thoughts on my travels

there's a clip floating around the internet lately that brought me great joy, but i think it also just clarified a lot of things in life for me. it's something said by robin williams.

in night at the museum, robin williams plays theodore roosevelt. i haven't seen the movie so please excuse me, but at the end, robin williams character says goodbye to ben stillers:

williams: "it's time for your next adventure!"

stiller: " i have no idea what i'm going to do tomorrow."

williams: "how exciting"

robin williams delivers this line with such reassurance and calm. it's really hard to fully express it in writing. i think no other actor could have done it the same way as him. you can listen to a clip of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvlv-SvL2cU&t=4s

it's one of my favourite memories of robin williams. he was a true gift to the world. rest in peace.

the reason the clip became popular recently is that someone pointed out that williams committed suicide shortly after this, which meant that this was the last line he ever said in a movie.

this single exchange summarizes what i think is the key to happiness: curiosity in the face of uncertainty. i've written a lot about dealing with uncertainty. it's something i think is incredibly important.

people are afraid of uncertainty. deathly afraid. and this fear keeps them stuck. in the same job, same relationship, same city, same life. they remain trapped to repeat the same mistakes in the same life that they know.

nothing is certain. the sooner you see this, the better your life can be. we live in a world of probabilities and yet we seek guarantees. of our happiness, of money, of health, even silly things like weather. they don't exist. they will never exist. and that's ok.

it's ok, because the good things live in this space. this space between what could happen and what does happen. life exists here. when people talking about living in the moment, i never know if they really know if they are full of shit or not. but i hope that this is what they are talking about.

let me try and explain what i mean. the very fact that nothing is certain is what makes you appreciate when things do happen.

when i was younger, my parents took me on safari. i was very fortunate. i loved animals and watching them. there is something incredible about seeing animals in the wild. it's completely different than going to a zoo. yes, part of it is the majesty and beauty of the animals themselves. seeing them unrestricted and free is a sight to see. but there's more than just that. there's the unknown. there is a magic in that chase, in seeking something rare. whether you see it or not, the magic is all the same. you'll never have that at the zoo.

now, this post isn't about animals, or safari. but for me, it's a metaphor. if you treat your life as a giant safari, and the experiences you have in life as the animals you are hoping to see, the magic will appear. but the magic hinges on the fact that nothing is certain. we can influence and increase the odds of certain things, but when it comes right down to it, it's about probability. if you reframe it as the joy in this uncertainty, it this pursuit, then and only then, can you start to appreciate the journey.

i think uncertainty is the origin of gratitude. some people like to say that this gratitude comes from god. that's not for me. the universe more than explains it.

this is how i feel about writing. i don't write hoping that other people will like what i have to say. i write as a deeply personal means to let out my thoughts and my emotions. i sometimes really like what i write and then, on very rare occasion, i share pieces of it. but that is never the goal or the purpose. i write for me. it's almost spiritual ... it's certainly therapeutic. writing gives me a catharsis. a means to process and understand myself. i am happiest when i when i am able to write.

sometimes you just have to start writing before you know what you want to say. you have to just let the words flow out of you in a rush before they’re formed, before you have time to give them structure or thought. this is what lets them be totally pure and true. 

i haven’t been doing well recently. i pretend that i am. but i haven’t. i am unfocused, unmotivated, but worst of all, i am lonely. i shouldn’t be, i have so many people who love me deeply. i see that. objectively i see that over and over again. but loneliness is a funny thing, because it’s impervious to rationality. 

that’s weird for me to write. i am someone who’s life has been so dictated by rational thought and reason. in fact it was my exes’ biggest criticism of me. 

but still, here we are. i feel alone. i feel distant. i feel profoundly sad. i have been trying so hard to not say that out loud. to not let anyone else know that. but clearly that isn’t the right strategy. clearly i can’t just suppress this feeling that has been waiting to rush out of me the minute i start putting pen to paper - or in our modern world, fingers to the keyboard. it took me less that 50 words to go from having no idea what to write about to admitting the thing that has been consuming me for a long time now. 

i don’t know where i go from here. step 1 was this i guess. admitting. embracing. maybe soon i will be able to shout it out loud, but for right now, writing it down is a start. 

everything comes in waves. 

bear with me a minute on this post, i promise it will come around to something if not profound, at least interesting.

sometimes i do weird little challenges with myself. i’m sure i’m not alone in doing this, but some of mine probably are more extreme than the average persons. 

for a number of years i decided that i wasn’t going to pee on an airplane. i have no idea why i decided to do this. it probably wasn’t good for my bladder. it served no real purpose. but that isn’t the point of this post and i stopped doing it by the way. 

