On Not Writing

I mourn the days when I had to write every thought, every idea, every interesting thing that ever happened. I couldn't sleep without writing it. I couldn't let go. 

I used to have an impeccably detailed memory. Writing helped me with forgetting. Remembering everything that ever happened is not really a good thing. Memories are ghosts that haunt you if you can't forgot, can't move on. 

Now I'm learning not to write down everything and to forget them too. I supposed its my new stage of maturity. 

Letting go of writing is like letting go of my identity. It used to be the most important thing in the world. But now, I suppose its not.

The world moves on. Ideas come and go. I can think, dream, make up stories as I go along without having to record everything, without this need of a captains log. 

Writing everything down can be so damaging to myself and to others. There is a certain rigidity that comes with writing, like saying this thought is now permanent. It has been sealed on paper.

Memories, at least, can change.

Learning not to write everything down is like learning forgiveness. letting the past just disappear as if it never happened; not having to to record everything someone said so you can use it against them later on. You can just live in the moment.

How unlike the identity I have worked so hard to build for myself all those years. But its our identities that bind us to the ego, that prevents us from transforming into something new, if that's what life demands.

Then it doesn't matter what life demands. Who are we to assume we know what life demands, what God demands., what humanity is and what it isn't?

I used to think I had to always write. Van Gogh once said, "if you hear a voice in you that says you cannot paint, then by all means paint, and that voice will be silent." He also said something about striking when the iron is hot because there will be other days devoid of inspiration, when you find it hard to get out of bed. 

Van Gogh sold only one of his brilliant paintings and died unsuccessful and unhappy. How could no one see his brilliance? I saw his paintings and read his letters when I was a young teen and immediately fell in love with him. I could relate to his struggles, his passion and his inability to adapt to reality.

I was so afraid of not being a writer. I struck when the iron was hot, not because I was taking advantage of my manic moments but because it was the only thing that rescued me from drowning in my own misery. Then it became my identity. If I wasn't a writer, then what else was there? I was afraid of what was beyond that.

Sometimes, when I'm alone, I miss that restless writer in me, always reaching for an idea or fantasy. I miss the feeling of insanity, of drowning in my subconscious. In a way its a good thing that I've learned to cope with reality better without having to go there. I still eat chocolate though. That helps too.

I wrote this for me but I figured I'd share for anyone still willing to be a voyeur.

Sorry, I've been in a dry spell for so long but I don't want to sell out. Once I have made enough money, I plan to drown in my creativity again. Then again, maybe choosing a hiatus from writing may lead me to something altogether different. Losing myself is scary. Maybe I'll find someone else at the end of all of this, or maybe I'll find a way to come back to Lacey Reah, being more confident of who she always was.

One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.

I should not be withheld but that some day
into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.

I do not see why I should e'er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.

They would not find me changed from him the knew--
Only more sure of all I though was true.

--Robert Frost

What if it Were a Woman

Nietzsche once wrote something about truth being a woman and how the dogma of men have failed to understand women.

Use woman as a metaphor and suddenly, everyone gets it. Men understand how unfathomable the metaphor is and start to accept their ignorance. Women understand just how much they themselves have been misunderstood, by men especially. 

We always seem to be what everyone around us want us to be.

As a woman, I've been pursued. I've been analyzed and idolized. I've certainly been misinterpreted, often because to truly understand me would mean to destroy the fantasy that one may have already imagined of me.

Deep inside, I often laugh at what others think, often a projection of themselves; and its funny how my points are often misinterpreted to suit the beliefs of those who witness them.

What if fortune was a woman? How often do men think they can control her, fortune that is. When things are good, they take it for granted. They think they are blessed and don't realize when disaster is lurking around the corner. Men pursue their plans with vigor, so certain of the outcome, as if you really can control your plans? Can you really control your woman? Is she really yours?

What if ideas were women? How we cling to our ideas and our methods, long after they've stopped working for us, as a man clings to a woman who has completely gotten over her infatuation of him. Then they wonder why those ideas no longer serve them.

A man once completely disregarded something I said because it wasn't in line with his view of what a woman should be. Then he said that we are all crazy and we shouldn't even listen to ourselves; making me realize that there really was no point in speaking intelligently to him, since I obviously have no credibility. In this sense, women are denied a voice. This man had already decided what he knew about me and what I had to say wasn't going to change that. This brings me back to Nietzsche when he said, 

"Supposing that Truth is a woman--what then? Is there not grounds for suspecting that all philosophers, in so far as they have been dogmatists, have failed to understand women--that the terrible seriousness and clumsy importunity with which they have usually paid their addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly methods for winning a woman?"

