2011

I've been staring at this blank slate and blinking cursor for weeks now. Even now, I'm not sure where to start. I could easily use a bunch of flowery adjectives and dramatic metaphors to describe the past 12 months, but I won't. Because to be honest, I don't really want to look back. I'm kind of done with 2011. I started out having no idea what I wanted and no inclination to make choices that were good for me. I didn't get out of my own way until about halfway through the year, when I finally had to scale my way out of the massive mental hole I had built around myself. I finally prioritized taking full responsibility for my life rather than continuing to wait for some elusive opportune moment. I learned to breathe, and to be present, and to be comfortable with uncertainty. I met an incredible yoga teacher who inspired me to get out of my head and stop exhausting myself trying to be perfect. I stepped out of my comfort zone and set goals that had previously seemed leagues out of my reach. I opened myself up to people and realized that there are always ample opportunities to belong, if you'll only let yourself do so. All in all, it has been an amazingly transformative year... that I am very much looking forward to leaving behind.

Of course, one thing I would do well to remember in the coming years is that there is no finish line. Perhaps counter-intuitively, maintaining peace of mind these days takes commitment. And commitment is all about balance. From now on, I'm going to try and embrace Lao Tzu's words: "A journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step." Rather than expending all of my energy on a single inspired task only to crash and burn and lose momentum, I'm going to focus on taking baby steps. I'm going to continue to work on forgiving myself for not being perfect, and I'm going to try instead to embrace the grey area. Essentially, my new year's resolution is not to make any. Yes, I could promise to adhere to a more consistent workout schedule, or eat only whole, minimally processed foods, or maintain a strict daily meditation practice, or put more of my paycheck into savings, or any number of other smart, healthy vows to foster my sense of well-being and improve my life. But, let's be honest. I would break all of those in no time and just end up feeling discouraged and disappointed with myself. Who wants that? So I'm proposing something different. Here's to imperfection in 2012 - to effort and failure and perseverance, and inevitably, to the joy that just might happen to arise from the whole shebang.

On moving forward.

As I pulled into my driveway, I instantly regretted not having the forethought to bring supplies and camp at the top of the mountain. It was such a beautiful night. I lugged my backpack from the front seat of my car and gazed up at the crystal clear, star-studded sky above me. The cosmos and I needed a moment, I thought. I set down my pack and lay down on the wet grass, propping my head up on my folded hands, staring into the abyss, chilled by the fall air but warmed by my quiet contentment. I suddenly realized that I couldn't think of one thing to ask for - no requests for clarity from the universe, or guidance, or good fortune. I took a couple of deep breaths, reveling in the perfection of that autumn evening. The following week, life blew up in my face.

And on and on it goes. These days, I'm pretty good at taking it in stride. There will always be crests and troughs; the trick is to be the water rather than the boat. Wise people know that the secret to happiness is relinquishing your attempts at control. Ok, noted. But wait a minute - surely we can't just coast through life expecting everything to be peachy keen without putting forth any effort at all? Call me crazy, but that seems like a pretty serious contradiction. How in the world are you supposed to simultaneously let go of your attachment to a given outcome and continue to maintain your goals and ambitions?

Once again, the answer (for me, at least) is stunningly simple: Be here now. It's all well and good to have grand plans for the future, but too often I've found myself halfway down one road before realizing that my drive to explore it had evaporated miles and miles back. Here's the problem with consciousness: it paints us as vaguely static individuals, when in fact we are changing all the time. In the Western world, we are taught that we each have a distinct "me-ness" that makes us special. From an early age, we are urged to define ourselves based on our myriad strengths, our likes and dislikes, the people we choose to associate with. Later in life our identities might become entrenched within a particular religion or political party or job or community organization. And while some of our values do tend to remain stable over time, little changes often accumulate and mix and mingle to become desires that undermine even our most dearly held self-concepts. And before we know it, we're stuck in a place we can't stand or pursuing a career we hate or married to a person we no longer love.

