The Rebirth of Sanity- Phase Three: Find It!

No one accomplishes their best goals or their dreams by moving at a half-hearted pace.
No one gets what they want by hoping or wishing. Even if they do, how can we keep valued dreams if we don’t know the worth behind the blood and the sweat that it took to make them come true?

Nothing happens when we move with unsureness or with regret. 
Whether the goals in our life or the dreams are as simple as waking up the next day, or if the goal and the dreams are more monumental, like getting up to walk again when the entire world says “you can’t,” nothing can be achieved without dedication or commitment.

We have to understand this. We have to understand the value of this lesson because without understanding our worth or the worth of our dreams, our dreams will only be deferred or lost to the subconscious bias that tells us, “Sorry, kid. But this one’s not for you.”
We are here to change our thinking.
We are here to dominate our presence on the court and to move in like Jim Carroll said in one of his poems: to move in like a cheetah.
We are here to overtake our doubts and replace them with real, live, human accomplishment.

We are here to reach and touch and feel the fabric of life and enjoy what it means to be alive because you and me and everyone else in this world knows and understands what it means to be disappointed. We all know what heartache feels like. We all know what the finish line looks like, right?
The yellow tape is spread out across the finish line, awaiting the frontrunner to cross through it, yet in our hearts, everyone wants to be the person who pushes through with the thrill of victory. But what we all know what it’s like to fall behind in the race or to be lapped by life and all seems lost to the point where even finishing the unfinishable seems moot or unfortunate.
We all know what defeat is like. We know what it’s like to give and try and to come up short. Yes, we all know what it’s like to become so frustrated that we either want to spit and scream or quit and give up.
We have all been passed up as an option. Everyone knows what the word competition means yet we compare ourselves unfairly or harshly. Rather than see a situation as unfitting for mutual reasons, we take on the bouts in our mind as if this means something was wrong with us.
But just so we’re clear . . .
None of this is true.

I had to stop trying to fit in places where I was either judged or only welcomed if I could fit the part or play a role. I had to stop wondering or worrying about who would see me as beautiful or desirable.
I had to come to an agreement with myself to rid the shaming ideas and stop the body shaming. I had to stop my educational shaming or the unsettled comparisons to people who sit in high corporate positions and because of where they sat, I had to stop seeing them as better or more worthy than I am (or was).

I had to come to this one undeniable conclusion:
If you’re going to go forward, then go with all you have. Use everything in your arsenal and leave nothing up to the judges. Give this your all because there’s no room left for excuses. There’s no time for doubt. There’s no more room for moments of self-induced despair.
There’s no more time for overthinking or overestimating the challenges in front of us; meanwhile, all this leads us to is underestimating our abilities to rise above or to accomplish the occasion.
There’s no more time to waste.
We’re not here to hope or mentally masturbate about wishing we’d tried when we had the chance.
It’s go time. Remember?
There’s no more time to doubt our victories that teach us that we can face the day, regardless of how difficult the uphill climb might seem.
We are here to recognize that we have the talent and everything we need to be successful.
We have the ability to seek help or the freedom to use our resources that will support us to overcome the odds that we thought were against us. But more, we can rid ourselves of the old, habitual mindset that kept us in an old loop of distracted thinking.
That’s all gone now.

There are times when we have all felt beaten. There are times when we have all felt alone and there are times when the unfairness of it all seemed more than just unbearable, but also unbeatable.
I will say that no one escapes heartache. No one escapes bad, sad or tragic news.
In fact, life touches everybody.
We all lose.
We have all tried for some kind of promotion or tried to find a role that went to someone else.
We all experience death in more ways than just the literal sense.
We have all gone through losses of loved ones and friendships, relationships, jobs and we have all tasted the sting of rejection. This is absolutely true.
No one is above the harshness of reality’s cold truths. No one escapes life without feeling the sting of the cold painful whip after realizing the true cruelties in life.
This is very real. It is real to say that life can be monstrous at times and to the anxious or the sad and to the beaten or the depressed; there are times when we wish we could just unzip this like a suit that doesn’t fit anymore and just step out of this whole bullshit life.
I would rather say this and be clearly honest than pretend and act as if everything is okay – because guess what? It’s okay not to be okay. . .

