Believe!

Como estas, NIP?

            One of my goals this year is to make these letters more accessible by coming straight to the point. I promise to do my best by keeping them under 1,000 words, which will hopefully translate into at least two letters a month. Even though school is back in session I’ve managed to keep up the momentum in my reading, especially in the area of spiritual/wisdom writings. One passage in particular from Merton has been haunting my memory for weeks now, which deals directly with today’s letter:

If a writer is so cautious that he never writes anything that cannot be criticized, he will never write anything that can be read. If you want to help other people you have got to make up your mind to write things that some men will condemn.

In homage to the chapter of New Seeds of Contemplation from which this brief passage hails, I have decided to break from the standard letter format and instead compose a list, a statement of beliefs, along with a terse explanation of said beliefs. You may or may not agree with them, NIP, but I feel it will help explain me as a person in the fewest words possible.

I believe in myself and my dreams—while this isn’t necessarily the most important belief, it’s the first one. We must learn to believe in ourselves if we ever want to accomplish any dream and/or goal. By believing in yourself with earnestness, NIP, you can foster incredible change in your life. And once you begin to realize these changes, you’ll find it much easier to believe in other aspects of your life/dreams.

I believe in holistic health—to be healthy means not only physically fit, but mentally and spiritually fit as well. For the physical, eat healthfully and get regular exercise (yoga, anyone?); for the mental, engage in an activity that focuses the mind (meditation works wonders and is simpler than most make it out to be); for the spirit, pursue what you’re most passionate about, whether it be creating works of art, making music, rigorous philosophical questioning, or contemplation of religious mysteries. To some degree, once the mind and body become healthy, the spirit expands naturally. This life is the only one you get, NIP; why not do your best to care for it?

I believe in helping others—once we take care of ourselves and our individual lives become ordered and streamlined, the real work begins. The most important thing we can do in this life is help other people. We all struggle from time to time, and I’m sure you can recall a time when that helping hand was not only invaluable but made all the difference in the world. I try my best to always help others in any way I can, whether it’s as a teacher at school, as a neighbor around our home, or as a faceless writer putting words to a screen in the hopes that it helps you, NIP. Helping is the highest calling.

I believe in establishing meaningful human relationships—human beings are social creatures by nature and the best connections we make in this life are genuine, heartfelt relationships we create between one another. Some of them will last forever, others will be ephemeral. Regardless of duration, we must do our best to be authentic in the relationships while they are vital. Life is too short to be disingenuous or, worse yet, duplicitous. We must enter into relationships with other people with love, compassion, gratitude, generosity and patience if we are ever to foster a meaningful relationship between ourselves and others.

I believe God is Life/Life is God—I try not to get wrapped up in labels. I feel that they’re limiting and only muddle intuitive wisdom. I’ve studied enough religion and science to know that to exclude one worldview in preference for the other is foolish. Both are legitimate though limited attempts to make this miraculous gift of life comprehensible to the human mind—which is a massive mistake. To attempt to crystallize the experience of living by putting it into an intelligible string of words cannot come close to experience itself. Moreover, once we’re dealing with words rather than raw experience, we are stuck in the realm of semantics, which is where I’d leave both labels (Life/God) behind. Who knows? Perhaps I am becoming a mystic, seeking a direct encounter with the sacred in each and every moment. I’m certainly not religious in the conventional sense, but I secretly feel that I’m more religious than most conventionally religious people. The false dichotomy fostered by the Western religious paradigm is only a barrier to our spiritual growth. There is so much that we simply don’t know and to stick to conventional explanations—whether religious or scientific—is not only intellectual hubris, but it puts limits on our experiences while living this incredible life as a human being.

            Belief is crucial to being human. To not believe in anything is a serious mistake and will only undercut our potential and progress. William James, the American philosopher of whom I spoke a few letters ago, was also America’s first great psychologist. He insisted that the “will to believe” is perhaps the most crucial part of our psychological make-up. In order to be mentally healthy, we must subscribe to beliefs that motivate us to become better people. Your beliefs may not be the same as mine, NIP, but so long as they foster positivity and an authentic life they are worthwhile. As someone who constantly doubted himself for the first 30 years of life, I can attest that the power of belief has the ability to fundamentally alter us for the better. It won’t happen overnight, but with patience and persistence you will start to feel more confident in your thoughts, words and actions. And once you have changed your life for the better, how will you use it to help others do the same?

