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8/12-8/13 Journal Entries
Missed yesterday’s entry, but with work picking up (so exciting!) I just wanted to share my mantra for the past two days:
Mind is everything. You control your reality.
Entries might look different from here on out. Maybe more of a recap of my days (or nights?). We’ll see.
8/11 Journal Entry
What I’m Grateful For Today: Playoff hockey! For a slice of normalcy during this pandemic. And also some nostalgia. Fond memories of my college years, spending every weeknight in April flipping between the NHL and NBA playoffs.
Today’s Lesson: Work hard and play hard. To earn the reward and be able to kick back and relax and watch the game, I had to put in the work during the day. Got my miles in, caught up with all my work e-mails, and completed some of the online training. I enjoy my down time more when I’ve been productive. Looking to keep that trend going as I start my doctoral program in earnest.
8/10 Journal Entry
What I’m Grateful For Today: Busy day! Spent most of my day working, on Zoom calls, answering e-mails, etc. But now is when I’m REALLY seeing the fruits of the work I’ve done on myself. No more anxiety, no more feeling like I’m running around. Now when I’m working, I feel more purposeful and much more clear-headed. Things that would’ve upset me years ago simply bounce off of me. I’m not as affected by them. I am really encouraged by this newfound tranquility even when I’m performing stressful tasks. So today, I’m thankful for me. For taking the time to rebuild myself from the bottom up and providing a more fertile ground for when I start working again. Which is now. Ahhhhh!
Today’s Lesson: Be prepared to toss aside the schedule. Planners and routines can be helpful, but don’t be afraid to listen to that inner voice and do what it says. There’s a good chance you’ll feel much more at peace by doing that - especially if you are completely in tune with what it is you want to do.
8/9 Journal Entry
What I’m Grateful For Today: Having a wife that listens to me and cares when I talk about and work through hang-ups from my past. Her patience and compassion is a big reason why I’ve been able to work through my own demons, and it’s made me a much better person. We’ve created such a fertile ground for starting a family together.
Today’s Lesson: My wife and my cats - this is my tribe. Focus on things that will make their life better. Discard the rest. It doesn’t serve you.
8/8 Journal Entry
What I’m Grateful For Today: Because I’m tired from a long day, today is just going to be simple. I’m grateful to experience the privilege of being non-disabled, which is something many of us take for granted all too often. It affords me the opportunity to participate in one of my favorite activities - trail running - which would be incredibly difficult if that weren’t the case.
Today’s Lesson: Running - and life in general - goes by much easier if you work to alleviate yourself of ALL the burdens that tie you down. You perform better and have a lot of fun at the same time. It’s worth it to spend extra time working through your problems.
8/7 Journal Entry
What I’m Grateful For Today: Everything that has happened to me that I perceived as “negative” at the time. All the suffering, the pain, the fractured relationships. All of it. It has led me to the place where I am now. And that is truly a wonderful thing.
Today’s Lesson: The thing that separates us from other species on this planet is EMPATHY. We mustn’t lose sight of that. But we also can’t let it be a hindrance. Follow the middle path. Awareness and equanimity.
8/6 Journal Entry
What I’m Grateful For Today: Having friends and family that know that I care so much about them that I don’t need to be participate in the kind of “everyday maintenance” of these relationships that can become routine and automated. They allow me to be who I am which is extremely helpful now that I live hundreds and thousands of miles away from them. I can put my focus and energy on the things on what really matters - the present moment.
Today’s Lesson: Meditation trains us to bring our attention back to the breath when our mind wanders. In the same way, the present moment is our anchor in everyday life. When our mind strays from it by focusing on the past or future (pleasant or unpleasant), we must non-judgmentally bring our focus back to the present. Formal sittings help us exercise this muscle by providing a “straw man” (in this case the breath) for the more difficult anchor (the present moment).
Harry Hood
It may be controversial within the Tumblr world to out myself as a Phish fan. But amongst the band’s tight-knit community, I’m not exactly ruffling any feathers when I say that one of my favorite Phish songs is “Harry Hood.”
For the uninitiated, here’s an excerpt from the song’s history page on phish.net:
“In 1985, Mike, Fish, Page and friend Brian “Miles” Long lived in a house on King Street in Burlington, directly across from a regional Hood bottling plant. The plant’s pair of huge milk tanks bore Harry’s smiling face, his grin illuminated at night by streetlight. “Harry Hood” was inspired by its namesake, the signature character of the Hood dairy company’s advertising campaigns. The little animated milkman in the fridge would proudly rattle on about his company’s dairy products when the “unsuspecting” folks opened their icebox doors. But what happened to Harry when the refrigerator door closed? Brian Long was the first to ask the question that has passed the lips of virtually every Phish fan. “Harry! Harry! Where do you go when the lights go out?”
When Trey and Fish traveled to Greece in the summer of ‘85, they experienced a tumultuous series of events involving a sea storm, a capsized raft, and lots of super-clean “chemists’ reserve” LSD. Following their return to safety, Trey wrote several chunks of new music inspired by the adventure. Back at the King Street house, a former tenant apparently named Mr. A. Miner was still receiving mail. One piece caught the band’s collective eye, a form letter bursting at the seams with Miner’s name, telling him, “Thank You, Mr. Miner.” It is from these relatively nondescript circumstances that one of Phish’s most beloved songs was born. “
Lyrically speaking, it’s not quite “Tears In Heaven” level, but that’s Phish for you. But in my first actual post on this blog, I want to discuss what this song means to me. And maybe on a beach in Greece thirty-five years ago, Trey was thinking the same thing. Probably not, but who knows.
