Cornell West on How to do Good in America

“… and of course America is a romantic project. It’s paradiso, city on the hill and all this other mess and lies and so on. No, no, America is a very fragile democratic experiment predicated on the dispossession of the lands of indigenous peoples, the enslavement of African peoples and the subjugation of women and marginalization of gays and lesbians and it has great potential but this notion that somehow, you know, we had it all, or ever will have it all, has got to go — you have got to push it to the side. And once you push all that to the side then it tends to evacuate the language of disappointment and the language of failure and you say, ‘ok well how much have we done? how have we been able to do it? can we do more?’ well in certain situations you can’t do more; it is like trying to break dance at 75, you can’t do it anymore you were a master at 16, it’s over. You cannot make love at 80 the way you did at 20, so what? Time is real.”

Cornell West

It is absolutely possible…

I don’t know if this happens to you, but when I get a good email, something from someone who my work has helped, I don’t ever really let it feel… i don’t know… good.

I see how much better it could have been. I say to myself, “well it’s not as good as that thing over there, or that thing that she/he made. THAT is good.”

Today I got an email and I didn’t deflect like that. It just felt… good.

It was probably because it’s from David. Fucking David.

It’s also probably because of the last image he used.

So I’m putting it here for posterity sake. Send me a link to this some time to remind me, would you?

Here’s the email in full:

An Obituary we all Need to Read

“As much as people knew hanging out with him would end in a night in jail or a killer screwdriver hangover, he was the type of man that people would drive 16 hours at the drop of a dime to come see. He lived 1000 years in the 67 calendar years we had with him because he attacked life; he grabbed it by the lapels, kissed it, and swung it back onto the dance floor.”

Chris Connors Obit.

Here’s the rest of the obituary in case it ever gets lost from the internet:

Irishman Dies from Stubbornness, Whiskey

Chris Connors died, at age 67, after trying to box his bikini-clad hospice nurse just moments earlier. Ladies man, game slayer, and outlaw Connors told his last inappropriate joke on Friday, December 9, 2016, that which cannot be printed here. Anyone else fighting ALS and stage 4 pancreatic cancer would have gone quietly into the night, but Connors was stark naked drinking Veuve in a house full of friends and family as Al Green played from the speakers. The way he died is just like he lived: he wrote his own rules, he fought authority and he paved his own way. And if you said he couldn’t do it, he would make sure he could.

Most people thought he was crazy for swimming in the ocean in January; for being a skinny Irish Golden Gloves boxer from Quincy, Massachusetts; for dressing up as a priest and then proceeding to get into a fight at a Jewish deli. Many gawked at his start of a career on Wall Street without a financial background – but instead with an intelligent, impish smile, love for the spoken word, irreverent sense of humor, and stunning blue eyes that could make anyone fall in love with him.

As much as people knew hanging out with him would end in a night in jail or a killer screwdriver hangover, he was the type of man that people would drive 16 hours at the drop of a dime to come see. He lived 1000 years in the 67 calendar years we had with him because he attacked life; he grabbed it by the lapels, kissed it, and swung it back onto the dance floor. At the age of 26 he planned to circumnavigate the world – instead, he ended up spending 40 hours on a life raft off the coast of Panama. In 1974, he founded the Quincy Rugby Club. In his thirties, he sustained a knife wound after saving a woman from being mugged in New York City. He didn’t slow down: at age 64, he climbed to the base camp of Mount Everest. Throughout his life, he was an accomplished hunter and birth control device tester (with some failures, notably Caitlin Connors, 33; Chris Connors, 11; and Liam Connors, 8).

He was a rare combination of someone who had a love of life and a firm understanding of what was important – the simplicity of living a life with those you love. Although he threw some of the most memorable parties during the greater half of a century, he would trade it all for a night in front of the fire with his family in Maine. His acute awareness of the importance of a life lived with the ones you love over any material possession was only handicapped by his territorial attachment to the remote control of his Sonos music.

Chris enjoyed cross dressing, a well-made fire, and mashed potatoes with lots of butter. His regrets were few, but include eating a rotisserie hot dog from an unmemorable convenience store in the summer of 1986.

Of all the people he touched, both willing and unwilling, his most proud achievement in life was marrying his wife Emily Ayer Connors who supported him in all his glory during his heyday, and lovingly supported him physically during their last days together.

Absolut vodka and Simply Orange companies are devastated by the loss of Connors. A “Celebration of Life” will be held during Happy Hour (4 p.m.) at York Harbor Inn on Monday, December 19.

