“One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small…”
-Jefferson Airplane
I had a weird day on Saturday. On Friday, one of my friends from high school called me out of the blue. I hadn’t spoken to him in nearly 20 years. He told me he was dying. He said that he had drank himself to death. I knew this was coming. It’s one of the reasons I stopped talking to him. I couldn’t keep standing beside him, watching his slow suicide. Maybe that makes me a bad person. Maybe that makes me a coward. Maybe that means I’m not strong enough. Maybe he represents the shadow side of me that I don’t want to see, so I avoid him to avoid that truth in myself. Maybe it means I was done enabling him. Maybe I did it for self-preservation because I didn’t want him to drag me down with him. I don’t know. I just know that I couldn’t watch it anymore, so I walked away.
On the phone, he said he loved me and missed me. He said he was sorry he wasn’t a better friend over the years, staying in touch, being there for me. He said he realized it was because he was jealous of me. I had been out there making something of myself and he was never able to escape our small town or really do anything with his life. He had tried but he just never found something he liked. He said he had so many regrets. He had so much he still wanted to do. But, as we talked about his unrealized hopes and dreams, he had barriers around much of what was still fully in his power to do, including getting a second opinion from the Mayo Clinic. We talked about Schrodinger’s Cat Paradox: He said he’d rather stay in a state of stasis where all things are possible, than make a choice and face the possibility of an even worse outcome. And I realized, that even when faced with the literal, life-changing power of death, he was still reciting a different variation of the same narrative I’d listened to 20 years ago: I have so much potential and so many dreams but I’m too scared to live them out. What if it doesn’t work out? It’s too much work to keep trying. Nothing I do matters anyway. I have no control. Life is completely random. No one is looking out for us. Life is too hard. Life hurts too much. I’m a victim. I’d rather live in static reality where all things are possible than make a choice and risk failure, rejection or tragedy.
I have recited that same narrative myself, many times over the years, especially when a new tragedy or disappointment strikes. It is so easy to get pulled in and give up, to lose hope, to feel completely powerless, especially if you have a history of being completely powerless while terrible things happened to you. SO easy. And, I’ve spent a lot of time in this narrative over the past few years. And, I’ve gone to some very dark places. And, like my friend, I’ve considered suicide.
“And if you go chasing rabbits, and you know you’re going to fall…”
-Jefferson Airplane
Saturday, I ate some magic mushrooms* in the hopes of pulling myself out of the dark place I was in. They took me to an even darker place, to the darkest depths of my victim complex, the same complex my friend had been living out. Some might say I had a bad trip. I’d say that’s in the eye of the beholder.
I began thinking about how easy it was to slip into the place my friend was inhabiting and just give up. I was having trouble seeing how my life was any different than his, that maybe I was going to die broke, alone, with a meaningless existence, full of regrets. He had so much potential and he did try a few things but he just never actualized. I was like, “Am I just like him? We have the same gifts, the same potential. That didn’t do him much good, will that do me any good? Am I going to suffer the same fate? I don’t have a family. I don’t have a partner. I’m broke. I’m alone all of the time. How can I possibly help people when I am sucking at normal life? Why should they listen to me? What am I actually doing with my life? What am I contributing? Am I even trying anymore? Am I losing my mind? Is this the end for me too?”
“When the men on the chessboard get up at tell you where to go….and your mind is moving low.”
-Jefferson Airplane
Then, I started thinking about the heat wave and drought we are having in Minnesota, about planetary destruction, about how most people are in denial, how no one’s really doing anything about it (well enough about it) and how in general, no one really knows what’s going on or what they are doing and we’re all just pretending we know but basically, we’re just floating aimlessly, living on the brink of destruction at all times in our own lives and in the world. I felt like I was losing my mind. Was I dying too? Life didn’t make any sense. Did anyone else feel this way or was I the crazy one? Why were so many wealthy people hoarding their cash and not feeding the starving children or using it to save our planet? Why can’t I make good money like they do? I will do good things with it. I already do good things with the little money I have. Why am I not doing more? Why did my teeth feel funny? Who the hell are these fuckwads supposedly in charge of us, spreading lies and misogyny and racism and hatred and greed and violence and destruction everywhere? They are hurting us. Can’t they see that? Why won’t they stop? Don’t they see that they are going to destroy us all? Isn’t anyone going to stop them before it’s too late? Why are some people still not recycling? Why have all of these terrible things happened to me? I’m a good person, I’ve dedicated my life to helping people. When will I get back what I’ve given? When will my life get better? Am I going to die alone? Please god, I don’t want to die alone.
“When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead, and the White Knight is talking backwards and the Red Queen’s off with her head…”
-Jefferson Airplane
I got really angry at how unfair life is. Life felt so random and meaningless, so full of tragedy and suffering with little hope of deliverance from it. There just aren’t enough good people doing enough good to ease the suffering of the world and enough to save our planet. And, I just didn’t know what to do and I felt completely groundless. There was no meaning. There was no purpose. There was no one to save us from ourselves. There was no one to save ME. I deeply felt the pain of the Earth and its people. I deeply felt my pain, my loneliness, my hopelessness. I felt so small and powerless in the face of all of this.
