Cel­e­brate Your Life

Me, age 21 or so,
in a typ­i­cally pen­sive mood

Those of you that have read my free e-book, The Watcher, will know that, since I’ve been an adult, I’ve had a pro­cliv­ity toward depres­sion. I’m sel­dom a bucket of yucks.

I would say that I am con­tent for great por­tions of my life, and included in that con­tent­ment is an under­tone of sad­ness and even despair. What I have come to learn since the time I described in The Watcher, is to accept this under­tone as one way in which I choose to frame my reality.

The Myth of Hap­pily Ever After

Now, some might sug­gest that the real goal of life is to live hap­pily ever after. I describe that as “hav­ing the car­toon ver­sion of the blue­bird of hap­pi­ness flit­ting around your head.”

It’s Uncle Remus skip­ping along, singing “Zip­pity Do Dah.”

I, on the other hand, insist that the goal of life is to live it. All of it.

Killing the Buddha

Back in the 70s, Shel­don Kopp wrote a famous book based upon a Zen teach­ing, called, “If You Meet the Bud­dha on the Road, Kill Him!” It’s a book about psy­chother­apy, and about life.

The idea behind the Zen story is this: noth­ing out­side of you brings a moment of enlight­en­ment. Noth­ing out­side of your­self brings res­cue (those of you wait­ing for Mr. or Ms. “Right,” give it up!) And if some­thing seems like the answer, then it’s time to drop it in its tracks.

No reli­gion is going to save you. No politi­cian or party is going to make it “all bet­ter.” (You’ve noticed that, right?) No lob­by­ing orga­ni­za­tion is going to change the world for the better.

And your life will always be just what it is.

This idea will amuse you,
scare you, or anger you.
(Feel free to invent another reaction…)

There is an inter­nal aspect, as you might sus­pect, to the Bud­dha on the Road thing. You also have to kill the Bud­dha inside of you.

Often, as we begin in-depth self-exploration, we shift from look­ing out­side for answers and res­cue to think­ing we will save our­selves. In other words, that maybe ‘out there’ is screwed up, but ‘in here,’ boy do I know everything!

My dad used to do one-liners. One of his favourites went,

“Every­one is crazy except me and thee,
and some­time I worry about thee.”

Here’s a flash. Your answers are not right or true. They are the story you are telling your­self. If you believe you are enlight­ened, kill the Buddha.

So, what does this have to do with
my orig­i­nal, ‘depres­sion’ illustration?

• Well, an exter­nal ‘cure’ for my mood is impos­si­ble. I could go to my doc­tor and get some Prozac, but that would change noth­ing. (My usual Prozac descrip­tion is “Your world still sucks, and you don’t care.”)
• I could look for some­one out­side of me (Hi, Dar­bella!!!) to ‘make’ me happy, and cheer me up, but she’s smart enough to laugh and tell me to get over myself.
• I could go inside and bemoan my fate, my life, my lack of… what­ever, and scream, “It’s not fair!” I could go inside and repeat silly affir­ma­tions and try to make myself change how I feel, and add another layer of frustration.

Or, I can kill the Buddha.

This means ‘being with’ myself as I am, with­out judge­ment. I am how I am. And as I go there, I real­ize that, if I do not cling to the idea that I will be this way ‘for­ever,’ how I am shifts as time goes by. If I do not invest in my ‘tale of woe,’ I pass through it… until the next time.

Oddly (he says with a smirk), my mood shifted as I was writ­ing this. I started out feel­ing sorry for myself… I now feel differently…

I went look­ing for Shel­don Kopp stuff, and found his “escha­to­log­i­cal laun­dry list.” He wrote these for a mag­a­zine arti­cle, and they were later pub­lished as a book with pho­tos. It’s out of print, but Ama­zon can find you a used copy. It’s called No Hid­den Mean­ings: An Illus­trated Escha­to­log­i­cal Laun­dry List

I read the list, and started amus­ing myself. In that process, I moved from one mood to another.

