103) From Shitty-ness to Wellness: Part 3 - The Self-Improvement Treadmill and Its Perpetuation of Trauma
As you go through life and learn more about yourself, you may at some point decide to really take your well-being into your own hands, and DO SOMETHING about it. Some people succeed spectacularly in this quest, or at least it seems that way on Instagram. But no small number of us try, and try, and try, year after year, with our self-improvement goals and checklists and resolutions and vision boards and buddy systems and therapists and support groups and exercise programs and gurus and mindfulness leaders and spiritual books and self-help trends. And the next year, we’re still at it. Then the next decade.
102) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness: Part 2 - Stigmatization and the disempowerment of the struggling
When you find yourself struggling with mental illness, the “personal responsibility” mantra all-too-often reinforces the already-deeply-internalized sense that there is “something wrong with you”. Society’s stigmatization of those who struggle with mental health, coheres so seamlessly with that “inner critic” that it starts to seem accurate.
101) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness: Part 1 - Some Personal Thoughts on the Journey out of Hell
It doesn’t matter where you are or where you’ve been, in the sense that there is no value in judging yourself for that. It matters where you are heading, what direction you are pointing yourself in. If you’re pointing yourself towards wellness, honesty, healing, growth, then you deserve an inner standing ovation. Well done, hero-in-training! Well done.
100) A New Century
3:45 in the morning, January 1st, 2000.
(yawn, stretch, roll out of bed, go pee…)
Well, it’s the dawn of a new century! Actually, a new millennium! Well…I guess it isn’t really, until Jan 1st, 2001, but hey, nobody really cares about that. Anyway, whoa, that’s pretty cool. This sure feels like a unique, maybe even transformative, moment in history.
(sit down on the floor, lean against the couch, pack a bowl….)
(Blurble blurble blurble. Exhaaaaaale….)
Ahhhh….
99) From the River to the Sea
These are people whose families and communities are, right now, experiencing practically unimaginable terror and violence. Their future is a question mark. And their people have lived as literal prisoners, for 3/4 of a century. That’s three generations, an entire human lifetime, birth to old age, imprisoned.
And they feel joy. Along with rage, fear, and no doubt often hopelessness.
I don’t have words to describe what that feels like, to encounter that depth of love, community, sharing and openness. It’s….Well, straight-up, it’s one of the most absolutely beautiful experiences I have had in my 49 years on this planet as my current incarnation.
So, to my brothers and sisters, thank you. You collectively inspired me and touched my heart tonight. I will raise my voice with you, anytime, “From the river to the sea…”
98) The cure for The Dude's pain, is in The Dude's pain
You’re not special. Not any more than any other collection of atoms in the universe. Which is ok, because every single one is infinitely special. (And doesn’t actually exist as “an atom” anyway, but is indelibly interwoven into the whole Quantum enchilada.) So stop trying to convince yourself you’re “more special” than infinity.
Instead, feel. Everything. You’ll probably need help doing this. Which is, in some ways, exactly the point. Because “you” are not you, just like an atom isn’t an atom.
Embrace this. Your heart will open. And everything you once relied on for “coping” will seem so silly, when contrasted with Being itself.
This is not an idea. It’s as real as biting into an apple. Taking a shit. Moving your eyes back and forth to read these words.
You can do this.
97) Dear Abuser,
I once believed you were the Wizard, but behind the curtain, you are starving, sadly trying to subsist on mere illusions. As with all tyrants, I now see that you are a prisoner.
But long before I saw this, long before I had the intellectual scaffolding, the emotional distance, or the social validation to see that we both lived in a prison of your making, your words bathed me, held, soothed, formed, judged and condemned me.
96) Abuse, Trauma, Shame, and Healing
In an upcoming series of posts, I am going to explore the dynamics of the inner monster that seems to doom so many people to suffer lives of loneliness and limitation — Shame.
As we go through these posts, we’ll explore where Shame comes from, what it feels like, how it works, and how to heal and be transformed by it in a “positive” way.
Some of the posts will be experientially-written, poetic, descriptive or metaphoric. Some will be analytical and theoretical. Some will be practical, like a Wikihow article.
My goals/hopes are to touch your heart, sharpen your understanding, and help you build a skillset to heal from shame and free yourself.
95) Gratitude Day 9 - A Dead Raccoon
That raccoon-shaped piece of God taught me an important lesson about the wisdom of the “Perennial Philosophy” that is the beating spiritual heart inside the world’s religions. Without that raccoon, I think I would have been lost for far longer in a kind of modern perversion of spirituality, a positivity-infused delusion known as spiritual bypassing whereby so many people talk about wisdom as though it was practically synonymous with happiness, and happiness with “success” and living a life of passion and adventure, a North American-ized, mega-church, business and self-esteem-friendly Disneyworld version of Wisdom that is easy to translate into motivational sayings for people to hang on the walls of their yoga studios.
94) The Day I Saw My Future Unfold
I read a love poem once. It was titled “The Day I Saw My Future Unfold.” It was about a walk in a forest. The vibrancy of life. Beauty. The ecstasy of truly trusting someone with your whole heart. It sounded so perfect.