Believe, NIP—Believe!

- Ryan

Turn the Page

Happy New Year, NIP!

            Hope your holidays were filled with family, friends, and fun. Mine have been brimming with all of those to some degree, but more than anything Erin and I took time this winter break to catch our breath and get prepared for the spring semester at school. For me personally, it’s been a time for lots of yoga, meditation, reflection, and reading. Since the break began I made it a point to spend a few hours each day with my face in a book, mainly because I had little (if any) time to read during the fall semester with the tumult of life these past four months. These last two weeks, then, have been luxurious: I’ve been reading several different non-fiction pieces, picking up quantum mechanics and cosmology one day (Hidden Reality) and spiritual sustenance and wisdom the next (Seeds, Shambhala). I actually wanted to see if I could finish four books in that time, but it looks like Meister Eckhart will have to wait.

All of this reading—in conjunction with it being the New Year—has had me thinking about something one of my Religious Studies professors used to say about human beings: we are storytellers. It probably doesn’t take much thought on your part, NIP, to recognize this and see yourself in this light, because we all are. We relate ourselves to the world and others through a personal narrative arc, telling other people (and often ourselves in our own minds) our perceptions of how any given event in our lives has transpired and shaped us as individuals. Though being storytellers as a species might not be groundbreaking news, Dr. Fasching also asserted something else: not only are we storytellers, we are storydwellers. While just about everyone agrees that we do in fact tell stories, many people might not necessarily see how we live within them. To a certain degree, the narratives that we compose are inextricably linked to who we will become as people. If we tell others and ourselves that we are victims of circumstance, fate or any other external influence, our personal story will play out that way. It will always be someone or something holding you back because that’s the story you live out through your choices and perceptions. If we see ourselves as the authors of our own destinies, though, we get to write the narrative. Does this mean there won’t be setbacks? Challenges? Struggles? Of course not! Who would want to read that story? We want stories populated with heroes who accomplish amazing feats...and that can always be you, NIP, if you’re willing to turn the page.

We often view New Year’s as a time to pause and reflect on the past year in its totality, celebrating our successes, understanding our failures, and recognizing the areas in which we need to improve. As the author of our destinies, this moment in time metaphorically represents a new chapter in our lives. But to some degree, this view is a mistake. New Year’s, in some respect, fools us into thinking that this is the only time to do this. While it is a convenient psychological bridge between the year that’s been completed and the one that is beginning, I think we miss the point because we get hung up on the artificial reference point. We treat New Year’s as if it had some special significance in relation to turning the page in our own personal narratives, as if it were the only moment pregnant with potential to begin anew. But that’s simply not true...

If I were to ask you what time it is, NIP, what would you say? Would you glance at the clock on the computer screen, look up at a watch or some other time piece in the vicinity? Maybe come up with a generic answer such as morning, afternoon, evening, or night? The answer to the question is simple, and there is only one answer any time someone asks. It is now. Now might not seem so special to you. In fact, now is not too special to anyone. We do our best to avoid now by getting unduly attached to a past we cannot alter or fretting over a future that we have yet to create, all in our minds. We also do our best to avoid now by diverting our attentions to endeavors that have no practical value or meaning for the narrative we are weaving. Worse yet, when we avoid now we are passive participants in our own story, often allowing circumstances to dictate our actions. But to acknowledge now and use it for your benefit is to become the active author, the one who realizes that so long as she or he continues to scribe that every moment is pregnant with potential, not just New Year’s.