I am not a moody, or depressed, or sad, or happy, or any other kind of per­son. I am just who I am right now, and part of that is this:

I tell myself sto­ries about myself, the world, and oth­ers. As do we all. Every time I attach to a story, and give it valid­ity, I cre­ate a false self (the inter­nal Bud­dha) that needs to die.
Because every­thing shifts, changes and dies.

Take some time to notice how tena­ciously you cling to the cer­tainty of the sto­ries you tell your­self. See how ridicu­lous all of it is. If you see your­self as a vic­tim (of another per­son or of your ‘genet­ics,’) what changes? How does this help? Is it even true, in this moment?

Rather, kill your belief in the cer­tainty of your sto­ries, and accept the ‘whole cat­a­stro­phe.” After all, stomp­ing your lit­tle feet­sies and say­ing “No!” doesn’t change anything.

What changes things is the walk­ing of the path, cel­e­brat­ing your self, your learn­ings, and your life, with­out attach­ing to or believ­ing one bit of it.

For your edi­fi­ca­tion, here’s Shel­don Kopp’s Escha­to­log­i­cal Laun­dry List (learned on life’s rocky road)

• 1. This is it!
• 2. There are no hid­den meanings.
• 3. You can’t get there from here, and besides there’s no place else to go.
• 4. We are all already dying, and we will be dead for a long time.
• 5. Noth­ing lasts.
• 6. There is no way of get­ting all you want.
• 7. You can’t have any­thing unless you let go of it.
• 8. You only get to keep what you give away.
• 9. There is no par­tic­u­lar rea­son why you lost out on some things.
• 10. The world is not nec­es­sar­ily just. Being good often does not pay off and there is no com­pen­sa­tion for misfortune.
• 11. You have a respon­si­bil­ity to do your best nonetheless.
• 12. It is a ran­dom uni­verse to which we bring meaning.
• 13. You don’t really con­trol anything.
• 14. You can’t make any­one love you.
• 15. No one is any stronger or any weaker than any­one else.
• 16. Every­one is, in his own way, vulnerable.
• 17. There are no great men.
• 18. If you have a hero, look again: you have dimin­ished your­self in some way.
• 19. Every­one lies, cheats, pre­tends (yes, you too, and most cer­tainly I myself).
• 20. All evil is poten­tial vital­ity in need of transformation.
• 21. All of you is worth some­thing, if you will only own it.
• 22. Progress is an illu­sion.
• 23. Evil can be dis­placed but never erad­i­cated, as all solu­tions breed new problems.
• 24. Yet it is nec­es­sary to keep on strug­gling toward solution.
• 25. Child­hood is a nightmare.
• 26. But it is so very hard to be an on-your-own, take-care-of –your­self –cause-there-is-no-one-else-to-do-it-for-you grown-up.
• 27. Each of us is ulti­mately alone.
• 28. The most impor­tant things, each man must do for himself.
• 29. Love is not enough, but it sure helps.
• 30. We have only our­selves, and one another. That may not be much, but that’s all there is.
• 31. How strange, that so often, it all seems worth it.
• 32. We must live within the ambi­gu­ity of par­tial free­dom, par­tial power, and par­tial knowledge.
• 33. All impor­tant deci­sions must be made on the basis of insuf­fi­cient data.
• 34. Yet we are respon­si­ble for every­thing we do.
• 35. No excuses will be accepted.
• 36. You can run, but you can’t hide.
• 37. It is most impor­tant to run out of scapegoats.
• 38. We must learn the power of liv­ing with our helplessness.
• 39. The only vic­tory lies in sur­ren­der to oneself.
• 40. All of the sig­nif­i­cant bat­tles are waged within the self.
• 41. You are free to do what­ever you like. You need only to face the consequences.
• 42. What do you know … for sure … anyway?
• 43. Learn to for­give your­self, again and again and again and again…