From the Road - Volume 35

There and back again

Housekeeping:

Good morning, afternoon or evening my friends. My deepest apologies for the delay in the newsletter. Life as it often does, got in the way. From polishing glasses at the pub, to realizing the roots couldn’t be planted in Australia, then touching back down on home soil, and now working again in corporate America, I couldn’t muster the will to write. My industry and constitution was focused on finding a new gig, securing an apartment, creating a new routine and all the necessities of a great migration.

But the ring was heavy, the burden great, but we have Mt. Doom in our sights. To be frank, I was caught in the downstream of depression and it usually takes me awhile to swim out. However, it is the start of a new year and I will cast the past 4 months into the fire and start anew. I went there but now I am back again. It is no excuse to deprive myself or my loyal readers the wonderful community we have built. Life doesn’t just demand it, I want to continue writing.

See, already on my feet, I threw in at least 5 Lord of the Rings references.

Confusion? Clarity? Codswallop!

When we enter the world, we are met with so many choices. And the world we live in offers no respite from indecision. Where do we want our choices to lead? To success? To monetary gain? To happiness? To love?

We often think there is a narrow path we must tread to reach our goals and any shadow cast upon us from failure or comparison will plunge us into darkness.

Those feelings persist and persist until the torrent of the current cascades into a flood of doubt and depression. I was just there, I still occasionally go there, but we can paddle out of it.

How many times have I looked at a friend’s career and thought, “Why didn’t I do that? What mistakes have I made that led me down my own path?” Or watched an interview where an airline pilot said he knew he wanted to do this since he was 5 years old. At that age I was still eating cheetos and playing Mario Party.

I don’t know one person that hasn’t at one point thought “What the hell am I doing with my life” or “If I just would have done this instead.” We are all trying to get on the right path and have that path provide clarity to our restless minds. To have the internal monologue shut off and we can be content with our place and our choices. Confusion surrounds us, and always will.

In times of confusion we desire clarity. With how much information, directions and decisions are in our day to day we desire a lot of it. We crave it and will search for it with the tools at hand. Unfortunately, that is usually social media and platforms that only showcase the side we want others to see. Perception is a powerful tool and most of us want others to perceive how we want to be perceived, not how we actually are.

The need for clarity is perhaps the most human of desires. We are the only species who know of our own doom. We know this show ends, and the fear that follows requires us to focus on something we can tether too. To make our lives mean something.

And this is where a lot of confusion likes to play. In that playground of who we want to be and who we are.

Be wary of those who provide absolutes. Do some instagram influencers and podcasters have some wisdom? Surely. But plastering it over a booty lift or an AI video or a roaring lion is not the medium for the message. Codswallop to that!

You will not find full clarity looking for it from people who want to sell it. They make money off you feeling and staying confused. We want to believe that someone has figured it out, but if so many people have figured it out why is there still so much mystery.

So where does that leave us?

Through most of history people had religion to fall back on, to provide guidance in the maelstrom of maladies and suffering. I’ll credit god people, never met a more carefree bunch, God’s plan takes away a lot of stress I reckon. But tell God’s plan to the countless millions that suffer and that apparently god has decided to let suffer their whole life. However, it provides a blanket to keep out the cold darkness of true reality. I think that is why we are seeing a surge of quasi-religious movements. Astrology is back in a big way. Health movements feel one green smoothie away from a cult. But at its core, it’s a way to help explain the unexplainable. To comfort and silence our confusion to make way for clarity, but that could just be the Taurus in me.

With the invention of the state, people had patriotism of their nation to believe in. It was a tether that provided pride as a source of clarity. Only our generation is more disillusioned with government than perhaps any time in U.S. History. We know there is no clarity coming from our leaders, only chaos and corruption. The U.S. is at an inflection moment where it too is in the middle of what it is and what it should be. Having any government provide you your main source of clarity is a sure fire way to being blind. It is we the people for a reason, the government doesn’t run us, we run the government.

Status is one of those tricky bastards that has been with us for as long as we’ve been human. We have to divvy ourselves up into some kind of hierarchy just so we can feel those 3 words, “I made it.” When you go and trample everything and everyone, how good of footing do you really have? We have to form an out group to make the in group hold value, and we will usually do whatever it takes to be in the “in group.” Our current system dictates clarity by how much you make, how much you consume and how much you obey. But with only a miniscule portion of people able to make the big leagues the rest of us feel left out.

Something to remember here. All of it is made up. This is not written by the hand of god etched into the Universal fabric. I doubt God crochets. We, as humans, as a collective, make the stories we believe in. Our systems are continually written, thrown in the bin and rewritten. We decide the rules. We decide the paths. But these stories are not working anymore.

A good portion of us are not fully devoted to any of these structures to provide meaning or clarity, and we are left adrift in a sea of confusion. This confusion is at the mercy of our meaning. We are struggling to find meaning and purpose in our lives. And we are wise to pay heed to it. So what can we tether too? Where can we find clarity in the modern world? For the small sum of 4 payments of $6.99 you can find out!

All jokes aside, I will go into this in the upcoming newsletters, but in brief, here is my take.

Once we realize at an early age we die, we are thrown into the maelstrom of meaning.

It is in hope and contentment where our peace should lie. And here is the Matthew Modesitt flavor, this magic formula lies in knowing we are all on this path together. There is no ladder to climb. There is no failure. There are just the pitfalls and joys of life.

We are all on lifeboats in the middle of the ocean. Somebody can have a bigger one, somebody can have one gilded in gold, somebody can stride the waters faster, but brother, we are still in the middle of the damn ocean.

You aren’t behind. You aren’t lost. You are on the boat, and I’m right there with ya. Grab a paddle.

Will we have confusion? Yes.

Will we have clarity? Never fully.

Is it all Codswallup? Only if we let it.

I leave you with the song of Mamuna Tribe of South Papua tribe sings on the way back home that is the closest to spirituality I have felt in a long time,

“Day by day we walk on,

Our feet pressing

The same earth

Our fathers and our fathers’ fathers

Walked day by day,

While they walked on

Day by day we walk on,

Hush, little ones,

Don’t tell the earth

We love her yet

We will sleep in her soon

Enough,

But for now we walk on.”