By learning to pay attention to now we begin to witness the blossoming of life that is constantly happening all around us. Any writer who is worth his or her salt also has an observant eye. Be watchful in all that you do, NIP. Start paying more attention to now and see how much easier it is to write/live your story. There is no reason to wait for New Year’s or any other specific fictionally demarcated moment in time to begin. All that does is force us to feel stuck and/or powerless in our situation and further delay the positive changes that are most necessary for our personal growth as human beings. But in learning to be present, to pay attention to the moment we are experiencing rather than trying to escape to some other in our minds, allows the potential in that moment to become palpable. We no longer feel inextricably bound to any given page of our personal narrative; instead, we realize that at any moment is ripe for rebirth. Why wait for New Year’s or any other time to begin turning your life around? We only have so much time in life, NIP, and the amount allotted to each of us is unknown. Why wait any longer to turn the page?

Now is—and forever will be—the time to begin...

- Ryan   

Love Your Life

How are you, NIP?

            Good, I hope. I don’t know how I’d describe my current state. I feel such a mix of emotions for many different reasons, and I’m still in the process of sorting all of it out. We all must wade through rough patches in our lives from time to time, but it’s how we face those challenges that makes all the difference. The last three months of my life in particular have been some of the most difficult I’ve faced in the last few years, but the progress I’ve made in my personal development has helped me mitigate the potential negative effects of these events. We all have this ability to deal with tough times in a positive way, it just takes the proper perspective, persistence and—of course—patience. And if there were a single secret to my success in becoming a more positive person over these past few years, it would be this—love your life.

            To say that we must love our lives might border on the banal, but to truly love our lives specifically or to love “life” in general takes courage. Courage to face those trying times, accept our limitations, and still see how we can learn and grow from those events. The quote of the week I had up in class the final five days before winter break is one of my favorites from Epictetus’ Encheiridion: Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well. A major part of learning to love life wholeheartedly is accepting both the bad along with the good. We cannot always have “good” things happen to us; it’s both impossible and impractical. How would we even know what “good” events are if we never experience the “bad”? We’ve wrestled with this idea a great deal in philosophy class over this past semester, and even these young adults recognize that some unsavory experiences cannot be avoided—and it is usually these that are the most necessary for our personal growth and development of wisdom. But how can we put these unfortunate events in proper perspective? How can we love life—and our individual life in particular—if these seemingly “bad” moments in our lives try to derail our development as better human beings? It’s easier than it seems, NIP, all it takes is embracing the whole rather than latching onto the pieces.

            This final week in school before the holiday break, we were wrapping up the semester-length survey course in philosophy by concluding our studies with Nietzsche. I love Nietzsche for so many reasons, but I’m not going to enumerate them all. He often gets a bad rap for some of the more famous aphorisms he uttered, but that negative view of him typically lacks a thorough understanding of his full body of work and the historical context in which it arose. To be honest, while I don’t agree with everything he espoused, there is one idea that I cherish above all others when it comes to his genius: amor fati. Amor fati is a Latin phrase that Nietzsche coined for “the love of fate,” or more specifically, “the love of one’s own fate.” At his core, Nietzsche was the ultimate affirmer, encouraging humanity to fully embrace life and all that it entails. He often couched the idea of “amor fati” within the framework of the myth of eternal recurrence, which fundamentally asks of us this question: would you still say “Yes” to life if you had to live it all over again in the exact same manner? Not one single event, choice, or circumstance differs—would you still concur? Granted this is best answered by someone who has lived a full and rich life, but I think the thought experiment can be done at any age. My students had great answers when we discussed it in class, and they range from ages 16-18; some said yes, others said no. Whichever answer the student gave, however, both sides hinged upon the suffering aspect of life, the “bad” that happens to us, specifically the elements over which we have little or no control. When they turned the question on me, I immediately responded with “the sacred Yes” of which Nietzsche spoke. Though I am only 36 and hope to experience all of what life has to offer for many more years, I know in my heart that I could never turn away from the cup. There are many reasons why I feel this way, but the most basic of these is that life is incredible. I mean that in the most literal sense, too. Dictionary.com lists the definition as “so extraordinary as to seem impossible.” So when I reflect on the life I’ve led up to this point, the choices I’ve made, the circumstances that have forced certain events, the sum total of all “good” and “bad” things in my life, I can’t help be astounded by the odds of my personal fate that I’ve sculpted in that time. Perhaps others might not see my life or life in general as being incredible, but that precisely is the heart of the issue—we must “see” it for ourselves.