I say this wholeheartedly and honestly. I say this because rather than deny the feuds we encounter in life; I would rather expose them and in the face of this exposure; the new question isn’t what are we going to do to change this. But more, the question I have is what are we going to do about us?
What are we going to do to retake the stage?
How are we planning to maintain ourselves so that we keep our motivation on a daily basis?
Also, how are we going to counteract the moments when our energy is not up to speed?
What are we going to do when the world tips from its sense of fairness?
Are we going to quit or allow ourselves to submerge in the loss?
Or are we going to learn how to rebuild and endure?
Even when all is in doubt or when things seem either pointless or hopeless, what are we going to do to carry ourselves like the champions we are? How are we going to carry ourselves, as if loss is not an option and quitting is out of the question?

Rather than accept the tides or the current that runs against us, what are we going to do to maintain a sense of motivation? How do we continue so that no matter what comes our way, no matter how strong the current might seem or how steep the climb might be; how are we going to engage our reward system? How do we keep this up and stay strong?
We have to find this out because we need to create a pattern so that in our minds, no matter what, nothing and no one can defeat us.
Not even ourselves.

If you are going to go forward, then go forward.
Go with everything you have. Do not stop.
Do not give way.
Do not give in.
Do not accept the trade or anything less than your worth or your value. Even still, even when you’ve received your rewards and whether this is something that’s tied to a paycheck or to a trophy or to something as monumental as your personal survival; no matter what, keep going!
Take this like a predator in the jungle and be so carnivorous that your appetite might be solved but still; you’ll always be hungry for more.
Stay hungry!
Allow yourself to thirst for more and, at the same time, allow yourself the time to enjoy the victories. Let yourself enjoy the occasion to taste the juice and feed from the fruits of your labor.

The time for beating ourselves up is over.
The time for the five fingers of rejective thinking is in the past.
There’s no more blame, shame, guilt, fault or regret.
There’s no more entanglements with self-doubt.
There’s no more room for judgment.
There’s only movement.
There’s only the navigational tools from your G.P.S. which are your goals, plans and the strategies to achieve them.
There’s no more discussion.
There’s no more meetings about meetings or emails about emails.
There’s no more negotiations with ourselves and there’s no more pivotal discussion that hinges upon outside influences or outside opinions.
There’s no more depending on “when” moments because acting according to something that will happen “when” is something that stopped us from acting now. 

Before we go forward, I understand there are times to pause and there are times to wait.
There are times to move and there are times to change direction.
There are times to adjust our thinking and most importantly, the more we move and the more we learn, it is imperative that we understand how to update our thinking.
We can’t go on the same logic anymore.
We have to allow ourselves the right to learn if we are going to celebrate the right to improve.

We are growing now.
We are moving at a constant speed, both consistently and persistently. So now that we’re moving, we are understanding the benefits of taking care of ourselves.
We are refusing to burn out.
We’re rejecting the options that pay us less than what we’ve come for. Again, whether this is to encounter a daily victory of survival or if this is an incremental goal or if we’re looking to move the mountains in our head; or in other words, if we are looking to rid ourselves from the shameful despair we experience when seeing our reflection in the mirror, no matter what the goal is or the hope or the dreams or the aspiration; if we are here to grab them, then we have to grab hold of this with all of our might. We have to take this with everything we have.
Right here. Right now.

No one else will motivate us and no one else can do this for us.
No one can give us this sense of realization and no one can learn our lessons for us.
No, this is all on us. 

I can say that I have felt the sting of scrapes and the pains of bumps and bruises. I have a very clear memory of waking up on the floor of a bathroom inside one of the bedrooms at an Upstate treatment facility. I can remember seeing the pant leg that was tied to a sprinkler pipe and how the other end that was wound around my neck had unraveled and rather than kill me, which was the intention, I woke up on the floor.
I didn’t die.

