A woman I worked with some time ago told me that in order for me to make massive changes in my life, I would have to change myself by about two percent. Surely, she’s mad, I thought. What’s needed here is a full out 180 degree turnaround, a 100% re-imagining of who and what I am. Anything short of that is going to fall short of the mark. Read more…
The last growth spurt of my life happened when I was 26 years old. I ate and slept like a teenager, and for a few short weeks a typical evening was spent consuming a pound of pasta and a box of donuts, and then crashing for about half a day. I didn’t even gain any weight. It all got magically burned off into… growth. Maybe I got a little taller, I don’t know. One thing I did notice, however, was that my brain “fizzed,” as if somebody had poured champagne on it.
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2009 was dedicated to making massive change on every level. Will 2010 hold more of the same? The pursuit has made me feel more alive than any time I can ever remember. My mind felt as if it were shot out of a canon, and my skin tingled as if the nerve-endings had been attached to a live wire. I had no idea where I was going when it started. All I knew at the beginning of the year was that if I didn’t change, I would die. You’ll forgive the dramatic turn of phrase, but I felt the “diamond bullet,” as Colonel Kurtz put it in Apocalypse Now, the moment of binding pain, beauty and clarity that turns everything on its ear. Read more…
If “The Popeye Syndrome” hasn’t been coined as a phrase yet, it should be. At very least it could be a terrible title for a film that nobody would know what it’s about. But that’s something else entirely. Anyway, I’ve been surrounded by the Popeye Syndrome lately, and it goes something like this: people resign themselves to their behavior using the logic, “I am what I am” (or as Popeye would say, “I yam what I yam.”). I’ve fallen into the trappings of the Popeye Syndrome many times. It’s seductive. All you have to do is what you already know how to do. No learning required. Just sit back, eats you spinach, punch out Bluto, save Olive Oil, rinse and repeat. And voila! You is what you is. I think Popeye got his catch phrase from Aristotle’s treatise on the nature of things but he skipped a few pages towards the end. Probably exhausted from all that brawling, poor guy. Yes, it is the nature of an acorn to become an oak, and for fire to burn upwards, but the acorn-to-oak and fire are, in point of fact, in a constant state of change. They isn’t what they is. If you don’t believe that change is happening, I suggest you take an apple, leave it out for three weeks, then eat it. Read more…