The first part of this is kind of raggedy. This started as an attempt to list some of my emerging values, as well as to think through some topics that are currently on my mind. But then it picked up steam and started turning into something else, and I so went with it. It feels like (as I think all of my writing/journaling does) what Jenny Odell in “How to Do Nothing” describes here:
“I came out of this book different than I went in. So, consider this not a closed transmission of information, but instead an open and extended essay, in the original sense of the word (a journey, an essaying forth).”
A journey. An essaying forth. Lets?
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I want to live and breathe and understand the mythic and storied nature of life, on its own terms. To not to enter into this understanding from a frame that subtly or not so subtly undermines this nature, by seeing it as make-believe or pretend.
I want to protect my sovereignty and self possession. I want to understand how to balance this with surrender - with being moved by, falling for, letting others in, letting myself be taken away, trusting, and being at-the-foot-of.
I want to find out what’s actually going on. I want to understand in terms of fundamentals, building blocks, and underlying territory. I want to eventually see how this approach was confused. But until then …
I want to appreciate and enjoy charisma, charm, and personal magnetism. And at the same time, be weary of it and its shadows.
I want to unfurl and embrace my uniqueness, the eclectic set of interests, cares, concerns, and values that I have, that I am. To not suppress it. I want to come to see this set not as arbitrary or random (although in some sense it is), but as a beautiful, yet-to-be-fully-realized tapestry of a world, a world that doesn’t yet exist but could. I think we’re all yet-to-be-expressed WORLDS. And it’s our responsibility and duty to carry them out, to create them. As I imagine you do, I seem to care about and be interested in a unique set of things that no one else seems to care about in exactly the same ways I do. Instead of despairing about this form of aloneness (where is everyone else?? where are the others?? who's gonna show me the way??), I want to honor it and see it as the seed of my unique offering to the world.
Myth, prayer, poetry, soul, ceremony, lineage, ancestors, ritual, reverence, the sacred, the divine, and more, and more, and more, and more … I don’t yet understand all of these things (these things that feel like members of a dimly lit room in the castle that is my mind and life) and sometimes I worry that they’ll never reconcile into the rational, paternal, overarching structure of my mind, but I sense their beauty, significance, and potential, and want to continue to be moved, inspired, and taken by them.
I want to take great care in how I interact with technology. I don’t want to put off this care until I have full understanding of how devices affect my mind (as I'm often wont to do, to only allow myself to act until after I have full understanding). But my initial sense is that I dematerialize in their presence. I’m no longer a body firmly located in space. I get untethered and lost in the ether. And in the process (since I believe the body is in an important sense, the seat of our “actual” preferences and values), I lose touch (literally) with what I want. And so in their presence I meander, aimlessly, often with no direction, and often as the ‘follow’ of systems designed to ‘lead’ us astray.
I want to write for and share with others. Writing with the knowledge that others will see my words allows me to write and think in a way that I otherwise don’t have access to.
I want to chronicle my sagas (or whatever the hell I’m going through) for myself and the inspiration and edification of anyone else who may be reading.
I want my writing to be big, beautiful, compelling, and drawing (as in, drawing someone in). I want to haunt you, with your consent and in the most beautiful ways. Writing beautiful things sometimes feels like the only avenue I have for touching, affecting, and impacting others.
and I want to take a deep breath
relax
relax
again, relax.
hide. tend to myself. hold myself. remember why i’m doing any of this at all. slow down. simplify. step off my high horse. and enjoy the simple and beautiful as it already exists all around me.
I want to know myself as creative. I want to look in the mirror and see a long-haired, free spirited, lover; a breath of light and life. It often feels like I’m trying to convince myself that I am not who I was (or am?). That I am not a nerd. That I am not a nasally boy who “well actually”s too much, who only concerns himself with the technical, who’s obsessed with literality, and can only speak neck up. Who doesn’t feel deeply. Who’s body is a side effect of living. Who’s embodied, material presence is something the designers should patch up in the next release. [And ouch, I want to reflect on my areas of growth while being kind to myself at the same time.]
I want to reconnect with ‘sincerity’. I want to move past cynicism and skepticism (of others). I want to re-enter the flow as a player, a character in the show, and not remain behind the veil, Saran-wrapped away from experience.
I want to love. I want to love others. But mostly, I want to love myself.
[Shadow alert:] I don’t want to be one of those losers who never actually makes progress. Who can write all of the above, but for whom five years later, nothing has fundamentally shifted and still suffer in the same, stupid ways. I don’t want to pay lip service to these ideas. I want change, shifts, and movement. And I want freedom, liberation, and ease. I want to move through the world in beautiful ways.
I want to cry. I haven’t cried in over a year. I want to bawl. I want to express this festering, slow-burn pain out into the world. I want intensity of emotion. I want to be fucking angry, and to rage. I want to throw shit across a parking lot. I want to yell. I want to do anything but stew in the slow cooker of temperate frustration, day after day, month after month, year after year.
I want people to pay attention to me. I want to impress people. I want people to think, “that Jonathan person is someone cool I’d want to hang out with.” I want the people I admire to admire me, to think well of me.
I want intimacy. I want careful, quiet, slow conversations with cute girls (ahhhh, I said it). I want to wonder with them, talk about the reality we live in. Poke at it together as a shared experience. I want a closeness and contact and baring of ourselves that (as far as I know) seems exclusive to intimate encounters of the romantic-ish kind.
I want to solve my problems. I don’t want to suffer. I want the life I dreamed of when I was growing up. I don’t want to settle.
I don’t always know what to do and I often get stuck. Sometimes I fear, worry, that at this rate, my expectations of life will never be met. That I have high hopes and big dreams, but just keep fucking up, one too many times, moving too slowly. Am wounded, flawed, in critical debilitating ways that will screw the whole thing up. That I act too little. That I’m too stuck in my ways, or have some karma that I’ll never burn off (in this lifetime). That I don’t know how to make decisions. That I ask for help too late. Sure, I’ll probably have a good life. But will it be as big, magical, and beautiful as I dreamed of, wanted it to be?
I want you. I’ll climb up and down the mountain three thousand times before I return to the base and conclude (or remember?) that all I ever wanted was to hang out with my friends, to belong in community, to be accepted by others. To eat together, sing together, heal together, love together. But it’s hard and it hurts and I have to climb those mountains first, I think.
I want to build grand, lasting institutions, do research, and understand the mind. Understand my pain, really. I want to live one of those lives you find as the author’s biography on the back of a good book: “was a student of Jung’s, lived in the Amazon for three years, studied Chinese medicine for five, spent two years in a Zen monastery, managed the Grateful Dead; has a partner, two kids, and a bountiful community of friends, lovers, and colleagues”.
I want to share. I want you to find yourself in these words. I want us all to revel in and celebrate what it is to be human. How weird and zany and fucked up it is. And how we all share this weirdness with each other. Our minds can be hellish (and they can also not be!!). And we are not alone in this. We can join in and revel in this together. I want us to take to the streets and shout from the rooftops: omg we’re so fucking crazy. Or do the same in our living rooms. I want us to laugh and cry, and cry, and laugh about this.
And most importantly, I want this all to be real. I don’t want this to (just) be the fanciful, fantastical fiction of a young boy man, who dreams too much and acts too little. I don’t want to long forever and actualize too little. I could die, anytime. Buses, meteors, and aneurysms. The story could take many forms and it’s not destined to be any which way or another.
Here’s to living, fellow journeyers and compañeros. Cheers,
Jonathan
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