I wonder if their future unfolded the way they saw it.
So often, it doesn’t.
But in any terrain, you choose your path.
93) How to Not Murder People, Stay Addicted, or Commit Suicide: Part 2 - The Representativeness Heuristic is Sus
Do you struggle with feelings of not being good enough? Do you know anyone who does? It seems pretty likely. Brené Brown’s TED talk on Shame has more than 50,000,000 views. That’s greater than the entire population of Canada. Shit, eh? There seems to be a lot of people who feel like they’re not good enough….
92) How to Not Murder People, Be Addicted, or Commit Suicide: Part 1 - Making Decisions During COVID
Instead of thinking carefully about things, we take cognitive shortcuts. We use mental “rules of thumb”, and we do so because, come on maaaan, if you thought carefully about EVERYTHING, life would suck. Life is way too complicated; there’s too much uncertainty in the world; and who has the time for that anyway? Just “use common sense” and get on with things.
Right?
Well, unfortunately, sometimes this could lead you to murdering somebody (unintentionally, in this case). It’s also a HUGE contributor to addiction (and almost everyone you know, including you probably, is addicted to things). It even can lead to suicide. And much of this could be avoided if people just understood, like really understood, the boring-sounding Representativeness Heuristic.
91) The great unraveling: A horror story of life on Earth
When I started teaching at the UofT, in 2002, I still believed a citizen-led evolution of politics would be enough to reinvent the economy and turn things around. Not in time to save the natural world as we used to know it, but in time to save enough of it that we wouldn’t experience large-scale collapse, leaving humanity to fight each other for the scraps left on a dessicated, charred planet.
I still try my damnedest, day to day, to believe that, because giving up that belief is to give up the belief that “we will make it”. But honestly? Most of me doesn’t believe that anymore; I just cling to it in order to stay somewhat sane in the face of a global holocaust.
90) Gratitude Day 8: Loneliness
Loneliness is like a psychic heartbeat. It shows you that you are a creature of Love. You yearn for love. Not just to BE loved, like you want to consume other people and vampirically suck the love out of them. But TO love.
Loneliness tells you, moment by moment, that you are a fountain, a river, an ocean of love, and it is the sheer, relentless pain of loneliness that confirms that, irrefutably. For if you weren’t a creature of Love, then you wouldn’t be lonely. You would just “be”.
It is the very agony of loneliness that reflects your inner light. It is a Friend who visits, right in the depths of your suffering.
89) Jordan Peterson: In Conclusion - No Rules for Life
I don’t believe people need “rules,” any rules, for living an optimal life, and for creating an optimal society. Let me say that again — we don’t need Rules. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
88) Jordan Peterson: Part 7 - Psychology at the Ending of the World; Subsection 2 - The Doctrine of Original Awesomeness
Learning to be a responsible, productive, healthy, moral and reasonably successful human being does NOT come from rules. It comes from having one’s inner goodness nurtured, embraced, accepted and loved PLUS having one’s inner shittiness also embraced, accepted and loved, so that the power of being loved and accepted in our totality teaches us that we ARE “good”! We ARE worthwhile, beautiful, wonderful little beings. Maybe we don’t exactly behave that way all the time, but intrinsically, we are creatures of love, far more than we are creatures of selfishness.
87) Jordan Peterson: Part 7 - Psychology at the Ending of the World; Subsection 1: Where Jordan is Wrong AF
So along comes Jordan Peterson, with his “12 Rules for Life”, promising us the “antidote to chaos.” Like every snake-oil salesman of the past, his advice may very likely be ineffective, OR, ends up causing exactly the problem he is promising to cure. Based on the Judaeo-Christian framework which Jordan argues is the foundation of Western morality and ethics, this would be considered, well, downright evil.
86) What's it like to go to a protest?
The reality is, when you show up, your ally-ship is clear, and your acceptance is instantaneous. Are there moments of discomfort sometimes? Of course. And as you push through those moments, you realize how deep the practice of respect and listening can be, and how quickly people can see past your skin-based “group membership”, to the person you actually are.
That’s bloody inspiring.
85) Jordan Peterson, Part 6: The myth of "the myth of white/male privilege" - Subsection 2: Flat-Earthers, Climate change deniers, and Jordan Peterson on the Patriarchy
So Jordan, go tell the old Grannies of the world that they grew up just as empowered as their brothers, and emerged into womanhood with just as much power as men. That they had just as much say over their lives as their husbands. That they weren’t shamed for their sexuality (relative to males), impeded from entering business and professional workspaces (relative to males), had the same types of economic opportunities (relative to males), suffered the same amounts of criticism and humiliation and violence in their homes (relative to males), etc.
And when you convince the world’s grannies and aunties that there is no Patriarchy, then ok, you win.
84) Jordan Peterson, Part 6: The Myth of "the Myth of White/Male Privilege" -- Subsection 1: Nobody should care about this essay
The issue, for me, is that Jordan’s claim that male privilege is a myth is so thoroughly absurd that it’s actually difficult to address. Practically all of history, all of life experience growing up in this culture, and countless personal stories, indicate that Jordan is virtually delusional on this topic.