Category: Waiting for the miracle

I’m sitting here, hungry for the pizza I’m about to prepare, trying to remember how to say “I’m hungry” in Spanish (I supposedly learned that this morning), and gradually coming down from a late afternoon caffeine buzz. Life is swirling and I can’t seem to wrap my mind around anything solid and stable. I don’t know what the sweet fuck I’m doing, and… wait… here’s a thought: Hole in the sky, on the fourth of July, on the fourth of July.

I’m trying to do too many things at once, but there are so many things to do, and everything takes time, and there’s just not much time, so I have to let so many things go. I want to be Ken Wilber and Bruce Lee and Ze Frank and Thomas Hanna and Alan Watts and Bill Hicks and Henry Miller, when the truth is, they’re not even them, I mean, they’re just ideas I have in my head, symbols of some ideal state of being, projections of squandered potentials and buried intentions. They are hallucinations in a hall of mirrors, dreams in a sleepless, moonless night.

Sometimes all I can do is just hang in there. My work at the hospital is wearing me down more and more each week, and I’m getting the feeling–sorta like a dull nausea in the pit of my stomach–that my days on the Adolescent Chemical Dependency Unit are numbered. I’ve been doing this for about three years now, and perhaps this kind of burnout is simply inevitable. I’ve not yet in my life been able to stand a full-time work routine for more than a few years without needing to make a change. Working forty hours a week at any one thing has always struck me as mind-numbing and counter to a life of embodied spirituality. At least for me, that’s been the case. I can only trudge on for so long. Of course, the job has also been edifying in many ways, but somehow, on balance, it feels like a losing battle that will eventually end with a bayonet in the belly.

It’s hard to maintain a strong sense of hope when you spend too much time in a psychiatric hospital. Lately, our unit has been accepting patients with serious criminal backgrounds. Criminality and drug problems often go hand in hand, but there’s a difference between a kid who commits crimes to support a drug habit and a criminal who happens to use drugs. Most of the kids I’m working with right now look at our treatment center as a softer and easier alternative to jail time. They don’t want my help, unless it’s geared toward getting them out as soon as possible with minimal effort and hassle. I’m expending tremendous amounts of energy throwing out life preservers to kids who don’t think they’re drowning. They swat away whatever I offer, and I can only watch as they drift further out of reach. It feels like the ship is sinking, and I’m setting aside a life preserver for myself as I look out with trepidation into the deep blue beyond.

I’m finally feeling better, seeing things a little clearer. It’s easy to see now how far off the path I have strayed. Fortunately, I often have the impulse to write when I’m graced with moments of clarity, so I have all these blog posts and journal entries to help me remember the core insights that have contributed most to my sanity over the years. Coming out of the fog, I find myself retracing my steps, looking for a little familiar ground from which to carry on.

Today I made it back to base camp by way of jumping around the room like a lunatic. Strange as it may sound, this has been by core spiritual practice for the past decade or so. Calling what I did today “movement meditation” sounds pretentious as hell, considering that a fly on the wall would probably call it “bad dancing,” but whatever the label it left me in a state of energized clarity. And I’ve repeatedly discovered over the years that if I do whatever it takes to keep the window of my soul clean, everything else just takes care of itself. What baffles me is that while I know this to be true and also know precisely the set of daily practices that keep my grounded and clear-minded, I still choose–again and again–to ignore these hard-won insights. The price I pay for this ignorance is lost time, lost hope, and developmental arrest. I make myself spiritually sick until everything I do feels as fruitless as the dry heaves. I’m like so many of the drug addicts I work with–I know what to do, yet for some reason I don’t do it.

There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to change, that doesn’t want to grow, that doesn’t want to see things clearly. And that part of me can’t stand bad dancing.

I turned thirty-six on Tuesday. My father had four kids by the time he was thirty-six. I don’t have anything else to say about that. It just strikes me as weird. Gives me an uneasy feeling. Ch-ch-ch-ch-change. My entire adult life I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of this mysterious, ubiquitous process. How can I realize the potential within myself? How can I help to facilitate positive change in others who are stuck in self-limiting patterns?