As a child, I remember playing this game. Closing the refrigerator door, while trying to catch the precise moment that the light goes out. Can I do both? In my parents’ fridge at least, this task seemed impossible. In “Harry Hood”, Phish poses the question: what does happen to the contents of our refrigerator when the door closes and the lights go out - specifically to this beloved dairy mascot?
The song first “clicked” for me while I was running on my local track in a torrential downpour. During the song’s triumphant peak, I left my body. I wasn’t affected by rain or fatigue or stress. I was gliding. It was then that my love affair with the song took root.
This experience in a way provides a basis for my interpretation. Maybe it’s my penchant for attributing deeper meaning to the mundane (perhaps unnecessarily so at times) and maybe it’s my affinity for the “psychedelic” way of thinking and line of inquiry it entails, but I take the song as an analogy for life.
In the context of the song, we are all “fridges” with a bunch of stuff inside of us. Fears, dreams, anxieties, cravings. Relationships and friendships, family, material possessions. But what happens “when the lights go out” - when all of that goes away? What are we left with?
And Phish has the answer: “Harry!”
During one of the sittings at a recent meditation retreat, a cartoon figure emerged to help me through a particular rough patch. My brain - who has been fed a healthy dose of cartoons and television over the years - rationalized this abstract concept and gave it a familiar shape: Jiminy Cricket.
In Pinocchio, Jiminy serves as the titular character’s conscience. While that was also my initial interpretation at the time, I now understand it to represent something that is equally difficult to pronounce for me (hell, I even conflate the two when speaking - even if I can explain how they are fundamentally different): consciousness.
When you strip away everything, what are you left with? Buddhists say nothing, I say, “Yes, but not quite”. Sam Harris posits that you are left with “consciousness and its contents.” I like that. Better still, if you’re like me and want things broken down in easier to digest chunks, you might prefer Phish’s response.
Awareness or consciousness or Harry Hood is all that we have. Beneath every layer of being lies something at the center. Western religions and - to a lesser extent if you really understand its teachings - Hinduism confuse this with an eternal individual soul. But consciousness does not have any attributes. Emotions, feelings, experiences - everything just arises within it. Within this nothing, everything appears. And we are just witnesses to it.
This could be deeply troubling to some. We cling to who we are as a person - our preferences, our grudges, our “qualities”. But we are not any of these things. At our core, we are consciousness. We are awareness. God is consciousness. God is awareness. Or, if you prefer to be agnostic and don’t like to drop the big “G”, feel free to use the double “H” instead.
All of us are sometimes caught in a storm - whether it’s on a track or out at sea. We all have to face the vicissitudes of life. Conversely, we all have things to celebrate. And they can be equally as harmful when we cling helplessly to such positive memories and experiences.
Beneath it all, there is something more real. There is a peace and tranquility that can be attained in fleeting instances. Or in prolonged experiences like my meditation retreat. Or on a particularly scenic hike. While running in the rain. While watching one of your favorite bands in concert at the most famous arena in the world. While goofing off with friends at a college house. While driving through pine-covered mountains that stretch as far as the eye can see.
You aren’t your emotions. You aren’t your experiences. Hell, you aren’t even your self as you understand it. You are awareness. You are consciousness. Nothing more.
While this is destabilizing to some, I argue that this alternative is better. Because when you break it down, after all the food spoils and the lights go out, there is something that is still there. There’s something that lies beyond all that. And every blissful note in a delicious “Harry Hood” jam is a reminder to me of just that.
That cartoon milkman is always inside of us. He doesn’t go away when it gets dark. He is always there. That peace is always there. We just have to train our minds to live from that place. A place where nothing can hurt us. Where we don’t always just live for the exhilarating, exciting moments. And if you live from this place - it might seem contradictory - but your life takes on new meaning. Colors feel brighter, love feels realer, your senses come alive, and music blossoms into a symphony of wonder and joy. You start living life as if for the first time.
And that is something that you can feel good about.
Favorite versions of “Harry Hood”: 12/29/2016, 8/2/1997, 2/28/2003, 10/23/1994. Comment below with your favorites!
Evanston, WY
The fluorescent hum.
The crisp, still night air.
Out of this polarity,
Where nothing else exists,
Emerges
The SPECTER
Of something much larger,
Much grander than my self.
Envelopes me
And everything I know
And will ever know.
I am humbled by it.
The sky
A deep shade of purple
Stands in contrast
To the emptiness.
Of the Void and the Majesty,
Of the mountains.
A perfect backdrop
As I wind through the unknown,
The concealed.
I am no longer a stranger to it,
I have made it my home,
My sanctuary
My love, my peace
The emptiness
The Void,
And the Majesty.
A disembodied, familiar voice
My companion, my brother
Who has seen it all,
Been a witness to it all.
We trade scrutinies
Of things past and those yet to come,
Both are intoxicating to me
And we revel in it.
The sun rises behind me,
Invisible
But bringing color and life to the landscape
Revealing its true,
But hidden nature.
A tapestry of hues and possibilities
It is the sun
Rising from the East
And its light
That illuminates
And reveals
The road that lies ahead.
It’s a brave new world,
A brave new world.