the point of this post, is what i learned from that struggle. i noticed that in the sometimes 14 hours i would be conscious and refusing to pee - again please don’t worry about the details, i have stopped this practice - there would be periods where the urge to pee was almost overwhelming. where i wasn’t sure if i could make it any longer. where my body would have little involuntary shakes. but then without explanation, this would invariably pass. my body would relax again. all of sudden i felt comfortable again. the wave had passed.

ok this sounds crazy - yes i agree. it was fucking crazy. i was young. but i still learned from it, which is cool in retrospect. 

and the weird thing was that i noticed the same pattern in other aspects of my life. 

i work 24-32 hours shifts. sometimes i get to sleep during those nights, but other times i don’t. the next day is almost always difficult. i don’t sleep afterwards, because i found that that disruption of my normal hours was worse for me than sleeping. so i started staying awake the whole next day and i noticed something interesting. 

there would always be periods where i felt incredibly tired. like i couldn’t go on without sleeping. but if i was able to get past this fleeting urge, i would always find new energy. the seemingly insurmountable fatigue i felt just 20-30 minutes before had suddenly and inexplicably vanished. of course there was a point where this was no longer tenable, but i started to see that like that prior urge to pee, the urge to sleep also seemed to come in waves. 

somehow this weird stupid observation i had began to become a metaphor for other aspects of my life. when you feel down, beaten, struggling, whatever emotion you can imagine, you must ride it out. you are just being held down by a wave. but waves always pass. and acknowledging this makes all the difference.

sure some days the ocean is calm and others it intense. it pounds and beats you. those are the days the days that might forget what it felt like to float on top of the water. but if you can remind yourself that the waves will pass, that things will get better, then that thought will always become your reality. 

we so often think of a love as an emotion. without question there are a lot of emotions associated with love, but love itself isn’t an emotion. because emotions come and go. they are sometimes up and sometimes down. but when love works, love isn’t this. it is perpetual. why is this? and why can love end?

love can end because you make a choice to be in love. to look at someone exactly the way they are and choose to love them. you choose to love their faults as well as their assets. it’s why arranged marriages work, and why so many celebrity marriages fail. 

i remember a long time ago my dad told me that, eventually you just have to stop looking and settle for the person in front of you. i remember the advice being odd at the time. i think back on it now and i think he just used the wrong words to express what he meant. what he meant was that you need to pick someone and make a choice to keep loving them. to balance the good and the bad and the in between and say “this is who i want.” 

it’s not easy, no one will ever tell you that. this is why love is work. because its compromise. but if you think that love is an emotion you will miss out on this work. you will move past the initial phases of lust and feel lost. like you’ve fallen out of love. you have missed the point where you chose not to love anymore. 

what you did wasn’t ok. misleading people about your intentions and your actions, wasn’t ok. the fact that you haven’t taken accountability for the wrongs you’ve done, isn’t ok. 

but that’s for you to deal with yourself now. i don’t want to be angry anymore, so I’m letting go of it. i don’t want to carry that burden anymore, it’s for you to carry. for you to deal with whenever you are ready to accept responsibility that you hurt people with your actions - many people. people you said you loved, people who you considered your closest friends.

please don’t think this is the first step towards us becoming friends. we will never be friends. this is my letting go of something i was never supposed to carry. that’s it. this is for me, because i deserve to move on freely. 

i should have trusted my instincts long ago. 

i remember when we would talk about living together and about marriage, thinking about what I would say at my wedding vows. i never could think of what i would say. why did i really love you?

actually it started even earlier than that. it started driving on vancouver island when you asked me about Sarah and what I liked about her. i told you she made it ok for me to be silly, for me to be me. i remember that you never made me feel that way. it was the first doubt that really entered my mind. 

i began to think why i loved you. you were fun, you are of course pretty, and by many measures you are successful. you should be full of reasons, at least on paper. despite that though, you aren’t. you’re vapid. you’re superficial. we never talked about deeper things, we never explored our own minds and what made us truly happy. 

i think this is one of the reasons you have run so quickly into the drug scene, because it fills that void, that somewhere you also know exists. chasing a happiness you haven’t been able to find on your own, at least not in a long while. 

since we’ve broken up, these things that weren’t clear, have become crystal clear. it doesn’t mean i haven’t been hurting - many of your post break up actions have made sure i’m still in pain - but at least i don’t have uncertainty about what the final outcome should be. 

i’ve decided that i am taking my mojo back. i went to a play earlier tonight and that definitely had an impact on how i’m feeling right now, but isn’t the whole thing. i saw the energy and the conviction of the characters and it made me realize that these feelings are choices we make. we choose to carry energy into our days, and the energy we carry begets more of the same. things ultimately will work out. i’m not sure why, but thats just become much more clear to me. 

i got out of bed because i felt the need to write this. i haven’t written on here in a long time, but this all of a sudden this felt like something i needed to do, so here i am.