This past week I poured my heart and soul into the kids at the Adolescent Chemical Dependency Center. I was overflowing with compassion, and did my best to make the holiday-in-the-hospital as enjoyable as possible for them. On the surface, everything was moving along smoothly, but I could sense there were things going on behind the scenes. Some folks were up to no good.

I’ve been through this many times before. There’s just no way you can house eighteen teenagers together–most of whom are repeat criminal offenders with frighteningly anti-social tendencies–and expect anything but manipulation, conniving, and blatant dishonesty. But this time it got to me. This time it really hollowed me out. By the time I was through interrogating them, I found out that several kids were involved in a plot to sneak contraband onto the unit. Two of these kids were our “star pupils,” having consistently said the right things in therapy groups and buttered up staff members with tearful expressions of gratitude. Another kid had stolen some magic markers from staff and inhaled the fumes to get high. When I confronted these kids and explained the possible consequences of their actions (further, long-term treatment; going back to jail), several other kids decided to come clean about their true feelings about the program, rallying to support their peers with shouts of “Everything you all teach here is bullshit!” “Honesty is bullshit!” “Sharing feelings is bullshit!” “If we want to get clean, we can do it on our own! You all don’t know shit!”

To say the wind was taken out of my sails would be an understatement. I had invested so much time and energy into these kids, and it turns out that the majority of them had been fronting their way through the program and simply telling me what I wanted to hear so they could go home as soon as possible. They had been pulling time. Nothing more. They never wanted my help. They never wanted to change. They just wanted to get the authority figures off their backs.

I tried all my usual rationalizations to lessen the sting: “Hey, there are at least a few of them who seem to want help.” “Maybe I’m planting seeds for later.” “They’re just kids. They don’t know what they believe.” Nothing did the trick. I just felt sick, sick of trying to help people who don’t want my help. You can’t force change. People have to learn their own lessons I guess. I’m still learning mine.

Being a therapist can leave one hollow and hopeless. I will enjoy my two days off; spend time with my wife; play my guitar; get some exercise. By Saturday, my perspective will have changed. It always changes.

Three years ago my guts were twisted about whether to move to Kentucky with my girlfriend or stay in North Carolina with my bandmates in My Dear Ella. I left the band, joined my girlfriend (now my wife), and my life abruptly changed course, as it had numerous times before. I’ve stayed in touch with Eric (MDE mastermind and my closest friend) since my departure, and several times I’ve flirted with the idea of moving back to NC, at least for the nine to twelve months my wife will be doing her doctoral research in Mexico. Per the original game plan, my wife figured she’d be heading off to do her research in the fall of ’06, as in right now, but the vagaries of grad school have been such that things have been considerably delayed, so now we’re looking at next fall at the earliest.

So many twists and turns, and it turns out that Eric recently dissolved My Dear Ella and formed a new outfit, Death of the Sun [pictured above]. It also turns out that D.O.T.S. needs a bass player to complete their line-up so they can take the world by storm. Do I smell the intoxicating effluvium of destiny? Or is it just the same old clump of bull-poop I’ve been dragging around on my boot-heel for years?

I don’t know. Part of me would love to cast off the shackles of normalcy and step out on that thin limb again. Maybe this time things will be different. Maybe I’m ready for greatness. But then again, having been down this road before, I’m all too aware of the costs, the doubts, and the insidious pattern that compels me, every four years or so it seems, to jump whatever ship I’m on in favor of the S.S. Something Else.

“Bob” is a palindrome. So is “rise to vote sir,” but strangely this just wasn’t enough to get me to the polls today. Truth is, I don’t care who wins any of the races here in Fayette County, Kentucky. There, I said it. I don’t care. Bill Hicks nailed it when he said: “I’ll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. ‘I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs.’ ‘I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking.’ ‘Hey, wait a minute, there’s one guy holding out both puppets!'”

I wanted to care. I really did. I even went online this morning to read up on the various candidates’ positions. Not only did I have a hard time making sense of the issues and discerning differences between positions, but every one of these people struck me as fake, plastic, and utterly unworthy of my endorsement. So, I watched some clips of Family Guy on YouTube while I drank the rest of my coffee.

I know what you’re thinking. I can see those fingers wagging at me: “You have no right to complain since you didn’t make your voice heard!” The trouble is, my voice was saying, “I don’t care! These people make me sick!” How better to express such a sentiment than by not voting.