For whatever reason, I'm becoming increasingly aware of the fact that we only get one shot at life. And time is flying by. For my part, I spent a lot of years backtracking, trying desperately to recover the ghosts of "lost" choices that were never right for me in the first place. Like most of us, I wish I had known then what I know now. So, be present with yourself. Take the time to become intimately acquainted with what you are feeling right now. By all means, have a blueprint for your future, but be prepared to jump ship at a moment's notice. If you're reading this, you're lucky enough to live in a place where you can choose nearly everything about your life; if not circumstance, then at least the way you react to it. All I'm saying is choose, and choose authentically. There is no reason not to live a life you love.

Harder, better, faster, stronger.

If there's one word in the English language that inspires more fear, more apprehension and more shame in me than any other, it's this one: wrong.

I've been thinking a lot lately about that word. Wrong. When I was in college (i.e. when my life was pretty well laid out for me), I spent hours and days and weeks of my life fretting and obsessing about the few choices I had to make, completely paralyzed by my indecision because I was afraid I would make the wrong one. Throughout the last year and a half, I've found it nearly impossible to forgive myself for instances in which I was careless with the feelings of people I cared about, in which I was rash and thoughtless, in which I made the wrong choices.

I've heard it said that humankind is capable of only two emotions - love, and fear. The majority of my adult life has unquestionably revolved around the latter. Somewhere along the line, I convinced myself that if I made a mistake, no one could possibly love me; and worse, I couldn't possibly love myself. If I didn't make every effort to see that the needs and wants of those around me were satisfied, if I didn't put aside my own desires and feelings - in fact, if I even focused on them long enough to realize what they were and that they could possibly conflict with those of others - I wasn't being a loving friend, or family member, or coworker, or girlfriend. I killed myself to maintain that precarious balance and tend to the needs of everyone I cared about, endlessly berating myself for those that fell by the wayside, trying desperately to hold on to some semblance of control in my own life, and expected that at the end of the day, I would be perfect. I would do everything right, and love everyone, and everyone would love me, and I would love myself.

Well, honey, that's not love. That's fear. Plain and simple.

A few weeks ago, I was having a particularly overwhelming afternoon. Now, when I'm stressed, I tend to just take off. And so I went for a run. I ran until my breath fell into a steady rhythm. I ran until all I could focus on was putting one foot in front of the other. I ran until I felt the endorphins coursing through my blood, and a smile creeping across my face. And suddenly an hour had gone by. It was then that I decided I was going to push myself. I decided to run a half-marathon.

Now, I had never been what you would call a "runner." I'd always preferred to run on a treadmill, with music pounding in my ears and some empty drivel on the television distracting me from the otherwise mind-numbing experience. But somehow, this was different. And since then I've been running exclusively outside, at dawn, with no sound but the beating of my own heart and the scuffing of pavement for company. I can't focus on my past, or my future, or my so-called "mistakes," or what anyone else expects of me. I'm forced to take it breath by breath, trust my instincts, let go of my mind, and listen closely to what my body is telling me. And slowly, I'm picking up the pieces. We've all heard the old cliché - before you can love anyone else, you have to love yourself. And this might be the first time in my life I've ever done something for myself that wasn't based in fear - fear of consequences, or inadequacy, or failure.

They say that if you can run 10 miles, you can run 13.1. This weekend, I'm on track to do just that. Easily. Something I never thought I could do. I'm proud of myself. And while it's not forgiveness, it's a start. Love, like life, is an endurance sport. And I'm working on it. One step at a time.

twelve months.

Tomorrow marks one year since the day I left for Colorado, and two years since the day I graduated from college. Funny how time flies. As the days get longer and the air gets warmer, I find myself becoming increasingly nostalgic for last summer: the gorgeous, sunny day hikes through green meadows filled with wildflowers, the lazy mornings spent floating around on pool rafts, baking in the 100-degree sunshine, the late nights spent in downtown bars, searching for nothing but an innocent good time with a girlfriend or two (though occasionally finding more than we bargained for). Eventually those thoughts give way to memories of the fall: of finally sharing my amazing world with friends and family from home, of trekking over the Rocky Mountains at 12,000 feet, endlessly in awe of the stark contrast between the vibrant yellows of the autumn aspens and the crisp blue of the alpine sky, of learning important life lessons from unfamiliar back woods and the unspeakably haunting, howling wind. After that, it gets muddy. Next thing I know, I'm back in Rhode Island. And a minute later, my life is completely different from what I had imagined and I'm about as comfortable as I would be had I never left. Let's back up.