            In addition to amor fati, Nietzsche was an advocate of perspective in that he tried to prove how everyone has his/her individual perspective on any given matter. This may seem a trite observation at first, but it should not be overlooked due to its impact. As you know by now, NIP, we make choices to sculpt our lives. One of the choices that is always available to us in any situation, though, is one we often neglect to overlook—the choice of our disposition. More often than not, we allow external events to greatly influence our sense of well-being. It’s only natural and some events will affect us more than others. It is precisely in these moments that we must recognize that we are the sole arbiters of our perspective and the easiest way to do this is to embrace the totality of life. Events aren’t good or bad and shouldn’t be seen as such. This isn’t to say that we don’t experience joy and sadness because we obviously do. But what they both have in common—just like any good or bad moment—is that they are ephemeral. The only way these events have any sway over us is when we make them permanent by labeling them one way or the other and then trying to revisit them in our minds. It’s never easy to let go. With patience and practice, though, we can cultivate a positive perspective on any given event, even the ones that bring us heartache…

 

            This is the incomparable Brit. The above picture was taken about 2 months ago, shortly after her biopsy had been done. After some major complications with post-surgery side effects, Erin and I knew that regardless of the biopsy results surgery was never going to be an option again. The results came back positive for bone cancer, with the doctor estimating anywhere from 3-12 months. Brit was nearly 12 at this point (quite old for a Boxer, which typically average 8-10 years) and she had lived a wonderful life. This past weekend, the tumor in her mouth had nearly quadrupled in size and we made the decision to prevent further suffering and spent the entire weekend with her by her side. On Monday we said our goodbyes and finally let her go. To say that it has been emotionally difficult this past week would be the understatement of the year. But even in the midst of this particularly egregious hardship, I can’t help thinking about all of the “good” moments of our life with her. Though it may sound crazy to some readers, I’ve probably learned more from Brit in these last few years than just about any book I read, insight I had, or any yoga teacher I studied under. Why? Because she embodied what it means to be “good,” to be happy even in the most challenging of circumstances (see above picture for evidence), and to always greet others—even total strangers—with warmth, generosity, patience, and love. She was a constant reminder for me to come back to the present moment, that life is fleeting and I should enjoy each and every minute that I am surrounded by family, friends, and my students. She also taught me to have fun at any given moment, to look at the world with endless curiosity and amazement, to always be myself and never be ashamed of the love I have to offer others. And it is for her dharma, her teachings, that I will always remember and cherish her. She may have left us physically, but Brit will forever be part of our hearts and, in essence, live on through us.

            I love my life, NIP. I love all of life. I think it’s amazing to even have been given this opportunity to breathe. But I wasn’t always this way. I can easily recall points only about a decade ago when I flat out hated my life in certain moments. It has taken me a long time to get to this point, but I really do believe the secret is opening ourselves up to all possibilities. We cannot only have good experiences, there will be challenging ones as well. In embracing life in its entirety, it’s allowed me to grow exponentially as a person. Moreover, the moments in which we must contend with hardship are most often the ones that bear the best fruit in the end. They have the ability to alter our perspective, to expand the growing edge of our understanding in this life. And the more that edge emanates outward, the easier it becomes to embrace life and be grateful for the simplest of things. I have an extremely rewarding marriage with a wonderful woman, a family who supports and encourages me in all that I do, friends who genuinely care about me by sharing in my triumphs and trials, and I am a teacher, which I means I get to be my nerdy self and pass on what knowledge and wisdom I’ve accrued to gifted young minds who will go on to do something positive in this world…and of course I have you, NIP, always there with a listening ear (or reader’s eye?). Like I said earlier, life is incredible.

Love your life, NIP, it’s the only one you’ve got.