Nietzsche also said that sometimes people don't want to hear their truth because they don't want to destroy their illusions. In this case, who needs truth anyway? If that fantasy woman is what keeps you going, then so be it. You don't need to know that your perfect little playboy heartthrob is flesh and blood with scars and shadows and demons of her own. See her however you want to see her, a figment of your imagination.

So is our truth. Often its just a belief, our own mind imagining what we think the universe is all about. As humans, we like to simplify things and even if we are proven wrong, we cling to our ideas because they give us our identity and a sense of structure.

So think what you will of women, just don't be shocked when all of those beliefs blow up in your face one day, and you wonder if you ever really knew this creature you once adored so much. Perhaps you never did, nor did you ever want to.

Nietzsche vs. Buddha

I have a friend who has a Nietzsche  tattoo on his arm, and Tibetan Buddhist tattoos on his forearms.

I find it ironic, seeing how Nietzsche criticized the Buddhists so much and how much their views clashed.
Yet, I can't help but find myself torn between the two philosophies.

Nietzsche loved Dionysus, the arts, beauty and passion. he felt deeply and didn't apologized for it.
Buddha sat under a tree and realized that the end to suffering would be to let go of all needs and wants.
Nietzsche happily suffered all his life. He died saving the life of a horse. He was madly in love with a woman who couldn't love him back and he didn't keep it a secret.
Buddha was great at squelching such infatuations and promised that this would end human suffering. He saw them as illusions and had his disciple do things like imagine the woman he was obsessed with was a corpse, withering away and dying just like everyone else. Because individual identity is an illusion.
So who was right?

Nietzsche said to deny one's emotions, one's desires is to go against nature. How can the Buddhists truly understand nature if they squelch human desire and suffering?
Buddha said that human desire is an illusion that blinds us to the truth and by separating ourselves from attachments, we can separate ourselves from prejudices such as love and hate that make us see the world in a limited way.
Nietzsche would say that the Buddhists are just another breed of philosophers trying to preach their beliefs without questioning it themselves. In this sense, they still have their own prejudices and point of views, therefore they aren't as far removed from the limitations of humanity as they like to think they are.

The one thing the two of them agreed on is that we are all prejudiced and that we all like to cling to our ideas. Maybe they are both right. Maybe we can use Nietzsche's philosophy when it suits us and Buddha's philosophy at other times.

If you are madly in love with the right person, then why deny that attachment? Nietzsche would say to indulge in that feeling of love and to deny it would just be a waste of time. Denying such feelings would also be going against nature and living half a life, a life of no passion.

But if you are in love with the wrong person, someone who is abusive or who belongs to someone else, then its wiser to listen to Buddha. Buddha will help you separate yourself from your desire by saying there is nothing different about that person from any other human being and that its just a trick of our biological processes that makes us feel infatuation.

So, there is a time and a place for every philosophy and as I read, mature and learn; I have stopped calling myself a stoic, a Buddhist, a Christian, a Hindu, an existentialist, etc. I don't want to be bound by a point of view if it doesn't serve me and I don't want to feel thatvI can't question it in certain situations.

So my new belief is to not believe, but to keep an open mind; to keep learning and keep questioning without feeling like there has to be one right method. To cling to a belief is to defend it utterly which makes it impossible to see the truth. After all, what if you're wrong? If you refuse to contradict your own dogma, then there's no way you can learn anything beyond that. I really love learning new things. I guess it gives me a dopamine rush, and I'm sure Nietzsche would welcome that dopamine rush while the Buddhists will make sure that I know that the dopamine rush is just a trick of emotion that helps motivate me, but I shouldn't be dependent on such a high.

On top of that, refusing to know the truth can truly harm us. What if we have a curable cancer, and we refuse to acknowledge it? Most likely, it will kill us. So ignorance can kill us as does an overactive clinging to our affiliations and beliefs. Just look at the world today, as we continually polarize ourselves with our ridiculous politics.

As for my friend with the contradicting tattoos, I tease him for it but I'm all for him believing in contradicting philosophers. But its all in good fun. Ralph Waldo Emmerson once said that we should be open to change our minds as we learn new things. He said that it may confuse others, but that's a great thing. He said Pythagoras and Copernicus and many other great thinkers were misunderstood. "To be great is to be misunderstood."

Reflection on the past decade and the one to come, and why I don't social network as much

It's New Years morning.

I feel like I have to write something. Dare I post it on blogger?

I open up my blogger page and see all of these unpublished drafts. As the world has become more controversial over the past decade, so have my blogs, my logic, my feelings and my whole view of the world.

But I find that my writing muscles have atrophied of late. I've been putting the past five years into other endeavors, such as building my own side business, raising a family and playing sports.
I have been interacting more with people in real life. Due to this fact, I'm much happier and more content. This leads to less confusion, less obsessing and therefore, less writing.

