Future and Destiny
One of the students in my Breakthrough Comfort course this weekend asked me how to find his passion. It’s a tough question to answer, but I feel like it comes from looking your fear dead in the eye and marching or sprinting toward it. But that’s not quite right, because then you would walk down dark alleyways in Compton for no reason at all. It’s more like your passion is usually where your desires are occluded in your mind’s eye by fear. I don’t think it’s possible to be passionate something over the long term if that something doesn’t promote change, and change is bed buddies with fear.
Apprehending your personal destiny seems to be about the unflinching and unapologetic pursuit of passion while bowing before the caprice of the universe. A lot of people like to puff their chests and crow, “I control my own destiny!” but they are fools to a man. No one truly controls the path of his own life. From the beginning, you did not choose your family or the circumstances into which you were born, and unless you make very specific decisions, most of which involve suicide, you don’t get to choose when you stand before St. Peter and/or headbang with GG Allin and Hitler.* Real humility in the face of the universe’s caprice, then, is living in the full light of the knowledge that your time here is limited, your specific existence is thus rare and precious. Every minute we take for granted is a kind of idolatry of the self. In those moments where we allow ourselves boredom or ennui or lethargy of the spirit, we stretch our lives past infinity, unburdened with grateful responsibility because as long as we are healthy and well and comfortable surely we cannot die.
This is living religiously. The metaphor of Christ or Allah or Yahweh is powerful, and there are clues to aid in good living in every religious text. Far be it from me to declare anyone’s path to the divine wrong. But the main point of religion seems to be our attempt as a species to wrestle with the notion of our consciousness as meaningful in the face of its inevitable termination. We have power and agency, the ability to generate well-being and love for others, the ability to fuck and fight… and then a plane obliterates a building on a perfect Tuesday morning or that IED goes off or a 60 foot wave reminds you that Mama Nature always has the last word or we’re sorry sir, it’s malignant and inoperable or you just talked to her this morning how can she be dead? Living to the fullest is supposed to be hard, although we tend to overcomplicate it, which makes it harder. We must accept our full impact and agency, the mighty extent of our abilities, even as we bow our heads to the impossible plan of the universe. Somewhere in there is what we call worship. For some people, it’s easier to name it and give it a face and call it God, but it’s always a name for that thing that is greater than any one of us or all of us and yet is a part of us, even if certain nomenclatures make you think of red states or social contagions or suicide bombers or Glenn Beck.
I’m not saying, by the way, that if you kneel before the might of the universe you will get girls, even though this is my Love Systems blog. The part that will be alluring the fairer sex is the part where you accept the full impact of your agency and kick the doors of life wide open. The deeper element of that, though, is that I’m not sure it’s possible to do said kicking without appreciating, even on a subconscious level, how tenuous our position on this rock really is. So the part that makes you appealing to women is the part where you answer the question, “What would you do with your life if you only had one shot. Because you do.”
*—Fun fact: St. Peter’s cross is an inverted Latin cross. Contemporary culture attributes this symbol to Satanism or the anti-Christ, but the original meaning was a reference to Peter’s denial of Jesus and his sense that he was unfit to be crucified like Jesus. This begs the question as to whether anyone should get to choose the ornamentation of their execution method. If I die from lethal injection, for instance, can I request a mixture of UV-reactive compound be added to the poison so my funeral can be a bitchin’ rave where I leave a glowing corpse? I mean, presumably the people crucifying (remember: this is where you pound metal into someone’s arms and legs so they are nailed to pieces of wood) did not like Peter. If they were feeling so charitable, and I were Peter, I would probably say, “You know, never mind inverting the cross. Let’s talk about not putting me on it to begin with, nowhatI’msayin’?” Come to think of it, he was probably just punking whatever newbie Roman soldier was on cross detail. Crucifixion is ugly business, and I imagine the effects of gravity on blood in a post-mortem victim of crucifixion are unpleasant in the extreme. Think head engorged with fluid, eyes popping out, tongue lolling, also filled with blood. And God knows what would happen to brain or ears or neck. The newbie probably arrived at Peter’s corpse, expecting something normal only to find Ashton Kutcher and friends pointing and laughing.**
**—$10 to anyone who gets laid using that footnote as an attraction routine.
Tags: breakthrough comfort, bullshit, destiny, future, religion
Dude, love your writing but the font size is way too small!