- Ryan   

Awaken The Sleeper

Nobody in Particular,

            I was 14 when I bought my first “journal.” It was a small, sky blue hardcover notebook, actually. At first I didn’t write anything in there other than quotes: mostly musings from movies and music that motivated me. And on the opening page I scrawled words that still move me to this day—The Sleeper Must Awaken. It’s from David Lynch’s film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel Dune, which certainly left an indelible impression on my 9 year old mind. I can certainly understand its allure now; it’s the archetypal hero’s journey. It’s probably why other favorite films from my youth would include the original Star Wars trilogy, Krull, and Clash of the Titans. The short line is the closing statement delivered by a father to his son (main character), foreshadowing his future and eventually becoming a major motif in the movie. Here’s the full quote:

A person needs new experiences. They jar something deep within, allowing him to grow. Without change, something sleeps inside us and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.

            The “sleeper,” then, to me, is the hidden potential within each and every single one of us. For the last few years since I’ve begun radically transforming my life, I keep wondering if “the sleeper” is finally stirring from its slumber. Perhaps it is awake and the changes that have transpired have been wrought directly because of it. I can’t tell for certain one way or another, but I can be certain that by trying to wake “the sleeper” that lies within each of us we are all capable of greatness. I suppose I should offer a disclaimer by stating the obvious—greatness, like success, is best realized through one’s own definition of it. I’m sure to most people my sense of greatness doesn’t stack up against the standard dream of American culture; greatness in that realm is synonymous with wealth and fame, unfortunately. The kind of greatness or success that I envision is more akin to a human life well lived, one in which a person’s passion for living is immediate and infectious. My students often compliment me on how positive I am and how much I seem to genuinely enjoy life—but what’s not to enjoy? There is boundless beauty at all turns if we’re willing to see it, just as there is untold wealth in loving relationships with family and friends. And the more we realize these ideas, the more they transform themselves into actions that sustain us.

            Action, however, is the key to waking the sleeper. This is where many people fall short for a variety of reasons, but more often than not this is due to misperceptions. As I mentioned in the previous letter, we cannot simply believe in our ideals, we must live them. This week in philosophy class, we are studying one of my favorite philosophers who has deeply influenced my own thinking and living—William James. I’m sure I may have mentioned him in earlier letters and, much like Aristotle, James believed that the point of philosophy was to inform us how to live life well. Moreover, he asserted that people fundamentally fall into two categories: those who choose safety, security, and compliance, and those who choose to take calculated risks through courageous action. To me, the first group are those who have been beaten down psychologically enough to have given up on their hopes, dreams, and aspirations—the sleeper is still dormant; the latter group, though, are those who foster what James called the “strenuous mood,” a constant commitment to action in the pursuit of our passions that allows us to flourish in this life. James realized that struggle and effort are vital elements of what constitutes “the good life.”

At this point, NIP, I’m sure you’re wondering as to why I even bring up James, but in truth he is the impetus to this letter because of a quote from one of his books I came across in our philosophy textbook this week: “The capacity for the strenuous mood probably lies slumbering in every man, but it has more difficulty in some than in others in waking up.” When I read that, the first words that popped into my head were the ones from Dune, the quote that has resonated with me for nearly 30 years. In truth, I think everyone is capable of waking the sleeper. It is at the very core of who we are as individuals, but we are perhaps afraid to let it out. Whether it be social conditioning, our own individual fears of how others will perceive us, or any other of the myriad reasons (read: excuses) we tell ourselves for why we should not be true to ourselves and our dreams, I’m here to tell you that I was that person too. But I’m not anymore and I’ll never be that person again. I’m too busy moving forward, purposefully progressing. And that’s the real key. Progress comes incrementally through the steady application of “the strenuous mood.” We often get hung up with outcomes because our culture is based on results, but that’s a mistake. Personal growth isn’t about outcomes, it’s about improvement. Moving along unwaveringly as we face obstacles—whether they be of our own mental making or challenges in our outer lives—is how we shake up not only ourselves, but “the sleeper” as well. In parting, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from James, as it sums up what we all need to do in order to maximize our human potential: “Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes.”

Awaken the sleeper, NIP…

- Ryan

P.S. – I know I’m about a week late, but I hope that all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving with your family and friends.
 
