As I turn twenty-five years old today (only written four months late, due to the weathering lockdown), I’m reflecting on how far I have come since my last birthday. The fear of death is obviously something that needs to be acknowledged and given attention, however, it also essential to not forget to keep striving and living life as healthily as possible. To get the most out of life, we need to strive for mindfulness each and every day. As an explanation of any addict’s journey back and forth from recovery, just when you achieve a great insight or breakthrough, it can quickly vanish as if it had never taken place at all. My mission during the upcoming years is to be sure that those important lessons of caution and optimism do not dissipate into thin air.

As we (if even possible?) emerge from this global pandemic and look back on the events in the past year and a half, it is easy to feel a sense of loss and disconnection from the chaos that has consumed us. And yet, despite the turmoil, there are moments of clarity and appreciation for life that have come about. For some of us, we have even turned to creative outlets as a means of solace and healing. This blog post will discuss this transformative journey of understanding, through a personal and philosophical perspective, as well as the various ways we can find peace and beauty in our own lives.

Photo by Honey Yanibel Minaya Cruz on Unsplash

The Lost Year and a Half

It’s been awhile since I’ve meaningfully written anything, here. But a lot has been on my mind. As it currently stands, I don’t have any compelling narrative, no flashy advice. Just some things I want to write. Pen to paper — just to get it off my mind, maybe.

Let’s begin as usual, shall we? It is fatiguing to even begin a sentence with “The past year and a half have been difficult…”, the state of the world that we are currently living in is a continuing, mutual, and universal terror. Or maybe for some lucky others, it’s just merely a mess. Regardless though, it is a span of time that has taken it’s obvious toll.

I miss writing — I really do. But I don’t feel as though there’s a centralized, coherent place for me to write anymore. In this chaotic timeframe, I feel a sense of loss. A loss of calibration — understanding where I want to go and how to get there, of what I want to write and why.

But that’s exactly it, I have to remind myself. One of my original mantra’s was “Writing for the sake of writing”, just getting any particular thoughts or ideas nicely collected and organized and then published. At the very least, that is a good meditative starting point for me at the current moment.

Let me rewind for a second, back to the title. It’s fairly catchy at least, isn’t it? Who doesn’t love a mystery. It’s one that’s so far caused me two 911 calls and two trips to the hospital. Specifically, some sort of unspecified tachycardia and palpitations that have recently gotten more severe.

Both luckily and frustratingly, at the time of writing, there isn’t any discernible diagnosis. I’m sitting at home right now, feeling fine. Further tests are required. The idea of having to wait weeks to see if something has been missed has given me a debilitating amount of anxiety.

The peculiarities of my physiology puzzle me — an educated guess as to why this is affecting a young man my age, one who often has such a rapid heart rate, would be due to the use of hard drugs. At the very least, perhaps there’s the likes of over-caffeinated work sessions followed by a ritual of daily tipsy relaxation periods.

However, this is not the case. I am painfully sober — the only coffee I drink decaf, black. I have dutifully stayed inside, no fun parties with others, and no self-destructive behavior alone, either.

I feel as though my body is made of glass, as if I could shatter at any moment if too much strain is put on my mysterious, broken heart. And I’ve found myself paralyzed from this sense of fragility. Not doing anything in particular, one way or another. Terrifyingly counting the days of the hottest summer on record, one by one.Throughout my time of reflection this past year and a half, I have grown increasingly aware of just how badly the extended pandemic has impacted the mental health of many, myself included. The simple joys and pleasures of life, such as seeing friends and family, going out to eat and being able to explore, have all been lost to this global crisis. And yet, I have still found ways to appreciate life and to stay emotionally healthy.

And even worse than that is that I do feel an inspired compulsion, nearly every night, to write. And instead I tell myself I’m too tired now, and that I’ll do it tomorrow instead. And that pattern just repeats.

With the tragic irony being that writing helps me so much. Even if it’s just a simple, mundane journal entry. Getting everything out of my head and onto somewhere else is a sincerely mystical ritual. It is the transferal nature that cannot be explained in its entirety.

Photo by Ally Griffin on Unsplash

Finding Silver Linings in the Chaos: Coping with Life’s Ugly Side

In truth? Everything is a fucking mess. Everything in my life is a mess. Just like the culture I whirl countless criticisms towards, I really only have, so far, put my best face forward online.

From a business perspective, you’re told of the importance of “personal branding”, of calculated vulnerability to make yourself appear human — but not weak enough that you might labelled ‘unhireable’.

A much stronger point though, in my opinion, is a philosophical perspective: only the idea matters. There is no reason to include personal foibles and follies unless it is for the pragmatic purpose of empowering an idea with storytelling. The rest is secondary.