In lieu of flowers, please pay open bar tab or donate to Connors’ water safety fund at www.thechrisconnorsfund.com.

Viktor Frankl on Success

“Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.”

Viktor Frankl

The ‘Make Friends With Fear’ Game

Here’s a fun little exercise: make friends with fear. Don’t cackle at that. I know it’s a kind of trope, but go with me on this for just a minute or two.

Give it a try, make friends with fear. Why? Because your life is a fucking nightmare and what do you have to lose and it’s worth it if there’s even a chance you’ll be happier with yourself. Right?

Seriously, you’ve got to look into this. I mean, all the shit you feel right now — right? Like, the anxiety about your career — the whole “am I heading in the right direction with my life” thing. Or that deep down fear about your partner that doesn’t go away no matter how good things are or how long you’ve been together; you’ve always got that disquiet place you can kind of go where you’re, like, “damn, am I with the right person?” Or, you’re on the other side of that and you haven’t found someone and you’re dealing with that whole fucking roiling boil of fear and hope. Then of course there’s the depression that just kind of settles on things for no reason like fog over a city… just fucking laying there, getting everything damp. Such a dick.

I mean, think of how much of your life you’ve spent in your head trying to untangle knots like these. When you’re driving and the All Things Considered report starts fading off as the goddam Professional Worrier™ part of your brain (is it the Medulla Oblongata??) begins turning over shit in your mind like a Slovenian housekeeper who couldn’t give a shit about if you’re still sleeping, she’s going to clean the room now. All these worries start popping up — I should call Dave. No, he’s at work, lets not bother him. Oh shit, Shannon’s birthday is coming up; I’ve got to get her a good card. She can be such a bitch. Why do I tolerate people in my life I don’t even like that much? Well, that’s not true, I do like them, but it’s so tiring to try to keep up appearances for them. This professional worrier Slovenian house cleaner who barges in uninvited whenever the fuck she wants, she’s just ripping up the room, throwing off bed sheets, collecting glasses and dishes and napkins from last night’s party, mumbling to you the whole time, you know you’re fucking clueless, right? You know you don’t have any control over anything, right? Your employer could just go underwater tomorrow for something something tax law or some shit. Your Mom could just up and dementia herself out of the building. Your own body might just fucking grow a cancer or some shit. All of this shit’s gonna change. And, also, fuck All Things Considered and this “liberal perspectives on the hijab” bullshit story. And you’re, like, damn… I wanted to listen to that.

All this damn dust being kicked up by this professional worrier lady. And you’re somewhere inside that scene trying to keep your shit together, but all these ideas she’s spinning up come with these feelings in your body. The weird, buzzy nervous chest tightness, the sort of acid-in-my-guts feeling of shame, the sluggish and severe lethargy of depression. Even though these feelings are so intense, we barely notice the feeling at all. Instead, we grapple with the ideas they’re kicking up! The part of our brain that takes in all the data and makes some predictions about what’s going on and what we should do, the thinking part of the brain (is it the prefrontal cortex??) elegantly brings all these feelings and thoughts together into a chorus of: everything is fucked; we are, each one of us, profoundly alone; there are no answers and no strategies that will get us to safety and security forever… Ha! Such a dick. But he’s kind of right. Right?

Almost done, we’re winding down here. Stick with me because this is the good part.

And so you kind of reach a bottom limit in these moments. Holy shit I’m profoundly terrified of losing things I love and nobody knows what’s going on and I am going to die a very real death at some point. The bottom, which would make you feel better — like, “hey, I found the bottom guys; it doesn’t get any worse than this!” — if you weren’t smart enough to realize that the bottom just keeps going. It’s a bottomless bottom, endless bottomness. So, instead of the “found the bottom and we can work our way up from here!,” you’ve got oh shit, it just keeps going forever… profoundly alone… etc.

So, anyways, listen — you’ve got these intense fears. You just do. And nobody else sees them in you with clarity. Nobody knows how hard you’re working to fucking keep a goddam balance going. Nobody sees how hard you are on yourself. Nobody knows about the night terrors, or those lightning flashes of intense fear, or that goddam fog sadness that just sort of lays on everything whenever it wants to — fucking dick. Nobody can see that in you because just about every single one of us is caught up being so hard on ourselves that we can’t use other people in any other way but to soothe a little of our own need for security. You’ve got these intense fears, but your dad or grandpa or grandma never looked into your eyes and saw it and told you how fucking amazing you are for keeping going — how strong you are to tolerate all this shit at once, how sensitive of a soul you are to feel these things as heavily as you feel them. None of our dads looked into our eyes, saw that, and said to us: You’re doing a great job, and I can’t say it gets easier, but I’m really proud of you. Because for someone to do that…

When someone bridges that gap, from bottomless to bottomless, it is… it’s just enough. Enough for a whole new feeling. It’s like love, but it’s better. Love in the world of certainty and progress and the kingdom of modern man on earth is just kind of like an agreement. But love in the upside down world, the world of bottomless and bottomless, unqualified and sincere insecurity, love there is… transcendent.