Social networking was different during my myspace blogging days when we all used to read each other's blogs, comment on them and use them to fuel our need to write more blogs. I felt there was a strong sense of intellectual bonding back in those days.

But times have changed. People don't read blogs anymore. They read memes. The attention span of my audience and of my fellow bloggers have changed. Those I knew who took solace in blog writing in order to uplift themselves spiritually or gain a greater sense of understanding of the world no longer do it.

Our correspondence has been reduced to 140 characters. How nuanced can that be? Our reading has been wittled down to looking at slogans and pictures. Propaganda everywhere. We are being manipulated so easily.

 As one who has observed this from the outside, all I see is that we are being polarized. We react emotionally to those who don't share the same world view as we do. The best way to cope is to only surround ourselves with those who agree. This only pigeon holes our own world view even more and closes us off to the world.

Such is the nature of today's social networking. This wasn't the case during the original blogging days because there was more to read, more to reflect upon. These days, we see more posts but they are mostly pictures or clichés, created to illicit an emotional response.

The great thing about having conversations in real life is that there is this natural flow. You can see the reaction of that person. You can right away notice if there is a misunderstanding and talk through it.

I do love conversing with intelligent souls and I used to use social networking as a way to gain more of this experience but as people started becoming more emotional and defensive, I realized that the current virtual systems no longer work so I made an effort to be more present for others in real life.

When you play sports and hang out afterwards, you are willing to accept that person's differences and learn from them because the share the same passion for the game, at least. So the past decade has been a true turning to real life for me. I canceled my facebook account in 2012. I hear my friends beg me to come back. Meanwhile they complain about the trolls and the drama. I suppose misery loves company.

I was looking through an old box of memorabilia and found tons of handwritten letters from friends from the years when I moved to New York to peruse art. How insightful and whimsical they were, so unlike the political memes they now post on the internet. I felt like we really understood each other then as we shared our experiences and reflections. I felt as if we really respected our differences and tried to learn from them. But alas, things change.

In the end, it's my choice how I want to maneuver my life and spending less time on social media as the rest of the world starts to live there is my own choice. During a time of great social unrest and polarization, I have found a strange peace in my soul, a solace away from the constant distraction that used to leave my mind ill at ease. I'm more focused now and more capable doing more work.

I still pay attention to what's going on. I read at least 5 books a month, mostly non-fiction but fiction as well. It scares me that people I once knew who were avid book readers tell me they no longer have the time and attention for it because the hours they spend on Facebook has gone up. I read quite a bit during my commute as work and family takes up more time.

There was a time that we stopped talking to each other and would just go to our separate screens. Then I started meeting people online who would purposely talk to strangers because they didn't like their own family. I told myself that should never happen to me.

So as this new decade approaches, I keep these thoughts in mind. Relationships take work and we must focus on the important ones. Distractions are great when we are bored but if we use them to take away from important tasks, such as health, family and meaningful work, then we need to step back and use our free will to make better choices.

So long as I focus on what's important to me, it shouldn't matter what other people say or how they judge me. I never cared what people thought. Therefore, I never had to start huge movements trying to get people to accept me. Instead, I want to start movements that bring people together because it makes them happy and included. Instead of complaining that the world is against me because I'm a woman of color, I will continue to start my own movements that includes people, regardless of their own gender, orientation or race. I think that is more powerful. That creates waves of love rather than shouts of offense and defense. That's what I've been doing in my IRL work.

As my public philosophic writing has slowed down, I assure you that I haven't retreated into a bubble. I am almost too aware of our social situation but I'm spending more time trying to understand it. I'm speaking less and listening more. I'm reading books from all points of view because its very important to me that my own perspective is as close to the truth as possible. I don't want to react and cling to a political agenda without truly knowing what's important and what isn't, what works and what doesn't.

I realize that all I've been doing with these blogs is simply preach to those who already agree with me and push away those who don't. So I listen more than speak now. And when someone is listening to you, you are more likely to listen to them. If we keep doing things the way we've always been doing, it will just take us down the rabbit hole of more polarization, more hate, more depression and anger at those who just can't see things our way.

So I will continue to cultivate my own mind and body as I age, and I must say that I'm aging quite well, or should I say, not really aging at all? Only in understanding ourselves and empowering ourselves can we really understand and empower others. Only in changing ourselves can we change our lives an the lives of others.

Since my blogging days have subsided I have no idea if anyone would read this. Been so long since I've written and I can't blame my fans for losing me to the other distractions of the media. But if you somehow found this blog, happy new year to you. Happy new decade! Wishing you peace, love and strength in this changing world.