Everytime I saw a slimy, negative campaign ad on TV, I said to myself “I will not vote for anyone who endorses such garbage.” By the time election day rolled around, there was no one left who didn’t stink like a dumpster. I just have no stomach for the abject inauthenticity I’ve seen on display for the past several weeks. While I was typing the last sentence, they announced the results for Mayor of Lexington on the local news and showed some footage of the new mayor’s victory speech. The guy’s been mayor for ten minutes and he’s already reading his speeches. Can’t these fucking androids just speak from their hearts? I’m sorry, but I feel better for having taken no part in this.

In 2004, I voted for John Kerry even though I found him repugnant. It was a vote against the other guy, nothing more. Had there been a Nazi or a rapist on the ballot, maybe I would’ve stood in line today to hold back the greater of two evils. In fact, despite all this vitriol, an hour before the polls closed I was still considering voting against some people. I was doing my grocery shopping, a chore I do every Tuesday afternoon on the way home from work. I went to the beer aisle to pick up a six-pack (my wife and I have a little pizza-and-beer-night thing on Tuesdays) and I was met by a big sign saying “No alcohol will be sold until after the polls close at 6pm.” You gotta be kidding! That was all I needed to justify an official election day boycott, since it turns out no candidate had promised to overturn this ridiculous ordinance during their campaign.

I work in a psychiatric hospital, and when a patient gets out of control, we often present him or her with a choice: “You can either walk to the ‘quiet area’ or else we’ll have to escort you there.” Now, a fifteen year old kid who’s been institutionalized her whole life is apt to respond with a “Fuck you!” and a gob of spit. She knows when a choice is not really a choice. She can see the guy in the white coat holding up both puppets.

David Jon Peckinpaugh has been ruminating on Parenthood over on his blog. In his latest installment, he says:

“I have been wondering again about being a Parent and how I received the Gift of Life because my Parents chose to have children… and allowed it to happen. I am specifically wondering if the choice not to have children is a breaking of Life’s Trust? After all, might we not owe an obligation to give to Life the opportunity for a new form–which is what each of us has received? Of course, this is totally in keeping with the notion that Life Is A Gift. If we view Life as a Gift then we will want to share that Gift.”

Interesting… I’ve never thought about my choice to be childless in these terms. I guess I don’t think of life as a gift. I don’t think my parents looked at their decision to have kids in that way either. I think they wanted to raise children and enjoy family life mainly because that was how they wanted to live their lives. I don’t know for sure though. I’ll have to ask them about it. This goes back to the whole “self-centeredness” thing. I always bristle when someone suggests (as they often do) that it’s self-centered to not have kids. After the fact, once the child is born, it’s true that it would be hard to be self-centered and be a good parent. The question is, What’s the motivation to have a child in the first place? You’re the first, David Jon, I’ve heard talk about “giving the gift of life.” Most people seem to want something for themselves, i.e. the wonderful, deeply meaningful experience of being a parent. Life may be a gift, but who’s the gift for? It’s my feeling that the vast majority of humans are at a self-centered stage of personal development when they decide to procreate, and thus they look at the newborn child as a gift—for themselves. This is evident in the language most people use to describe the decision (i.e. “I want to have a baby” or “I want to be a father”). And like a child who gets bored with his Christmas toys by February, too many parents remain self-centered and leave kids feeling neglected, unwanted and unloved.

Of course, someone who decides to have children from a place of relative selflessness will look at and experience parenthood from a relatively selfless perspective. But then again, childlessness can also be viewed and experienced from a relatively selfless perspective. After all, there are millions of children (and adults) already in the world who could use some attention, so one need not create a new being in order to bestow gifts. And the ultimate gift, as I see it, is not life, but love. I could get my balls blown off in a minefield (ouch!) and still give love. And I can give it to anyone at anytime.

I don’t know, David Jon, what goes into the decision to create life, because I haven’t made that decision. But I have made the conscious decision (every time I put on a condom) to not create life, and I certainly don’t feel like I’m withholding a gift from anyone. The truth is, I’m not sure why I don’t want a child (for now at least). That’s why I’m having this discussion with you. Thanks for that.