So, c’mon guys! Look into those fears you have. Do the Sandberg and Lean In™ on this shit, because these things that are so terrifying are the things that can take away the terror. The fears are their own antidotes.

How do you do it? Here’s what I do: start a running list of things that scare you. Write one down when you think of it. At first it was tough to get used to seeing the fears (because I had spent the last 15 years being the fears, like, living inside of them and mistaking them for me-ness). But after you’ve seen and written down a few it gets easier to see more (like Pokemon Go??). And that’s basically the only step. From there you’ll notice the fear, you’ll remember it’s name, and you can watch it like it’s a troubled student having a hard time fitting in with the others at school. If you feel any love from reading this article, maybe you’ll have a little love to give that troubled kid so that, instead of isolating them in a special classroom, you can actually get her integrated. The student body needs her, you guys. Otherwise she wouldn’t be there.

As an example, here’s some of the fears on my running list:

  • Losing another child, or spending the next 10 years keeping trying to have children and losing too much of my wife in the process. I’m sad and scared about that. (And since writing this down, my wife and I can actually talk about this. Bottomless to bottomless, guys!)
  • Career, success and money certainty stuff. I mean, I want to be a big deal, guys. I’m not afraid to admit it: I really think I could be. And it’s not the fame thing; it’s the going into the grave with my songs unsung thing. Life’s too miraculous (and maybe too endlessly meaningless) to not shoot for a great fucking ride. This one, right now, is scary in a kind of exciting way.
  • That thing where I’m asleep and I half wake up and it feels like there’s someone standing by the bed. What the fuck is that about?? Haven’t learned anything from this one yet; bet I could, though.
  • I’m afraid that following my heart — really listening to my gut and trying to pull that thread of curiosity and delight every day — will cause people I really love, like members of my family, my son, my wife, my coworkers, to lose trust in me. Feels like a calculated risk (because I’m still a charming motherfucker and can work hard to win people over), but it makes me sad to think of ever hurting these people.
  • Here’s a sadness, not a fear: I’m sad to think that every one of us is going to die and that might be it, the end of the show. That there’s nothing beyond all the learning and development and beauty and experience acquired here in life. I want my grandpa to be rewarded for how awesome he did life. And if the quality of your life is, itself, the reward of life well lived, well then, that’s actually very beautiful to me. But still, it’s sad that we all die, that your brave soul will get tuckered out and do something completely final. I’m sad that you’ll have to go through that, I’m sad I will and my son will too. We have these great rewards in life, these tremendous feelings and experiences… I still kinda think you and I deserve more though 🙁 But, if I’m honest, this makes me double down on the best feelings this side of the grave. That’s something.

So, there’s a fun little exercise. Make friends with fear, you guys. There’s good stuff to learn there. (The only stuff??)

I have been Chase Wardman Reeves. Thanks for reading! You can subscribe to my email list if you want more writings like this over time.

Bean on how Power Works

“…these fools always look up for power. People above you, they never want to share power with you. Why you look to them? They give you nothing. People below you, you give them hope, you give them respect, they give you power, cause they don’t think they have any, so they don’t mind giving it up.”

Bean, Ender’s Shadow, Orson Scott Card

Alan Watts on How to Become Wise

What you took to be a thinker of the thoughts was just one of the thoughts. What you took to be the experiencer of the experience was just a part of the experience.”

Alan Watts

the whole quote:

“The whole approach is not to convert you, not to make you over, not to improve you, but for you to discover that if you really knew the way you are things would be sane. But you see, you can’t do that. You can’t make that discovery because you’re in your own way so long as you think ‘I am I,’ so long as that hallucination blocks it. The hallucination disappears only in the realization of it’s own futility, when at last you see you can’t do it. […] You know a fool who persists in his folly becomes wise. So you’ve got to speed up the folly. […] What you took to be a thinker of the thoughts was just one of the thoughts. What you took to be the experiencer of the experience was just a part of the experience.”

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