On not giving up...

I'm reading Just Rose's blog, tonight...

Just Rose...Anonymous Rowhouse...

Which...if you haven't...you should...Rose really is one of the most beautiful young writers you will ever read...I mean that...she's really very good...and insightful...and she's well-loved for good reason...

She's writing about so many great things...you just got to check it out...

And she has this really beautiful post about her mom...who died when she was much younger...

Rose writes about her mom, a lot...it's really awesome...you should definitely check it out...and about dealing with the grief of having her mom pass...it's so powerful to read someone write about that process as open-hearted as Rose does...someone who is/has clearly been dealing with those feelings openly and honestly...not a common thing to do, I'm learning...

And when I'm done...I'm not just left with the feeling of reading someone who feels like a really good friend, even though I've never met her...

I realize that what Rose does...and I try to do...that so many people fail to do...

Is to take...all the pain...all the difficulties...all the hardship...

And open up her's and all of our hearts, despite all of it...

Rose's example is what true courage looks like...

It is so easy...and all so common...to face the hardships of the world...and to shut down...and stay inside one's little shell...seeking the illusion of safety in that shell...which never provides it...it just dulls one's experience of life...which can be aided by other substances...weed...alcohol...all kinds of drugs...taking it out on others...bullying others...sex...money...and all the things that money can buy...attention and fame...all kinds of shit can help fuel that illusion...and if you're really lucky...you can turn out like folks like Michael Jackson or O.J. Simpson and completely detach yourself from reality...with pretty serious consequences for you and everyone around you...

Or you can do what folks like Rose or I do...

Which is you can work at opening up...and deal with all that pain more openly...and stop rationalizing why you've been such a prick while failing to do that...

Abraham Maslow asks the question in one of his books (I think the Farthest Reaches of Human Nature)...with a picture of children when they're very young...and another picture of tired, suspicious adults on a subway system...with the caption:

"What happened?"...

And now I think I know what happens...

Some people...like Rose...they don't give up...they just keep opening up...and finding new courage to face the new day...and trying, better, to understand the world as they move through it...

And others...just kind of give up...

They just kind of lame out...and give into all kinds of cowardice and smallness...and fears and cynicism that results from all that laming out...that habit of quitting when the going gets tough...

I have so many friends like this, I can hardly count them all...

Most of my friends have never lived through something as difficult as having their mother die...or a parent die...some of my friends have...some of my friends have neither parent in their lives...

But when faced with the option of shutting down...which I know, too...because it's so damned hard to open up when something really painful happens to you...and that I've had happen to me too many times in my life to count...

Someone like Rose decides to still open up...to face the pain...the best she can...and to be strong for herself and others, authentically...not some tough, macho, bullshit strong...that fragile little bitches who are too afraid to deal with pain engage in...

But real strength...that someone with real heart demonstrates...like Rose...

Why people try to satisfy themselves with this kind of fragility and cowardice and the pettiness that inevitably comes with it I will never understand...because they're afraid, I'm sure...because they'd rather put off the pain, today, so that they can try to forget about it till tomorrow...except tomorrow never comes...because they think it's easier to just keep putting it off...smoke some weed...drink 10 or 12 beers...and try to forget about it...

Or to work as much as possible...to forget about it...maybe earn a vacation...or two...or three...to go somewhere...and try to forget all that pain...

But the nice thing about someone like Rose...is that she doesn't get stuck under her shell...not for long, at least...

She just keeps coming out...and sharing herself with the rest of us...

And if you visit her comments...you'll see that people really appreciate her coming out:)...

And that's what courage really looks like...it's not getting lost underneath all your fears and anger and hatred and pain...

Courage is facing all that shit...and yourself...and feeling all that pain...just long enough to let it go...

When I broke up with Brandi...I started studying Zen Buddhism for awhile...a great friend of mine, Dewang Dixit, invited me to a Zen temple one Sunday and we just kept going back...and I remember sitting in that temple, one day, with a bunch of other quiet strangers...and deciding, one day, that I was going to try the advice of our Zen leader...and just sit with the pain...just feel it...and not run away from it...

And I remember how painful it was...how totally, overwhelmingly painful it was...how it must have shown on my face or something...because both people beside me and the person across from me all kept getting up and walking around, some, they were so uncomfortable with whatever they were dealing with, I imagine...

And slowly...over a very long period of time...it got less painful...it was still senseless tragedy...our break-up...but it was manageable tragedy...and something I learned from...and kept learning from...and that I was, eventually, able to put more or less behind me...after many years of sitting with that pain...and keep opening my heart to...

But what I love about Rose...and I was just writing to her...

Is how she keeps sharing about it...how sharing it doesn't mean that you're stuck in it...it just means that it meant a lot to you...and you want others to know just how much it meant to you...since you can't share just how much it meant/means to you with the person who's not there for you, any more...

And how sharing it is a sign of strength...no matter how much the more fragile friends and family you have keep misindentifying it as weakness...so difficult a time do they have dealing with the pain in their own lives...and, if Rose's experience is anything like mine...who are constantly trying to get you to shut up about the painful experiences in your life...since it reminds them of all of the painful experiences in their lives that they have been so foolishly and dysfunctionally trying to forget and lose underneath layers of drugs or alcohol or work or money or sex or whatever to get them through their otherwise too often miserable existences...

Courage is not bullying people...

Courage...real courage...is what Rose does...to carry an open heart...even when it's not popular or in vogue...especially for people over 18...who waste an enormous amount of my and their energy trying to convince me that I should be just as cynical and afraid and insecure and bullshitting myself and others as they are...

I'm tired of all the hate and fear and anger dominating everything...bullying everyone all the time...I'm done with it...we're moving on...because I say so...and because it's better for us, that way...

I realize, now...thinking about Thomas Hobbes' work in a similar light...

That Hobbes is this very similar dude...in 17th Century England...who is living through a similarly fucked up time...religious warfare among Protestants and Catholics that has ravaged the country...and left only destruction in its wake...

And who is similarly saying, "Enough is enough...we are not going to keep having the same stupid, destructive, meaningless fight...we are moving on"...

And so he writes Leviathan...as the first real attempt to make a secular account of government and governing...so politics and government is not left to the religious bullies of his day...

So some alternative exists...to all that destructive nonsense...

It's brilliant, if you haven't read it...Hobbes' Leviathan...and in that historical context...it is terribly courageous...and I so appreciate the courage it took to write it...

John Locke...and Jacques Rousseau...and John Stuart Mill...and Alexis DeToqueville (someone who I think modern political theory classes should study, now, though my really excellent class with David Ericson at Wichita State did not cover DeToqueville) get it better, along the way, I think...

But Hobbes is brilliant for his time...trying to find some fundamental understanding of government...that doesn't require an appeal to anyone's God...so that some sort of political order can be established that didn't require adherence to any particular faith...Catholic, Protestant, or otherwise...

Amidst the religious and political cynicism and corresponding war and destruction of his time...

But to do that...you have to have courage...the courage to open up your heart...even when others choose to let their hearts slip and fall and remain stuck...

And Rose is the type of person who has that kind of courage...and it's pretty impressive to see it when it comes around...

Rose is someone who not only doesn't give up...but who thrives despite adversity...not using it as an excuse for not gathering that type of strength...

And she doesn't do it with any particular expertise...or ideology or political orientation, really...

She just has heart...

And in the end...that's really what matters...

Just Rose...Anonymous Rowhouse...

Check her out when you get a chance:):):)...

Love,
Ben