I'm Only Human, For Christ Sake

I'm looking for absolution.

Please forgive me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Clarify Your Intentions

 "Let all your efforts be directed to something, let it keep that end in view. It's not activity that disturbs people, but false conceptions of things that drives them mad."

Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind 

"Plan all the way to the end" Law 29 of The 48 Laws of Power  By planning to the end you will not be overwhelmed by circumstances and you will know when to stop. Gently guide fortune and help determine the future by thinking far ahead."  Robert Greene

The second habit in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is: begin with an end in mind. Having an end in mind is no guarantee that you'll reach it - no Stoic would pretend otherwise -  but not having an end in mind is a guarantee you won't. To the Stoics, oiesis (false conceptions) are responsible not just for disturbances in the soul but for chaotic and dysfunctional lives and operations. When your efforts are not directed at a cause or purpose, how will you know what to do day in and day out? How will you know what to say no to and what to say yes to? How will you know when you've had enough, when you've reached your goal, when you've gotten off track, if you've never defined what those things are?

The answer is that you cannot. And so you are driven into failure - or worse, into madness by the oblivion of directionlessness

All this stuff came into my world thanks to 100 Foot Wave, a series I'm watching about big wave surfers. A series that demonstrates, in the extreme, that life does not have to be boring.

These people are insane in a great way. What they do is dangerous. What they do keeps them alive.

They are THINKERS. They think about life. Many of them meditate. They are all about getting their minds right. They talk about life, they wonder about the value of what they do, they wonder if they should do something else, they think about what life should be. As opposed to you and me, who muddle through, and accept boredom as the norm until just before the end, when we go screaming into the abyss.

In this episode, the wife of one of the legendary surfers whispers all of the above, the "beginning with an end in mind" stuff, into her husband's ear as they curl up together on the bed. Calming him. Focusing him.

"The oblivion of directionlessness" slapped me wild awake at around 1:00 a.m. as I was watching this. That's exactly what is torturing me.

Came to Belmont at the end of 2023 fueled by euphoria. Our lives became spectacular overnight. That lasted through knee replacement, which kept me distracted, through the beginning of 2025.

Then I started focusing on the end. Two weeks, 20 years, doesn't matter - the end of my life is within sight. And I am determined to leave a mark.

I got past the rude awakening of the oblivion of directionlessness, and looked up the quotes. Read them, re-read them.

Shit makes perfect sense. I gotta keep the end in mind and incorporate everything in my life around that. But I gotta define the end. It's not just death; it's who I want to be when that comes along.

Flailing around aimlessly is not going to get me where I need to be.

Key phrases to think about:

1) It's not activity that disturbs people, but false conceptions of things that drives them mad

2) Plan all the way to the end

3) Gently guide fortune

4) Begin with an end in mind

5) When your efforts are not directed at a cause or purpose, how will you know what to do day in and day out?

6) And so you are driven into failure - or worse, into madness by the oblivion of directionlessness

True

 I am not fully engaged with reality

Warren Z and Me

 "I asked for tenderness and depth of feeling and you showed me that. Nothing more I need to see."

Scrooge said that to the Ghost of Christmas Future.

I would say the same thing to Warren Zevon if I could. I just listened to The Wind - his final album, which was released two weeks before he died in 2003. Two fucking weeks.

I'm flailing around right now (but that's nothing new) trying to find a sense of direction, something to believe in, something to hold on to. Something to fucking do with my life. A purpose, a happy ending. Denouement - I love to use that word.

I'm looking to feel something beyond dread. Warren Z just gave that to me.

He was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer in the fall of 2002 and told he might live for three months. Instead he made it 10 months - which allowed him to see the birth of his twin grandchildren. And to release this album.

Recording it was tough - I read about it at the time, how tired he was, how he pushed himself to get it done - through pain and fear and fatigue. He had something to say.

I am trying to feel soft right now, to give and get love, to feel like a human being instead of the walking dead. How can I not feel good after listening to The Wind? Quintessential Zevon.

