Trials and Tribulations of Being Human AF

I am human AF. I make mistakes, but I do my best. I really do.

To make my best even better, I am to work within the parameters of my humanity.

When my best is a pitiable mess, it’ll only get worse if I hate myself for presumably not being enough.

The exit to this mess is found in acceptance, surrender, and humility. These are the antidote to the walls of my self-made prison.

To accept and surrender. This is not concession to permanent limitation. I cannot move forward until these walls that constrain me are broken down.

The walls only fortify themselves when I fight and flail, and when I despise myself for the facts that brought me here.

You could say that these walls are constructed of my foolish pride, resentment for myself and others, my stubborn clinging, regret, and my inclination to deal with my life in shadowy, secretive isolation, far from the reach of the light of community, synergy, and fellowship.

These walls are the congealed form of my spiritual and social malnourishment. They are held together by my shame, disgust, and conditioned sense of unworthiness.

This prison exists because I am cut off, and I am cut off further because this prison exists.

This perpetual reinforcement of isolation cannot be abated without administration of the antidote.

When the antidote dissolves the walls of my cell, I can move away from this imprisonment. Then, the task is to learn to think and feel again, gradually, carefully, and within some worthy and proven framework.

To practice a framework aside from the ideas that come from within my own dysfunctional mind, requires humility.

Getting humble is easiest after being beaten to within an inch of my life, light years away from any sense of accomplishment, and connection.

To get myself humble before I’ve lost everything is more challenging, when there are still other ways to go than up, one of those ways certainly being down, down, down, to the 8th sub-basement or so of a very hot and dirty place.

I’ve been to the hot and dirty place before, too many times. The thought of going back seems like it should be enough to compel me to do what it takes to avoid a reunion with that hell.

But again, I’m human. I am bound by certain psychological, emotional, and physical laws.

It may make sense to fight with all my might against my demons, but my demons are me. So the harder I strike them, the more ripe my own bruises shall be.

My brain may also tell me that others do not wish to be bothered with my problems, or my own shame and fear of consequences may otherwise persuade me to take my struggles into hiding.

No matter how many times I do this and no matter how consistently the state of affairs grows disastrous from there, these tendencies never seem to lose their sick appeal.

I cannot succeed using this default method of mine. This is why it is necessary to get out of my own way. This is the essence of humility.

Surrender unsolidifies all the misguided self-will that has become a tumor to my spirit.

The only way I know of, to transform my maladaptive default protocol, is first to give up as the authority of my own life. Which sounds self-defeating, I know. But it’s an ironic thing, because this surrendering of my own authority is crucial to authorizing a sense of freedom that I’d never known before.

After walking for a time in that spacious freedom, my tendency has been to again claim back my authority.

But…

A sense of accomplishment and pride rises up when things go well for a while in life.

I identify too much with the compliments and praise which I receive from others, and I start to mold my behavior around receiving more rather than continuing to do what’s best for my stability and recovery.

External validation can truly be a drug like no other, and one that tends to make me blind to the slow reconstitution of my prison’s walls.

By the time I’m willing and able to see the situation for what it is, I am already considerably ensnared by old ways of thinking and doing. I’ve already taken back my self-will and pride.

Once again, I find myself isolated from my truest strength: connection and synergy with forces from outside of my physical self.

Any outside force will do. The force of community. Of nature. Of ideas and principles that others have relied upon to solve problems similar to my own.

Many people find their humility and connection through a relationship with God. As I write these words, I have great difficulty letting myself go this route. My past is full of contradictory notions and experiences which leave me confounded on this subject.

Sometimes I think that believing in God can work as a tool to promote the humility and inner resources required to escape our prisons, but this doesn’t mean that the tool is real and literal. And I mean, if it produces the needed results, who cares if it is real and literal?

And I mean again, what the fuck is real anyway? I am weary of anyone who confidently claims to know…

The problem faced here is, how can I consistently walk in faith and connection with God, when I basically have come to perceive this God in the context of being a placebo effect for the human condition?

Diseases can be cured with water pills, but only when the taker of the pill is oblivious to what’s in the pill, right?

Or maybe I can swallow a water pill, knowing it only has water in it, while using the pill as a symbolic reference point for healing, a tool to convince my body to activate certain processes to produce certain outcomes.

At any rate, my ability to think is both a great burden and a great blessing. It’s not analysis and over-analysis which has the power to create the needed space for tranquility in my life.

My dear friend humility, though, does have that power. To get out of my own way is the best way to be on my way.

To be connected to the world around me. To play a role of service to others, is part of what it means to take care of myself. To at least be open to the idea of God, even though I still grapple with my disbelief, trauma, and cynicism.

This is a process without a set destination. To accept the ambiguity of this, while relinquishing demands for absolute answers is part of what it means to trek back toward humility.

If you’re also on the trek back to humility, I’ll meet you there.