several years ago a close friend of mine from undergrad killed himself. it was very unexpected for all of us. i wrote a post about it previously. he wasn’t someone struggling with depression and hopelessness, or at least it didn’t seem that way. he was instead a very focused and decided person, and i guess at some point grant just came to the conclusion that life didn’t have a meaning, and therefore, what was the point in continuing on with it.

i spent a while in my last post talking about beauty. i still feel strongly about what i wrote there, and that while life is ultimately without a higher purpose, beauty in life provides meaning.

so why i am here again, years and years later, you may ask?

early today i came across a tiktok - yes, you read that correctly, a tik tok about absurdists. for those of you who aren’t familiar with this concept (i wasn’t until the video explained it) aburdism is the absurd situation we find ourselves in where we are born wanting meaning and purpose, but we live a universe that is ultimately indifferent and without purpose.

camus talks about absurdism in his book the myth of sisyphus. the opening says “there is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” if we can’t answer that question, then what is the point in arguing ethics, ontology, or metaphysics. 

camus then goes on to state that there are three options when faced with this dilemma: suicide, philosophical suicide, or embracing the absurd. grant chose the first, something that i clearly feels is the wrong decision. the second, philosophical suicide, is to outsource meaning to something else, such as a religion, but for most people - myself included - this would be denying the truth, that we deep down realize. 

so we are left with only the third option - to embrace the absurd. accept the lack of meaning, and laugh at it all. create your own meaning, while accepting the ultimate meaninglessness of it all. 

this is the ultimate freedom to me. to accept that life has no meaning, no purpose, no larger concept, and yet we can embrace this anyway and find happiness and joy in the present moment. 

i stumbled back into this blog after being away from it for quite a while and i’m so glad i did. reading my old posts has renewed my desire to write. truthfully it’s the only way i’ve ever been able to express myself. it’s the only way i know how to really let my emotions out. too often my blog posts have been sadness, anxiety, emptiness being let out. don’t get me wrong a lot of wonderful writing came from those emotions, if i do say so myself. but this time i wanted to write from a different place; a place of fulfillment.

sometimes i write the word fulfillment and i stop myself, questioning if i can use that word. its a big word. not literally - although at 11 characters it does dwarf the english average (4.7 if you were wondering). what i mean is the word carries a large presence. to be fulfilled is such a high barrier. it can seem to hang over us as some unattainable goal. but it doesn’t have to be that way. as i move through life, the more and more clear it becomes to me that fulfillment is self determined. you can literally just decide to be fulfilled and you will be. 

i’ve spent the better part of the last year trying to find someone else to fix me. actually probably a lot longer, maybe my whole life, but it’s really amplified in the last year since my relationship fell apart. i’ve been searching for someone else to fill the void, to fill the loneliness. i was hoping that a new partner, a closer friend, another party, a new success at work, that fucking something would make me feel complete. none of it did. why? because other people can’t fix your life. other people, things, minor successes, sure they fill up your life, but they don’t make your life whole. that sounds complicated, but i promise it’s not just empty words. only you can fill your life. you need to change your mindset and only then will you be able to be happy. i promise you that all those other things - friends, partners, fun activities, work successes - these things will magically happen. everyone wants to be around someone who is genuinely happy.

the more i think about the more i realize that it’s a big reason why my last relationship failed. we were both subconsciously looking for someone to fill a void, to make us love ourselves more. this is a recipe for failure. don’t get this emotion is very powerful and will hold people together sometimes their whole lives, but the true desire is so much self love that the you are never co-dependent, you are strong and independent. you share your fortresses, but neither would fall down on it’s own.  

i’m not doing so well. i haven’t really admitted that to anyone. or at least when i have no one really took me seriously. but its true. it’s been a terrible few months since i broke up with my partner after she tried to kill herself. saying it like that may be the only worse than it actually happening. i don’t know exactly what went wrong, and i tried to fix it, but i was too late. 

i’ve had this horrible gnawing sense of dread more days than not since then. occasionally i have a good day, where i feel hopeful again. a day where i think things are getting better, but they don’t last. life just feels like a constant uphill, for every small gain, there is a bigger loss. 

i don’t know why i feel this way. i shouldn’t. so many other things in my life are going so well. the terrible thing is that none of those things matter. i feel empty when i sit at home, alone. my friends say they are there for me, but there words ring hollow, and their actions usually fall short. 

i’m not sure if thats a word. it’s probably not. i could look it up on the internet. it would be easy to do; i’m already on here anyways. for some reason i don’t want to. i just want to write whatever i want to write and that will have to do for now. 

it’s been a long time since i wrote anything on here. over a year. my last post is strange also. i wrote it after i broke up with my girlfriend, but since then i got back together and were together a year and then we broke up again. it’s weird to have that be the last thing up here. 