I thought about calling one of my friends to help pull me out this downward hell spiral but I didn’t want to sound like a crazy person and have them worry about me or question my ability to care for myself independently. Plus, I wasn’t sure anyone could/should help me with this. This might have been something I needed to fight and overcome myself. So, I just laid in bed and sobbed uncontrollably for three hours and begged god, someone, anyone, something, anything to help me, to help humanity, to save us, to save ME. And I felt completely, utterly powerless, hopeless and heartbroken. And, no one came. Nothing happened, no lightning bolts, no divine visitations. Just me, feeling powerless, hopeless, groundless, overcome by pain, heartbroken, completely alone, and completely INSANE. It felt like it would never end, that I’d go on feeling like this and believing this forever. After all, this wasn’t the first time I’d been in this place and it didn’t feel like it would be the last time.
“Remember what the dormouse said…”
-Jefferson Airplane
Then, in the midst of my dystopian despair, a thought quietly entered my mind: “Your manifesto. Finish your manifesto.” I remembered that I had written a manifesto eight months earlier about how each one of us has the power to save humanity and the planet by evolving our consciousness. But, I had been sitting on it for all of this time because I had become paralyzed by all of the edits and my goal of turning it into a video lecture. Plus, was it really going to help anything? Was it going to help ME? Was it good enough? Would people think my ideas were ignorant or harmful? Were people going to think I was naïve, or worse, unstable? Would I be punished for speaking my truth? What was it going to cost me? Was anyone going to actually read it? These fears kept this important piece of work completely unrealized, unactualized, like my dying friend. Until that moment. Because in that moment (you might call it a moment of deliverance from an existential crisis), those fears and my feelings of paralysis seemed small.
I thought, “Fuck it. I’ve gotta do something and this is something I can do. I want to be able to say that at least I tried. I didn’t give up. I didn’t let my feelings of powerlessness and hopeless completely possess me. I didn’t live in denial. I didn’t say it was pointless or too hard. I did something. I might not have as much to give as some but I do have something to give. I may not have as much power as some but I do have power. I may be suffering right now and not know what to do to help myself but maybe I can still help someone else. It may seem completely hopeless and this existence may be filled with tragedy but I am not going to stop trying to make this world a better place until I breathe my dying breath. I will not stop.”
Much to my surprise, I began to feel…better. Empowered. And, that feeling of empowerment, along with my willingness to keep going and the remembrance of my dream to make the world a better place, were what seemed to be the keys on Saturday, and in times past, to pulling me out of that dark, nihilistic place and into a brighter, more hopeful place.
So, I decided that I would pick up my article again and work on getting it out into the world. And, as I began editing, I started to feel even more empowered, energized, excited, joyful and, alive. I decided that I didn’t need to obsess about every GD word, phrase and detail. I decided not to spend hours trying to find all of the keywords that might bring it up in the search engines more easily.
I decided to forget the video lecture component and just hope enough people were willing to take the time to read the entire document. Perhaps they could think of it as a book, something they could bookmark on their devices and complete in several sittings. Because, when I was really honest with myself, I realized that I hated putting myself on display like that, in front of a camera. I could do it if I had to but I really hated it. I would prefer if everyone just pictured me as a recluse, living in a remote cabin in the wilderness, slightly crazed, furiously working on my manifesto, just like Ted Kaczinsky. Well, maybe not JUST like Ted Kaczinsky.
I realized that this article needed to live in the world, NOW. It needed to actualize, and I suppose, by extension, so did I.
“Feed your head, feed your head…”
-Jefferson Airplane
Now, it’s YOUR turn: What is going unrealized in your life: dreams, hopes, relationships, projects, ambitions? How are YOU not actualizing and achieving your full potential? How are you letting fear get in the way? How are you unwilling? What is one small step you can take towards the actualization of your dreams, hopes, relationships, projects, ambitions, and toward self-actualization? Sometimes, I’ve found, it’s simply enough just to pray to whoever is out there, and ask for the willingness to keep going or to do the terrifying thing. And if you still don’t know what to do or how to do it, the article that follows will hopefully give you some inspiration and guidance.
So, expand your mind: Read the manifesto (link here and below).
Expand others’ minds: Share the manifesto.
And, if you haven’t signed up for my newsletter yet, you can do so here.
Are we sabotaging our dream lives, and humanity in the process? Getting over our egos by evolving our consciousness, and saving humanity in the process. A manifesto.
*This is where I’m probably supposed to include some disclaimer about the dangers of using drugs and how I’m not a licensed medical professional, to release myself from responsibility for someone else’s choices. If, after reading my account, someone still thinks it’s a good idea to use such powerful, mind-altering substances without medical supervision or extreme caution, consider yourself warned. Your choices are in absolutely no way MY responsibility. And, I hope that the consciousness evolution-revolution I propose in the article below will put a stop to the need to make OTHER people responsible for OUR own life choices.
References
Jefferson Airplane. (1966). White Rabbit. On Surrealistic Pillow. Hollywood, California: RCA Victor.