I'm pretty sure I've said that Colorado changed me about as many times as one can say something without being labeled with a memory disorder. But to a certain extent, it's true. If nothing else, it changed my values. I remember listening to a speaker at the Science Writers conference in November and being struck by the realization that I had always cared about ideas more than people. For the majority of my adult life, I had been far more interested in learning about abstract concepts than I had been in interacting with my fellow man. But sometime between that trip and the time I moved back to New England, all of that changed. At some point, I stopped living my life in my head, and I started living it with my heart. I think it happened over Thanksgiving. Despite my history of running off on my own, I had never felt that kind of profound loneliness before. For the first time, I realized that I needed people. And slowly but surely, my urgent desire to belong to the world has blossomed into a quiet sense of clarity that I've never felt before.

There are days when I miss Colorado a lot. I miss my friends and the sunshine and the mountains. But I haven't once regretted my decision to come back to Rhode Island. Despite the frequent dreary weather, the distinct dearth of open space or elevation, the cranky people, the crappy roads, the constant rush and congestion... it's home. I felt relieved the minute I crossed the state line. I'm going to be honest, it has been a challenging couple of months. Hell, it has been a challenging year. But I worked it out. I accomplished everything I wanted to. I'm happy. And I'm ready for yet another fantastic summer.

On being here now.

I've been destination-oriented for as long as I can remember. As much as I loved theatre when I was younger, I never liked rehearsing very much; it was the final performance that always drove me. In high school, I spent my time taking pictures of everyone and everything so I'd have the memories to look back on, rather than focusing on enjoying the experience in the moment. I looked forward to my college exams more than I did classes. I watch movies to have watched them and I read books to have read them. Sometimes I even find myself wanting good things to end simply for the relief of being on the other side of the pain that will ensue when they do.

I know a number of people right now who are undergoing transitions. Some are just a little confused, and some are on the brink of quarter-life crises. Yesterday, a few friends and I were lamenting the fact that we're spending the prime years of our lives consumed by concern over our futures. Personally, I know I've always been in a hurry to grow up because I crave stability. I'm terribly impatient, I despise failing, and I can't stand feeling like life is out of my control. But what's funny about all of those things - and what I'm only now starting to realize - is that all of this evolving is the fun part. Now, somebody once told me that I concentrate so much on purpose that I don't know how to have fun. That comment bothered me for years but, to be honest, in a way I think he was right. And I don't think I'm alone. So many of us are so focused on tomorrow that sometimes we forget to live right now. And the truth of the matter is that we'll never be younger than we are today.

Of course you need to plan for the future. But only until it starts to detract from your present. The answers will come when you're ready for them. I spent years and years hoping to control circumstance by sheer willpower alone, thinking and rethinking my big life choices until I was blue in the face. But it wasn't until I became very still - until I sat on a train quietly observing the world as it flew by my window, until I heard the pounding of music in my ears and felt the wind racing through my hair, rolling down a hill on my bike - that everything seemed to fall into place. I still feel jealous when I encounter people who seem to have their entire lives figured out, but I'm trying not to get ahead of myself anymore. I'm trying to step out of my own way so I can be the one place I need to be: here, now. And so far, it's going swimmingly.

wherever you go, there you are... or are you?

I've been thinking a lot lately about change. I am not who I was ten years ago. Nor am I who I was last year, or last month, or even yesterday. Everyone evolves - friends, family members, acquaintances, people we aren't terribly fond of. It's a fact of life, but it isn't one that we tend to focus a whole lot of energy on. We all care deeply about some people and hold grudges against others without regard for the amount of time that has passed since our feelings arose. But why? Mentally speaking, they have changed. Physically speaking, they don't even possess the same body they did so many days or months or years ago. When you really think about it, such a continuity problem becomes a complicated issue in terms of both love and accountability.

A few weeks ago, a good friend of mine recommended that I read Milan Kundera's short novel Identity. In it, Kundera tells the story of Jean-Marc, a young Frenchman who becomes consumed by the fear that time will change his lover Chantal into a woman he no longer recognizes. And why shouldn't he? In a world where such change often happens imperceptibly, is it even reasonable to believe that two people can spend 10 or 20 or 50 years together without growing apart or eventually encountering some kind of insurmountable obstacle?