P.P.S. - Special Bonus: Here's the scene from Dune I was talking about:

 

Walking the Path

Hello NIP,

            Early this past spring semester, one of my students said something during a side conversation we were having privately just before class began. He told me that his parents thought I was a “youthful idealist” and I didn’t know how to take that for a couple of reasons: 1) I’m in my mid-30s. I still feel “youthful” but I’ve experienced enough of life and gleaned enough wisdom to warrant perhaps a different descriptor; 2) even more surprising was being branded an “idealist,” as I never saw myself as one because I’ve often thought of myself as too pragmatic to be idealistic. But after a great deal of wrestling with this notion, I’ve finally come to see that in many ways I have transformed into an idealist, something I never thought would have been possible. For much of my youth—especially beginning with my parents’ divorce in my “tween” years—I became and was a hardened cynic. I distrusted the motives of others and even myself, but I think this worldview was more of a social defense mechanism than what I genuinely believed deep down. I had certain convictions that I wanted to order my life around, yet was unable to do so because of the barriers I had built. Little did I know that in time those walls would come tumbling down and I would be this person writing letters of encouragement to nobody in particular.

            When I went back to college at age 23, I had no idea what I wanted out of my education, which may have been the best thing for me. This allowed me to explore my interests without any preconceived notions about what those interests would eventually lead to in terms of job prospects, salaries, etc. I just wanted to learn at the time, but I know now that what I really wanted to learn about was life and my place in it. It only seems natural, then, that I became overwhelmingly consumed by the timeless questions for which there are no easy answers and ended up studying primarily religion and philosophy. About a year into these pursuits, the film The Matrix came out and only reinforced my interests in pursuing these eternal issues. And while there is tons of great material from that one movie, the line that has been sticking out in my head for the last few months is one that Morpheus says to Neo: “There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.” It sounds so simple that it borders on being a platitude. But from this one realization I think much of our personal progress and happiness in/with life stems. I’d imagine that just about every single person has ideals by which they live—or at least claim to live—but don’t follow through with them. I think the breakdown between how we ideally want to live and the way we actually do live is what causes our own dissatisfaction (whether we own up to it or not). As I described it in a speech to our graduating Honor Court two years ago, it’s the difference between espousing our ideals and living them. When I began to change my life for the better a few years ago, it began with not just believing in my ideals with words but by living them out with actions.

            As I mentioned earlier, this letter has been a long time in the making. I’ve churned this idea over and over in my mind, trying to narrow down the ideals I thought were the most crucial to helping me transform into who I am today. Even that sounds misleading because these three are certainly neither the only ideals I have nor have they attained any sort of culmination. Life is a work in progress and we must strive to live out our ideals to the fullest in order to foster any meaningful change, but these three represent the foundation, if you will, for who I am in the process of becoming. Moreover, these three are listed in a specific order, as I personally believe we must begin with ourselves before moving on to our immediate community and ultimately our entire world. So after more than a decade of study and reflection on life’s essential questions, here’s what I’ve whittled it down to…

            Integrity. This one word represents what it means to “walk the path.” Integrity is the first step on said path because in order to become the best of who we are meant to be we must make the right choices in every aspect of life. When I was younger, I clearly knew what the right thing to do was in any given situation but I often let my base desires win out, whether it meant succumbing to eat like a glutton when I was already depressed about my weight or stealing change from my mother’s purse to buy some worthless item. Granted my lack of follow through was more in my youth, but as I grew older—and especially coming into contact with classical philosophy—the ideal of living a virtuous life became incredibly important to me. It wasn’t until I met Erin and began this process of transformation that it really took on new meaning for me. As I entered my third decade I only began to truly appreciate that our integrity is the only thing (albeit an abstract thing) that we will truly ever own. Perhaps even more importantly, when you truly follow through on your convictions and live your ideals rather than just talking about them, life gets much easier. If there are no discrepancies between what you say and how you act, your relationships with others become stronger and more genuine. Plus, the lack of artifice makes our lives more organic in the sense that it frees us to be who we truly are on the inside. Much like I mentioned in an earlier letter concerning Howard Thurman, the more we integrate our “public persona” with our “private self” the more we streamline our lives into a seamless whole.

