[848] So Close To Scoring

I've finished two thought-provoking books in the last week that I want to riff on.

The first, The Body Keeps The Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, is basically the pinnacle of what you ever could know about our current understanding of trauma and how to treat it. The second, Can't Hurt Me, Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds, by David Goggins is one man's story of overwhelming amounts of trauma both inflicted upon and self-inflicted.

Goggins' book I like because it transported me back to the obsessive focused place I was in when I decided I was an “entrepreneur” and had to “simply do” whatever was in front of me to get to the end. It didn't matter if it was ten or two hundred phone calls. It didn't matter if it was early or late. It didn't matter if I didn't have the money or got hurt. Goggins ridicules the word “motivated,” which I understand. I wasn't motivated. I was convinced. I knew the end and what it had to look like.

Living like that is analogous to the faithful. It's an irrational endless push towards an end that is hardly as defined as you'd like to claim. It's the infinite well of justification. It's a pious position on top of your hill. And, as physically manifested in Goggins, it will eventually knot you up until you die. It's an invigorating and intoxicating drug and mythical place where your goal is the only goal. If you occupy it, you are practically guaranteed success. The catch is the narrow definition of that success and a craving for your next fixation.

I appreciate how Goggins discusses things in intimately personal terms. He's talking about his literal psychosis and uses the verbiage that works for him. He doesn't want you to become a Navy Seal or beat the shit out of your body. He wants you to understand that there literally is no excuse and the fear or laziness that permeate all of the little things will run you if you don't run yourself. You have to orient yourself to what is difficult. You have to sacrifice comfort. You have to organize around the things that speak to your deepest insecurities and honest desires. When he was on the verge of death, he felt at peace reflecting on what he had achieved and why. We should all be so lucky.

I think recognizing that capacity in yourself is important. I don't think you need to be cranked up to 11 at all times. I don't think you need to destroy your body and relationships. I don't think that even were you to achieve world domination, it matters much if you were in a blacked-out haze awoken only by the license you give yourself to describe your position at the “top.” I grew more zen about the idea of being “better than everyone.” I can be me. I can't be you. You, absolutely, have important things vitally important to me being the best me. That calloused mind place about you and your effort alone has no room for other people.

Modernity is born of countless calloused minds. Before we could flirt with horrid ideas like “safe spaces,” every single one of us knew there was no such thing, and we knew it because the death and pain and struggle of survival was playing out in real time. Arguably, a huge portion of impoverished or targeted groups kept that “real” spirit alive, while the comfortable and entitled among us pretended the world ebbed and flowed with our first-world posture. For those not markedly defined by, or interested in getting a handle on early trauma, the rest of the world is going to look like a very foreign and hostile place.

That's what we are. We are traumatized by life itself. There are many languages to describe it. There are a dozen schools of thought currently competing on the best ways to treat it. And, frankly, we're babies who've just babbled out the concept of trauma, and are struggling to translate its true consequences.

Just like you can only know the conversation you're having with yourself, the varying kinds of trauma and how or who it hits are infinitely complex. As such, when people tell you to de-escalate, be kind, or otherwise find the “love” for your neighbor that you might for your dog if not yourself, it's an appeal to actually learning what it is you or they are mad at or hurt about. I might be able to reliably predict a handful of pathological behaviors or conditions associated with certain kinds of trauma, but that doesn't mean I appreciate the holistic environment that would lend itself to healing or preventing further damage.

This is where we wade into the undulations of culture wars. We disregard the trauma of being raised Black in The United States. We eventually get the violent disregard thrown back in our face. Ironically, even when it isn't violent, we're fascinated with those who are, almost as if a guilty conscience is trying to keep everyone on the same stupid playing field desperately justifying.

I've had the thought that as the world seems to be burning down in a more countable and palpable fashion than all of the “war-on” rhetoric could ever convince me of, I feel more stable. I don't know what to make of this. It's almost like the turmoil around me is giving me a chance to prove that the way I've attempted to organize my life is proving vital and important. When the world shuts down, where are you living? When the food goes bad, what can you grow? Where the streets are filled with violence, what's the refuge? When you're feeling stifled and looking for a way to express or create, do you have the money, time, room, help, or visible reminders that you're making progress? I used to stare out of my security cameras and see a dirty block path in overgrown weeds. Now I see a driveway, airstream, and recently laid out floor for a home extension.

I regard my place in life as less a description of “progress” though, and more a vibing on a personal theme. My anxiety about ever experiencing peace and comfort notwithstanding. I have a level of person I desire as company. I have a nature of conversation I prefer over others. I have an assumption of work in service to a kind of life I want for myself and others. I've said several times over years, I'm already at the top. I was at the top when I had all of my time during drug study life. I was at the top being able to drink and whore around in college. Hell, I was at the top having a Mini Cooper in high school and in every instant that resembles when I heard on the marching band field “Everyone play this next section but Nick!” because I was loud and clean and setting the bar. I was less interested in how to get everyone to my level, but I was also 16.

I try to walk the line of comfort and appreciation for where I'm at, while throwing myself into the next challenge. Tomorrow, I have to start deconstructing a shed I got a killer deal on. It'll be hot, dangerous enough, a bit of a drive, and involve problem solving I hope matches the tear-down I did for my shed-turned-bathroom. Then I get to remember that with one primary tool, an almost perfectly inept and dramatic stranger, and two days, we got that shed moved the same distance. Oh ya, I can say to myself, it's been worse and also confusing or complicated, and I got a bathroom out of it.

I don't know what the analogous road is for you, mostly because I never really hear people's desires anymore after they've been self-shamed into complacency. The forever-point will be that you can literally start today. I always need help and want to enable you. It will not necessarily be easy. It won't happen overnight. What I gather from the most prevalent story though is that it isn't going to happen at all. I hope things like protests and pressure and the anger and resentment that drove/drive me make their way into the story of why you're operating the way you are in any one moment. You don't need to be irrationally faithful to hold yourself accountable, speak honestly, learn where to fit, or turn and face a fear.

My “fears” for lack of a better term are as straight-forward so to be rendered pointless (like, not wishing to be sick or hurt) or abstract enough I struggle to know where to begin a description. I fear “not proving.” And to be sure, I mean to myself. More than afraid though, I'm curious. I'm obsessed. I'm convinced. The fear is missing out on the game. I've got FOMO for my own life. The intellectual part of me knows it's going to take years, the experimentation, and learning how to fill in where I fuck up, but I can imagine tackling the “better problems” of having “more fundamental” pieces to my envisioned future. How many “if only I had!....” sentiments can your mind ring out when you've already been given the world?

That's where I probe for peace in the infinite now. I already have all the pieces. I'm living in the future. What I “really” want is probably something simple, like to pour concrete and see the wood and dirt look a little different. I want to ease the stress and drama for those I care about and share memories and food (or be willing to buy you more food as I don't really like to share food). I want the “mildly-drunk Nick P.” sensation to rule most of my moments and remain open and flexible and challenged to creatively solve before mindlessly venting. I want to perceive the changes in service to feeling better or living, and amplify them. And when the memory or violence of trauma can be utilized, viciously defend my creation.

But right now, the vast majority of my nows, are very good if not for a great many others. I hope I can be part of translating and building a perpetual better now.