Tahoe, Sunday Journal

There's fightin' and love on my mind this morning.  

My mom and I got in a fight yesterday and it reminded me of all the things I don't want to be: angry, loud, upset. 

Getting in a fight with my mom (over nothing), helped remind me that I'm off my path. Since 2017, I've been trying to eliminate anger from my experience — it may be an impossible task, but all progress is good progress toward that end. 

Sure, I have permission to get mad if something actually awful happens, but my experience has been that my irritation and anger are usually massively outsized. Just like the fear-that-the-Lion-is-hunting-us anxiety that no longer has a place in our Savanna-free life, my spiraling anger feels like an anachronism. 

The surprisingly effective balm to the anger problem has been two-pronged: mindfulness and needful surgery. 

Mindfulness is hotter than Kimmy K with Ray J in 2002, so I'll only say that, for me, meditation has widened the gap between stimulus and response. 

The needful surgery replaced my arthritic right knee with a metal and plastic replacement. With 95% of my pain gone, it's easier not to be irritated with the world for requiring walking. 

So, today, after a fight with mom yesterday, I'm trying to remember that the anger can be melted away — that, with practice, I can give myself even more time between stimulus and response. 

Today, I'm also hopeful that I can continue to find empathy for everyone, including myself, in difficult times. So often I get stuck in a spiral of self-criticism, which seeps out into my communication — and then, suddenly, nothing is right; every word is wrong; and finding empathy becomes near impossible. 

So Imma practice some self-forgiveness and empathy now: you've come a long way in just a few years and you've overcome patterns of communication that are wildly unhealthy. 

That's a little better. 

"A smile is the ultimate sign of self-mastery." (-T. Zao) A smile stops the spiral. 

(Rough transition) Also on my mind this morning, is love. 

Should I be against love and for trust? What is 'love' anyway? Oxytocin? 

"I'd rather you trust me than to love me' (-K. Lamar)

Maybe it's best to look at love like heroin — some of us had our fun with it, but people who make it to old age put that shit down before they hit 30.

Chasing love is like chasing the dragon — junkies always look for that big hit, no matter what it'll cost 'em. 

Even if you're straight and narrow and only try for love with one person, the resentment borne out of unmeet expectation will eventually lead to rock bottom. And as any AA or NA'er will tell you, how you respond to rock bottom determines life moving forward: 

Some people dig and dig and dig despite the rock bottom — they refuse to give up the shovel and bang it into the solid floor. They eventually snap the spade from the handle and bash at the rock with a stick until the stick splinters and they claw at the rock. They, of course, die down there, exhausted. 

Some people hit the rock and start back filling the hole. They recover by slowly inching their way out of hell, by muddling through the dirt of their past. 

Others grab the rope thrown that was always there, but not seen by all. The ready help of the understanding other.

And in monogamous love, when one hits that bottom, when one's looking at one's partner and wondering "where'd all the excitement go?" the options for action are even more various: cave-in and deal with the depressing facts of life; lash out and look for extra- love even though it won't last; lash out at your partner for not providing an impossible thing; begin a slow-burning resentment that will take years to surface; or etc. 

So, it would seem, I have a pretty clear opinion on the matter: romantic love is a drug for the young and dumb.  

Best to stay sober and be a person to be trusted. "Wag." (-John Berryman, Dream Song 14) 

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