In my past five years of writing on Medium, I think I have done the latter fairly well, though not the former — My writing is so sporadic and without a tangible call-to-action it can hardly be called good marketing via personal branding.

It goes without saying that doesn’t matter. More than anything, being honest with myself and the world is what matters the most. You are required to build everything on top of that. That is the exclusive foundation for communication and building something sustainable.

So then, let me be honest. I have been trying to be clever in crafting a narrative for the past 18 months — scratch that, maybe more like 18 years — that spins my experiences and my character in the most positive light imaginable short of pure fiction.

And I do think there is merit in that idea — to take our sufferings and foraging an important meaning out of them as a means of psychological survival at the very least, and a sense of thriving at best.

But honesty must take priority over meaning. And that is a surprisingly hard pill to swallow. To be completely objective about the past — our past — inhibits the ability to mythologize it, it disallows us from crafting a narrative of meaning.

As you can see, even now I am being purely pragmatic. Sincere vulnerability — the kind of vulnerability that is plainly ugly, with no silver lining, and with no lesson learned — is not something that comes easy for me to find in myself.

It is easy to glorify the mistakes and failures of those who eventually become successful. It is only easy in hindsight to look back on their journey and think every bad decision and poor judgement call — or worse — was somehow necessary or inevitable for their future success.

Please excuse the following cynicism, but after a long bout of meditation over the course of an isolated year-and-a-half, I believe it resonates true:

But we do not glorify the mistakes and failures of those who do not become successful. In spite of the fact they are tenfold. One-hundredfold. With over seven billion people in the world, so many more of them end up dead without any sort of redemption, without any sort of dreams achieved. Without a loving family surrounding them at their death. Without any sort of meaningful obituary or overall positive impact on the world.

This is not because they negatively impacted the world instead. They just did not really impact anything at all.

For most of us, which is a vast majority, the best we can hope for is to pass on some sort goodness to someone else — usually younger — that will then go and perhaps impact the world greatly. Or just blindly, naively continue this torch passing without noticing that it never was actually lit.

Photo by Josh Eckstein on Unsplash

Breaking Out of the Rut

It is maddeningly frustrating and holistically embarrassing that I require such a stark, intense wake-up call to get my shit together even now, at twenty-five years. That I’m still so intensely immature and incapable of such simple, rudimentary tasks. It’s too singular of an experience to conclude with a meaningful thesis. With everyone gone, I feel as though I can- and I must — genuinely express myself. To accept everything I have gone through and everything I will go through in the future without trying to craft a new story-line or narrative onto it explaining why it all made sense in the end. I am just trying to grow, and to hopefully do some good — for myself and for others.

I am twenty-five now, and yet, I am unchanged in some ways. And I am the most changed in so many others. I have had to face and accept my own mortality more now than ever before. I respect the world and daily life much more having seen that it could be taken away so quickly. But even more than that, I recognize my strength and confidence. I know what I am capable of, and how resilient I can be.

At the end of the day, we are all faces in a faceless world. We can choose how we react to life’s events — how we shape our own experience and legacy — but no matter the outcome, the only truth is the journey itself. And I am so grateful that I get to take this journey with so many who are also in the midst of their own.

I ought to stop trying to make sense of the nonsensical. I ought to stop trying to make the world a better place by always jumping ahead when I should be simply stepping forward. In doing so, I should grant myself the permission to be inextricably flawed, ultimately imperfect, and solely human. This is an intimidating course of action. I’m willing to bet it’s where I, and many others too, find ourselves stuck at the moment. But, I am also sure that this is exactly where healing and recovery begin.

I remain strong and steadfast in my commitment to stay true to myself and do as much good as possible. This reflection has been therapeutic, and it has enabled me to look ahead with clarity and optimism. I still have so much to learn and to accomplish, but I find comfort in knowing that I am taking steps forward in the right direction. I am confident that by remaining focused, I will be able to use my story to help spark clarity, optimism and courage in others and help make a positive impact on the world.

Despite the darkness in the world, there is so much light and beauty. There is challenge, but also an opportunity to become something better than we could have ever dreamed possible. Here’s to the future and all it may bring!

Previous Birthday Posts

20: Becoming an Adult — Turning Twenty is Weird. 21: Structure → Chaos — Musings on privacy, disruption and mindfulness. 22: Accepting Good Responsibility — Happiness isn’t the Meaning of Life 23: Dying Without Seeing You Again — Living on fire without putting yourself out — and cherishing the heat. 24: Be Noteworthy — An attempt to find peace with who I am.