pay for THREE of 'em! And there ain't nothing you can do about it." Then later on you go home and separate out your food into two piles. One pile for the food you paid for and one pile of BOGOs that you swiped from those suckers right out from under them. Every so often, you are like, 'Listen, bitch. Not only are you going to give those as a BOGO but BOO YA, I got a coupon too. Uh! That's right, 50 cents off. You heard me. Those aren't going to be BOGO 2 for $5, those are gonna be BOGO'd for 2 for $4.50. Now whatcha gonna do? Wha? Oh yeah, don't make me drop the dollar yogurt coupon on yo ass!"* Ooh, and they have these amazing rides like the little motorized scooters or the shopping carts that are shaped like fire trucks. They sometimes even give you balloons and cookies. Most people think these are just for children, but that's mostly because they're not used to 36 year olds asking for cookies and balloons. Usually they give 'em to you with out much fuss and it usually takes a while for the shock to wear off before they catch on. And by that time, you're like four aisle away feeding the lobsters in the little tank by the seafood counter sugar cookie crumbs. Because, by this time, you're almost at the cereal aisle and you've found exciting new things to catch your fancy like Froot Loop Cereal straws. Nine boxes of cereal straws later, you are home free. I'm serious. You should try it.

Write this down. This shit is good to know.

Anyway, my point is that it is up to you to decide how you approach things. Like I said, people can tell you where to go, what to do and when to do it but no one, I mean no one can keep you from having fun if you decide you want to have fun- no matter what you are doing.

They can, unfortunately, tell you that you have to wear pants.

Oh, and I really like friendly talking squirrels who like to give nutritional advice. I mean, who doesn't?

*From past experience, I highly recommend that you keep that dialogue in your head. While no one can impede on the joy that is BOGO or coupons and certainly not BOGOs with coupons, one ill spoken "BOGO that, beyutch!" and you can all but count on finding your bread and eggs at the bottom of a very overstuffed bag full of canned goods.

DAY 1:

Ok. I'd like to start by saying that I know how to laugh at myself. You can make fun of me all you want. I'm okay with that. I learned long ago that laughter is indeed the best medicine. Far too often we get ourselves in trouble because we take life, others, the world around us and whatever the day has handed us way too seriously. We fill our lives with anger, jealousy, insecurities and guilt instead of laughter. To what end does this get us? Not me buddy. I prefer to revel in the absurdity that is life because I know that every time I take myself too seriously, someone or something is around to knock me back down. Count on it. It's like when you were walking briskly home from school, king of the world, totally thinking you're the shit and then, BOOM!, without warning, you trip on a crack on the sidewalk. You regain your balance, look around and hope that no one saw that, shrug it off and pretend it never happened. Or laugh. Acknowledge that ok, I may come off like king of the world, but between me, myself, and I...we know I am a complete dork. Let's just hope nobody else finds out. Now you're harboring a secret. As you walk through the hallways of your job just like you did in high school, you find yourself once again looking out for cracks in the sidewalk to make sure you don't trip-to make sure nothing will happen to reveal to the world that, deep down inside (or perhaps bubbling right beneath the surface, you are, in fact, a complete dork.

Ah, but this is not the life for me.

I, sir, am a dork and I am proud. I wear it proudly and refuse to bite it back down as one more secret to have to carry around. I am a dork. My friends know it. It's why they enjoy logging onto their Facebook and spending the better part of the day joining in my absurdities. My friends know that I am not afraid to laugh at myself, and more importantly, the beauty of my circle of friends (and I mean the ones that have been around for 20+ years) is their ability to laugh at themselves in their own right.

Look, we have names for people who take themselves too seriously. Douchebags. Fanatics, fascists, zealots, assholes. These are the people who sue McDonald's because they spilled their own coffee on their own lap and then turned around and blamed others. These are the people who shoot down soccer players for turning a play that cost their country a win. These are the people who spraypaint temples and churches because they can't deal with the fact that other people are different. These are the people who are more concerned with what other people are doing. These are those guys who trip on the crack in the sidewalk and blame you. These people are dangerous.

But not my friends. My friends have never been too proud or too serious as not to acknowledge their own glorious dorkhood. We have often been accused of being irreverent, even obscene on many occasions. We have been accused of laughing too loud. We have been banned from places you may not yet have been lucky enough to even go to. We are a rag tag motley bunch. We are loud and raucous and frayed around the edges. We may not always be the crowd you want to be associated with On any given day, we may smell like booze or sex or fertilizer or baby vomit. We may question the government, God, our teachers or our parents. We may have some issues with authority here and there. We may have some attention deficit disorders. We may not always be pretty. But man, do we know how to laugh! Because among the few things we do take seriously is our friendships and our unalienable right to the pursuit of dorkiness and the God-given right to mock ourselves and the ridiculously absurd world around us.

Amen.

As I wrap up a particularly intense and personal Yom Kippur, I am, amongst other personal goals and challenges, taking on a challenge, nay I say, dare from my friend Jenni. Can I come up with a new thing I like about myself and a new thing I like about others (with no strings attached) for forty days? As I endeavor to minimize the negativity, drama and b.s. in my life over the next year, I will approach this with several strategies.

1. I/We are addicted to drama and negativity as a culture so I will approach this like an addiction. One day at a time. 21 days starts a new habit.

2. Pilfered from Tom Rath's How Full Is Your Bucket?: Everyday is filled with hundreds to thousands of isolated opportunities to either fill someone's bucket with positivity and strength or to drain their bucket with negativity and criticism. What do YOU do when these opportunities arise? I will try to be a bucket FILLER this year.

I'll talk more about some of the other strategies tomorrow...