i don’t want to write a post about breaking up. that will of course come through, but it isn’t my focus. my focus is feeling lost. not so horribly crushingly lost that i don’t know what to do. i have my shit together (for the most part). i have a plan for the future, i am doing really well at my fellowship, and i already have some prospects for future jobs. these things all excite me. yet i still feel a bit purposeless. maybe i’m burnt out, maybe i’m just bitter about being single, maybe i have seasonal affective disorder. who the fuck really knows. 

we are born, we do some shit in the middle, and then we die. it’s easy to simplify life down like that. but here’s the thing - the shit in the middle really fucking matters. i’ll talk other posts - more on my other blog - about the dying part and why that matters, but right now i’m very much focused on that in between part. what makes life worth living? why do i want to wake up in the morning? 

i’ve been watching a decent about of garyvee lately - which i had to admit was weird at first. but he actually says a lot of things that ring true over and over again. i don’t care about all his influencer and instagram advice - that isn’t me (a superficial part of me maybe). but what i like is the other stuff he talks about. i can distill it down to a simple philosophy: happiness is the only thing that matters. whenever i think about that it takes me to another video of a man (who ended up being a google exec) who lost his son, but gained a unique perspective on what happiness is. the video is here, but essentially he says that happiness is your contentment with what the world has given you. contentment. not fun. not commodity. 

sarah,

i wanted to write something to you because i’m usually much more articulate writing than speaking, and the hangover didn’t help matters this morning. 

i think i should start with an apology. i’m sorry. i’m sorry that i wasn’t better. that i couldn’t reciprocate your feelings of love. i spent a lot of time reflecting on it today and i realize it’s all my fault. i tried to tell myself that you were always pulling away throughout the relationship, and there may have been some truth to that earlier on, but the truth is that i was the problem. i never let myself become emotionally vulnerable. i never let my guard down. i never let myself fall in love with you. and so i wasn’t in love with you. and i hate myself for it, because you’re incredible person. you are so sweet and kind, and anyone would be lucky to know you. 

you talked about how it was a bad thing that you always found the good in other people. the thing is, thats the most wonderful part of you. you make other people feel good, and that’s a gift, but i’m sure its one that takes a considerable toll on you. i’m not that person. i’m far more selfish and i wasn’t fair to you. 

i wanted to be in a relationship with you, but never let you fully see me. i don’t know why i couldn’t open up, because i really wanted to. it’s something i will have to try and figure out. 

anyways, i know you’ll be an amazing nurse and you’re an exceptional human being. and i know i already said that, but you can’t hear it enough times. i’m sorry things didn’t work out, i really wish they had, but you deserve someone to love you unconditionally, and i couldn’t. i hope i found it within myself to be able to some day.

i miss you more than you could possibly know, and i hope some day we can become friends. 

- taylor

a little over a week ago an old friend of mine committed suicide. it came as a total shock to pretty much everyone. 

i was at the visitation yesterday and spent a lot of time talking with his other closest friends from all eras of his life, as well as his family. it’s not that easy to understand but his story wasn’t one of someone tormented by depression and isolation like so many other young people who commit suicide. i’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on it in the past few days and i think his struggle was an existential one.

grant always was a definitive and highly rational person. he made a decision and that was his decision. not in a stubborn way. in a calculated way. he had already considered all the possible angles and made the only logical decision there was from where he stood. 

with this in mind everyone close to him tried to understand his final decision. the decision to kill himself. 

trying to felt like a pit in our stomachs. 

i guess we will never actually know what his line of thought was in the end, but the best idea we have reflected around grant’s view on death. he thought that death wasn’t something to be feared. that we were all heading there. and maybe he thought, if the only certainty of life is that you die, what’s the point in delaying the process?

it’s morbid maybe to think like this, and hard for most to understand. if you knew grant however this would be a logical argument for him. i know i for one understand it, but at the same time vehemently disagree with the premise.

it was almost by coincidence that today i strumbled across a clip of robbin williams in dead poets society - a movie i’ve been meaning to watch for ages and never have - that really provided a substance for what i’ve been thinking. in essence it therefore provided me with a meaning to life, but i thought that claim sounded a bit too brash haha.

so why do we live if in the end we all die. why push and grind. why not just accept our fates?

we live for beauty. to experience it. to create it. to immerse ourselves in it. i still think you can hear the meaning of life in incredible music, and you can certainly see it in a sunset, or feel it when you touch someone you love deeply. 

after the visitation yesterday i had a long six hour drive home, hampered by major traffic delays on the highway. the delays however pushed me later into the evening and so as i drove back i got to see one of the most incredible sunsets i’ve seen in months, if not years. it seemed ironic that the very beauty i think is the thing that makes living worth living should make itself so apparent.