Sharp wit, rocking songs, quiet songs, funky songs, lyrics that skewer, lyrics of raw emotion.

Two songs that brought tears to my eyes.

Keep Me In Your Heart, and She's Too Good For Me.

He put that album together staring death right in the face. That is a strong man. Inspired. Someone with something to say and the will to say it, no matter what.

I always loved Warren Zevon. For a bunch of different reasons.

I love him again. Right now. For taking me away, and for showing me the breathtaking power of the human spirit.

Maybe I can get there too.

Thanks, man.

She's Too Good For Me

"I could hold my head up and say that I left first, or I can hang my head and cry, tell me which is worse.

If you go and ask her why, she might say she's not sure, trust me when I tell you why, I'm not good enough for her.

I want her to be happy, I want her to be free, I want her to be everything she couldn't be with me.

I'd wait here for a thousand years, if she'd come back to me, I have everything she wants, and nothing that she needs.

I want her to be happy, I want her to be free, I want her to be everything she couldn't be with me.

I could hold my head up high and say that I left first, or I can hang my head and cry, tell me which is worse.

If you go and ask her why, she might say she's not sure, trust me when I tell you why, I'm not good enough for her."

She's Too Good For Me by Warren Zevon

Italics provided for emphasis, interpretation, and understanding.

He Does Not Know Himself

He does not know himself, and he suffers because of that. Worse still, his family is cheated by his absence.

In gatherings, when joy is the right emotion, the normal emotion, he withdraws. Not consciously - God knows he wants so very badly to engage honestly and joyfully - it is an unfortunate, automatic, self-defense mechanism that is entirely misplaced. The wrong response in the wrong situation.

The awkwardness he feels is psychologically painful and physically uncomfortable.

Around strangers, of course it makes sense to hide, to play-act, to strangle honest thoughts and smother intense emotions. He has to. They only care about themselves. They want to dominate him, to strip him of dignity. To impose their will, their thoughts, their emotions, their irrational perspective of life upon him to the exclusion of his essence. So, the turtle withdraws his head.

But family is a refuge, a chance to air out the soul and allow it to breathe. Even more important, allow it to express itself, naturally and honestly in complete absence of self-doubt. Family is a bona fide source of life.

Because his self-awareness has died, or possibly never existed - every thought that comes to mind, every word that exits his mouth, is surreal and unnatural. Nothing he says is genuine, to his enormous frustration. Sometimes the words that come out of his mouth shock him - "that's not me, why the fuck did I say that? I don't even believe what I'm saying."

Everyone else talks, laughs, and acts themselves. He is a distant spectator to himself, looking on in horror at the image he is projecting. The family is used to this. They respond to the person he is not.

Over the years, this internal battle has escalated to the point where every gathering is a war. An opportunity to vindicate himself so important to him that he can't possibly achieve it. The enormity of the significance of victory paralyzes him. So he repeats another disingenuous performance. And the hole gets deeper.

I have talked to him about this but his defenses are stout, fortified by self-delusion. I refuse to give up, though.

I like the guy.

Wisdom & Epitaph

Wife: "You've had so much strife but you're always happy. How do you do it?"

Husband: "I choose to. I can leave myself to rot in the past, spend my time hating people for what happened, like my father did, or I can forgive and forget.

Wife: "But it's not that easy."

Husband: "Oh, but my treasure, it is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things. I would have to make a list, a very, very long list and make sure I hated the people on it the right amount. That I did a very proper job of hating, too: very Teutonic! No, we always have a choice. All of us."

"Izz, I've learned the hard way that to have any kind of a future, you've got to give up hope of ever changing your past."

There are still more days to travel in this life. And he knows that the man who makes the journey has been shaped by every day and every person along the way. Scars are just another kind of memory. Isabel is part of him, wherever she is, just like the war and the light and the ocean. Soon enough the days will close over their lives, the grass will grow over their graves, until their story is just an unvisited headstone.

All the above from The Light Between Oceans, by M.L. Stedman

That last paragraph is the ultimate epitaph, relevant to every human life. An unvisited headstone, the final reality.