It took me years to embrace this. It took me decades to redefine myself and to define my value. It took me what seemed to be lifetimes to reach a moment where I decided to draw a line in the sand.
Rather than dispute the world, I chose to place my energy elsewhere.
Instead of arguing over pointless feuds or fighting about unwinnable tasks; instead, I chose to find something that helps me move forward.
I chose this as an action to keep me going onward.
I chose this moment right here, which I choose every day.
I chose to start my journals. I chose to use this as a resource and to use this as a voice because the truth is, the whole world can love me and celebrate me. And that would be great.
But none of this would have any value if I am unable to love or celebrate myself. 

Charles Bukowski once wrote, “Find what you love and let it kill you.”
Instead, I chose to find what I love and let this save my life.

I chose to decorate myself. I chose to write about myself. I chose art. I chose an outlet. I chose something so humble and modest and no matter what happens to me or to these words and whether they should reach an audience or no one at all; I have found that it is my intention and my actions that save my life.
It’s not the results. It’s the efforts.
It’s the fact that I continue. I create on a daily basis.
it doesn’t matter who agrees or who acknowledges this.

Not every day is a good one.
I can say this with absolute certainty.
Not every choice I make is one that makes sense. Yes, I am a person with faults and flaws. I have character defects. I have quirks.
I have moments where I act unprofessionally or immaturely and, more to the point, there are times where I’ve acted self-destructively.
Yes, this is me too.
Yet, I allow myself to celebrate this because this is what makes me real.

This is what makes me human. This is also what allows me to learn from my mistakes. Rather than live some “righteous” life or pretend to be above or better than, my response to this is no. I will not pretend anymore.
I will be who I am and I will celebrate myself, faults and all, because no one can stop me.
Not even me.

I wish you could hear the sound of the keys as I type.
I wish you could hear the sound of dedication, each time I punch a letter to create these words. I hope you can feel this. God, I swear, I wish you could feel this. I wish you could see the tears in my eyes because I’ve paid for the salt in them and I’ve paid for the right to claim them too.
I wish you could feel the surge of emotion within me because these are the words of a once-dying man who, at last, can claim this here and now: I am not dead anymore.
I’m alive.

I offer this as a person who has lived most of my life with the belief that nothing I wanted was possible. I lived with the belief and thought system that I was somehow less-than or undeserving.
I was stupid. I was classless and unremarkable, unwanted and undeserving.
I believed in the words “learning disability” and more, I believed in the judgments of mental illness. 
It took me nearly five decades to realize none of this is true.

I used to believe that, at best, I could only be depressed. At best, I could only be a person in recovery. I could only be an ex-junkie or an ex-alcoholic. I could be an imposter. I could be a person who lives with sever anxiety disorder and suicidal ideation.
At best, this could only be me.
But that was wrong too.

Rather than allow myself to die or find what I love and let this kill me; I chose to find what I love and let this feed me.
I chose to let this breathe life into my lungs again.
I chose to let this embrace me as I embrace this. As I move in this world whether I am supported by all or loved by no one but us; so long as I have this means that I have you. Therefore, I will never be alone. Not in this life or the next.

I have decided to find what I love.
I have decided to learn and see how this can open new doors for me.

Find what you love.
Look to find what makes you happy.
Stop trying to find faults and flaws and look for something beautiful and redeeming.
Do this each day and from this day forward, look for the mountains that you can climb. Look for the seas or the oceans that bring you peace. Look for the moments and the smiles that encourage you to seek opportunity.
Rather than fold to despair, stand tall and revitalize yourself by stepping towards the lights of your hope.

There is no more “can’t”
There is no more “quit.”
There’s only this –

Find what you love and let this save your life
That’s what I had to do . . .
And I’m still here
So, it had to work at least a little bit.