My friend David Jon lit a fire this morning with his latest blogging on the transformative power of parenthood. He makes several interesting points, and I have no doubt that parenthood can be a profoundly deep, spiritual, humanizing, enlightening experience for everyone involved. Just saying this much, however, and I realize I’m in over my head here. I’m thirty-six years old, and neither my wife nor I have any intention (right now, at least) of having children. “Why not?” one might ask. Good question.

I love kids. Always have. At family gatherings I’m the one running around in the back yard with all the kids while the big people stand around like stiffs making idle conversation with each other. My own parents had always assumed I would be family man, and now they — along with my siblings — scratch their heads wondering why I persist in being so self-centered. This is when I get pissed off a little. Because unlike David Jon, I have spent my life surrounded by people who hold parenthood up as the ultimate spiritual experience, at least in the sense that Paul Tillich used the term “spiritual,” i.e. whatever matters most to a person. However you slice it, where I come from, raising children is assumed to be the highest purpose in life. And yet growing up, I never met a single adult who seemed radiantly happy and fulfilled, at least not in the way I yearned to be. And I never heard anyone talk about having and raising children in the way that David Jon talks about it. On the contrary, I was always left with the impression that most people had kids or wanted kids for the most self-centered reasons imaginable, i.e. to keep up with the Jones’s, to pass on their genes, to keep their family name going, to mold little beings in their own image, or to justify continued misery at a soul-sapping job. Where I come from, everyone gets married, has kids, and works at least forty-hours a week. In fact, to this day I know very few people who choose to be childless. If having kids, in and of itself, is such a transformative, life affirming experience, one would expect widespread peace and love instead of widespread misery and ignorance.

When I was a younger man getting ready to take on the “real world,” it seemed that adulthood promised to be, for the most part, a period of gradual physical, psychological and spiritual decline. It just made sense for me to rebel against the status quo. Hec, I never thought I would get married, but here I am. And I may yet decide to have children. If ever I am a father, I have no doubt that it will be a wonderful, spiritual experience like none I’ve ever known. But why should parenthood be any different than loving relationships in general, in that the depth of the experience depends on how open, awake and unfettered I am in my capacity to relate to others and to be alive?

I’ve worked with kids whose parents pimped them out for crack money, or used them as punching bags to vent their endless frustrations. I also have a friend who says he’s discovered what it means to be human through caring for his sons. Any experience can help to free us from our spiritual prison of self-centeredness. Maybe parenthood is uniquely suited for this. I wouldn’t know, I guess.

For all the ballyhoo about psychospiritual growth and seizing the day and whatnot that finds its way into this blog, it’s incredible — and downright discouraging — to discover that one bad day can seemingly negate months of perceived progress. I know it’s only a feeling, and “this too shall pass” and all that shit, but it took literally one crappy experience at work for me to consider changing careers. Hec, I was ready to move out of the country after my train-wreck of a discussion group yesterday evening. I gave the kids (patients on the Adolescent Chemical Dependency Unit) an assignment, asking them to write down the one person (could be living, dead, family member, celebrity, whoever) who they considered to be “the bomb” or the coolest person ever, then give me five reasons why. I was trying to get a discussion going about values and about what we can learn about ourselves by thinking deeply about who we look up to and who we despise. By the end of the group I felt as disconnected from these kids as I do from suicide bombers.

The majority of the kids espoused a core value system on par with a bad gangsta rap song, presenting the most abject vision of vacuous materialism, criminality and self-centeredness one could possibly imagine. To say I was discouraged would be putting it mildly. I felt utterly powerless to even plant the tiniest seed of positive change in these kids. “They’re too far gone,” is all I could think. And while I know that many of them will grow out of these self-limiting beliefs in time, I can’t help but recoil at the possibility that maybe, just maybe, they are too far gone. Maybe we all are.

I woke this morning as if from a drugged stupor. My wife and I have an agreement that the last one out of bed has to make it, and while I was making it I could barely keep from falling back in and into my dreamy haze. It seems I was at work much of the night, doing therapy and saving the kids on the Adolescent Chemical Dependency Unit from plunging headlong into the abyss. This evening I will sit before them in the flesh, and once again I will do my thing, flowing with the vibe in the room and using whatever they throw at me to build my house of insight. When one or two of them knock at the door, I will nod my head with smug satisfaction for a job well done. But I will still be dreaming.