This journal is all about the question
What now?
And this entry was inspired by a new friend with an old soul . . .
Sometimes, the best answer is to know that there is no answer. There are going to be times when you don’t know what to do—or there will be times when you can’t move, as if too much is happening at once, and your body is stalled, as if to be caught in some uncomfortable submission, or you’re stuck and emotionally paralyzed; or in the case that your heart and your head are mismatched, and your body is at odds with what’s happening around you—and when life takes on a newly unfortunate or unexpected shape and you don’t know what do—sometimes, the best move is not to do anything.
Just pause.
Sit still.
Give it a minute.
Let yourself catch up and let the ride slow down for a minute because, after all, isn’t this what life is?
Life is a ride, isn’t it?
This is all a trip with unexpected turns and rest assured there will be places where the traffic is painful, like the sight of red-taillights when you’re in a rush or your late, and some accident makes the rest of the drivers creep along, just to watch and look at someone else’s demise.
And yes, there will be times when the sun is bright and the world is kind and the wind is fair. There will be great moments and moments so valuable that we never seemed to realize how important they were, until they were gone. But life . . .
Life is a good thing.
However, life has a way of showing up at odd times, or in the face of some unforeseen change or in the mix of some common or everyday tragedy or turn of events, there is something about how the world keeps turning, as if to be ceaselessly moving or out of control—and then the “what now?” questions come to mind.
What do I do?
How do I get through this?
Do you want to know the worst part??
It’s easier to see the bad things about the upcoming future than it is to see a successful change, or transformation you can make.
It’s easy to see the “crash and burn” possibilities and it’s easy to lose to your thoughts which, and I say this often, is why I leave this here to say this again:
Sometimes, you lose to your thinking like water loses to the drain.
Understand?
You get flushed away; and there’s nothing you can do, at least not at times like this. There’s nothing you can do but lose yourself to the spiral of the drain—especially when anxiety takes place.
Your mind is flooded with a thousand different scenarios which spread out, nice and wide, or they dovetail, and open up like some vast display of red-alerts that warn us, as if to say, yes. . . be careful, or even more grave: “something wicked this way comes.”
What now?
What do you do when the anxiety takes hold?
How do you breathe when your chest is so heavy and the weight of your choices is bearing down on your chest?
The weight of your consequences are heavy truths caught in an uncomfortable contrast between the so-called “here and now,” and then you realize the person who you want to be and the person you are (at the moment) is not you at your best, or when you find yourself at the mercy of your thinking, and your thoughts betray you, or when you are beneath the weight of a thousand different anticipations and your assumptions bring you to fears of shameful or some kind of hurtful exposure—you find yourself so tired from running around in your mind.
You’re thoughts have kept you going and there is no rest or comfort, and the attacks in your mind have detonated like tiny land mines, which have blown off the legs of your mental foot soldiers, which is the army of your fears and thus—your protectors have all been carried off and leaving you exposed or weak or worse—you are vulnerable now.
You are humbled to your truest state—almost primal, like down to the most bare and basic form—or as if to resume back to the weakest point, which is us, pre-birth, fetal, or turtled up in a ball and crippled by a thought which devastates our ability to conceive a new or better thought.
What now?
The world has all gone mad . . .
And so have we.
What now?
I have no answer for this because at the time or when all is about to flush down the drain, the truth is there is no answer.
All you can do is breathe.
All you can do is breathe to stay alive and all you can do is let one heartbeat become the next because the answer is there is nothing you can do, except to hold on tight.
This is just a moment in time, complex and simple, and unfortunate too. While I can grant and understand the fact that it is uncomfortable to be uncomfortable—no one ever died from this.
It’s all the other bullshit and the contributing factors which lead us to the symptoms of our degrading sanity.
This is when the mind leads us to an insanity that match our craziness; and so, we choose actions and respond in ways that embody or emulate, or make sense of the fact that sometimes, life is a bitch, and sometimes, the world and the people around us can appear to be ugly.
I swear, this can be a crazy place.
But who said crazy is bad?
I know this is a beautiful life. And I know this is a beautiful world.
I know that I have never fallen so drastically that I couldn’t rise back up or return to my posture or recover.
I know that our state of mind and the direction of our thinking can create a focus bias, to which, I understand how easy it is to become fixated on the ugliness around us.
I understand the insults of the aftermaths or the remnants of our bullied thinking and how our mind replays and looks to re-litigate the items in our life which are beyond our control.
There is no way to negotiate the truth. However, in the case of the question at hand, which is, “What now?” I have to say that there is an answer.
I have to say that there will be times when there is no answer.
All someone can do is wait until the answer comes, because rest assured, the world is always moving, even if we seem paused or emotionally crippled or held to an unmovable stillness—the world is going to move and thus—this is the time to look for the sweep.
Look for the opportunity to advance or to improve your position—even if it’s only by inches, at least we are advancing. Therefore, I tell you this wholeheartedly and as someone who has experienced my own paralyzing attacks—I will explain this the same way it was explained to me by a good friend and a fellow Brazilian Jiu-jitsu practitioner and fighter in life—pull guard when you have to, create space when you need to, and move in increments, to which, I can say that I have learned from this.
I have learned a lot. However, in my short time of training—I can say that I have learned some game-changing principles to show me how to escape.
I’ve learned how to recover, and whenever possible, I’ve learned to achieve a mounted position and improve my possibilities.
Some of the best victories I have ever seen have come from people who were down and on their back, and somehow, they found a way to create their own safety and reduce the punishment, and when the time allowed, they pulled their sweep and advanced their position.
So, what now?
Hold your guard, son.
There’s an opening on its way.
Look for the gifts and when you find them, grab on to each one until you return to dominance, or get back on top—and win.
Otherwise, leave nothing up to the judges.
And give it your all.
No matter what . . .
This is what I have learned from you.
The Written Addiction 