We have them. We can’t escape them. I had one a few days ago and it caught me off-guard.
Gratitude checklist – done!
Life is temporary contemplative type thinking – done!
Setting an intention – done!
Meditation – done!
I dug deep down into my mental toolbox of positive thinking and came out nill. Instead of trying to understand or make sense of the way I was feeling, I decided to wallow in my cesspool of despair.
My girlfriend was concerned. I told her I’m just having a bad day. She got it and didn’t try to cheer me up. I appreciated that.
The next day I felt better. Actually, much better. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t trying to find answers. Maybe being present isn’t about fornicating with joy. Perhaps presence is accepting all the beauty and bullshit life offers.
Sometimes you have to wallow in filth to appreciate what it feels like to be clean. Life gives us infectious, euphoric, cataclysmic, beautiful, and malignant doses of contrast.
The Zen warrior in me tries to stay in the middle of the good and bad and stray away from reactionary thinking, but the human in me, the person that bleeds, the person that feels. and has emotions says feel the high’s and the low’s.
What I thought I know for sure, just isn’t so. Passion is born out of despair, enslavement breeds freedom, and hate will eventually give way to love.
Live vigorously, unapologetically, and kindly.
With Love,
Anand Swamy