            Egalitarianism. Once we have taken care of ourselves and ordered our own lives into a meaningful existence, we can then work toward the greater good—the other. While it is important to get one’s own affairs in order to have a fulfilling life, I personally believe that a life of fulfillment is a life of service. The only reason we must order our own lives is so that we have a stable foundation upon which to stand tall and help others achieve their dreams. My egalitarianism stems from my two favorite spiritual teachers, Jesus (by extension Thurman and Merton also) and The Buddha, both of whom taught a doctrine of equality among all human beings. If we want to be happy in this life, it truly rests in making others happy and a precursor for doing just that is recognizing everyone in the world as equal. I’m not saying that we are equal in our capacities, but on a fundamental level we are all equal in that we have been given this same incredible opportunity at life. We all think, we all have emotions, we all have families and the list could go on forever. Even scientifically it’s been genetically proven that all human beings are 99.4% the same. Six-tenths of one percent represents all the outward variation we see in our world, and for centuries have used those minor, insignificant differences to label, denigrate, enslave, maim, or kill each other…all because of wrong convictions. We must learn to treat each other as equals no matter who we are if we are ever to understand the complex web of interconnectivity and interdependence in which we live.

            Something More. I love this phrase. This is my go-to explanation for anything that I would otherwise designate as ineffable or beyond expression with words. This, to me, is the undercurrent behind all of life. If you’ve read any of the older letters, NIP, I’ve alluded to this before—namely, life is completely miraculous. You can take that in any sense you wish, but to me it doesn’t matter if you attribute the miracle to spirit or science because one must fundamentally arrive at the same conclusion that either way you look at it or contemplate the odds of existence life is miraculous. Having grappled with many suppositions concerning the origins and nature of the universe/life over the years, I’ve come to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter what you call it. The label will never capture the essence of anything in this life, which is why I’ve always fallen back on my description of “something more.” I don’t rationally “know” that there is something more, but I intuitively feel that there is. Moreover, there is no point in giving “it” a label; labels only limit us and our thinking, whereas living in the moment and truly appreciating what we have been given with this chance to live and breathe as part of this miraculous phenomenon allows us to simply exist without those limitations. Perhaps I am akin to an ancient Israelite who knew labels can do no justice; they dared not “name” the ultimate power because that would limit it to human conception and comprehension. The force that lies behind all life cannot be encapsulated as such—it cannot be “known” only “experienced.” These last few years especially have helped me “pierce the veil,” so to speak, on this illusion. Every last atom in this universe came from somewhere and is directly responsible for the life we have been given, and I believe it is intellectual hubris for us to try and ever capture and understand this experience with words. All I intuitively know is that there is something inexplicable at the ground of being, the substrate of all existence. And whatever this “something more” is, I am eternally grateful for it and the interconnectedness it provides for all in this amazing life.

            I’ve been walking the path for a few years now, NIP, and I would encourage you to do the same. This may mean tempering some priorities in favor of others, but it will ultimately lead to a better life. The ideals that you find most important may not necessarily be the same as mine, but they should be congruous and working together to build a strong foundation for the life you want to lead. Perhaps we all figure this out as we age and the phenomenon I have experienced is something older readers may have already been through. Either way, it has taken me months to come to grips with this student-given epithet but after much reflection I have to agree. I have become an idealist. I may not ever achieve perfection with any of these ideals, but I will ardently strive toward their realization in order to help me become the best person I am capable of becoming. You can do the same, NIP; your ideals may be slightly different than someone else’s, but as long as those ideals foster personal growth within you and a desire to change the world for the better outside of you then they’re noble goals. If you’ve been staring at your path (knowing) wondering how you’re going to change, NIP, all you have to do is take the first step and let the momentum carry your forward. Once you begin walking your path, your ideals will transform from words to actions and it will make all the difference.

Walk the path, NIP…

- Ryan