In one of my college courses, we conducted the following thought experiment: a ship goes off on a long voyage. While at sea, boards crack, pipes break, and one by one each component is replaced with a new part. When the ship finally returns, every piece of it is brand new. So is it still the same ship? What if, instead of discarding the old parts, each was gradually assembled into a second ship? Both ships return to port - now, which is the one that left? Personally, I'm inclined to assign identity based on some form of continuous memory; that is, the ship with all the new parts is the one that originally left.

But what about in criminal cases? Yesterday, the New York Times published an interesting article arguing in favor of lessening the punishments for juvenile murderers. The author cites factors such as peer pressure, impulsivity and immaturity as reasons to prohibit severe sentences in juveniles. When it comes to accountability, identity becomes a sticky issue. Releasing a 25-year old murderer is still releasing a murderer, even if he was only 14 when he committed the crime. But at the same time, so much of our growth as human beings occurs during our adolescent years. Is it fair, then, to lock him up for the rest of his life based on a crime he committed when he was barely old enough to know what it meant? I don't think so.

Then again, where do you draw the line? If a young girl kills someone the day before her 15th birthday, should her sentence be any more lenient than that of the young man who commits murder the day after his? What about a 17 year old vs. an 18 year old? I suspect that it's less about age than maturity in these cases, but it is extremely difficult to quantify maturity and even moreso to diagram the grand ways in which an individual has changed since the fateful day that shaped the rest of his or her life.

The famed Greek philosopher Heraclitus once claimed, "change is the only constant"; still, it would seem that our society makes very few provisions for evolution. So how do you make sense of your own continuity of experience? How do you pass fair judgement on the people in your life? What do you place your faith in? I have no idea, but I think it's all worth a thought or two.

sea level

I drove to the beach in an effort to find some clarity. The chilly salt air stung, and I retreated as far as I could into my winter coat, a lone huddled mass on the long stretch of concrete. As I bundled up against the cold and spitting rain, I watched the ocean. The same old waves crested and fell again and again, one after the other, displaying at once their strength and transience. The water haphazardly lapped at the grimy and windwhipped rocks below my dangling feet. Beneath the threatening sky and relentless wind, the ocean seemed tired. I felt I could relate.

Ten months ago, I moved to Colorado with grand aspirations. I was going to start over. I was going to figure out who I was. I was going to prove to myself that I still had the social stamina and emotional wherewithall to confront a set of completely alien surroundings and transform them into a place that I could call home. But I didn't count on longing for the ocean. I didn't count on desperately missing my friends and family. And I certainly didn't count on my career sending me right back the way I came. So I decided to pack everything up, drive 3000 miles across the country and dump myself right back into a life that less than a year ago, I left behind for some very good reasons.

Surprisingly enough, not much has changed for me in Rhode Island. Despite filling my time almost to excess, I've been feeling insecure and anxious and alone. I've been questioning whether I actually accomplished any of the goals I had for myself in Colorado. I've been blaming myself inside and out for choices and judgements that are out of my control, and I've found myself wrung out, exhausted, and feeling hauntingly close to the way I did a year ago. Bla bla bla.

And you know, for a while there I thought that I messed up. I thought that it meant I didn't trust myself any more than I did last May. I thought it meant that all the time I spent out west was a complete wash. But I was wrong. The fact is, I did change. I stopped being the person I thought everyone wanted me to be, and I embraced the qualities that make me who I really am. In fact, I think I'm confused and hurt and overwhelmed precisely because I've learned to be true to myself. I think more than is necessary, and I'm openhearted to a fault. For me, there are only two choices: I throw myself 100% into something, or I don't do it. That goes for my career aspirations, my personal relationships, and everything else. Call it what you will, but it's the most authentic way I know how to live.

The fact of the matter is, I know who I want to be. And even if I don't act like that person every minute of every day, even if I make a misstep here and there, it doesn't mean that I've failed. It just means that I'm not dead yet. I'm growing. I'm moving forward. And regardless of everything I'm feeling in this moment, that is something to be proud of.