The story begins at one of my happy places...
During a visit with family for Thanksgiving, a group of us went to go see the movie “Moana”.
While the movie itself was excellent and the soundtrack, well let's just say I own it now; what really took me by surprise was my reaction to the short before the movie titled “Inner Workings”. As I was watching it I felt as if its creator, Leonardo Matsuda, had reached into my soul and magically transformed my subconscious state of Being into a short film.
In case you haven't seen it, the story is about a really uptight guy named Paul who happens to work in a very sterile and rigid office environment. His job is to perform a menial and highly repetitive task that bores him to death. On the way into work one day, his anthropomorphic heart (soul) decides to rebel and refuses to go to work. Paul's brain (his rational mind) panics because to skip work means to freeze to death; so his brain ends up solving the heart/mind disconnection by wresting control of his body away from his heart and this makes the heart very sad. Later at work, Paul notices how miserable the older guy next to him is and then, in a moment of clarity, he sees his life stretching out before him. Like the old man beside him, he'd be stuck performing the same menial task until one day he'd willingly walk to the grave and happily close the coffin lid on himself. Upon this realization he gives control of his body back to his heart and goes out for lunch. He discovers surfing, sunglasses, women, as well as the secret of life:
“Be free in everything you do. Do not fear death, fear not living while you are alive.”
I found the short as uncomfortable as it was enlightening.
Uncomfortable because it nailed my state of mind so precisely that I felt for sure everyone was going to laugh, point at me and say “that's TOTALLY you…looser” (sic).
Enlightening because it wasn't until I saw Paul's mind wrest control of his body away from his heart that I realized I had done the same. It wasn't until I saw the hearts reaction to being rejected that I understood the source of the pain that I was experiencing.
After the short I was aware that something inside of me had shifted but I found myself quickly immersed in Moana and also identifying with her in an incredibly strong way. Then came the scene where she sings “I am Moana” and the feeling of something shifting changed to something breaking. I couldn't process it at the time so I mostly swallowed the emotions, wiped away the tears (it's a REALLY beautiful song) and figured I'd think about it later.
Later turned out to be the next morning. I woke up and was feeling unsettled (almost agitated) but I couldn't work out why. I finally decided to go for a walk to try and sort out what was going on. As I walked along the river, my usual fast pace gradually transformed into a slow walking meditation. I just felt BAD, my mind felt as if it had “lost a tooth” overnight and I had yet to spit it out. Instead of nature soothing me, I felt no connection to anything around me. It was as if my connection to spirit had been severed and the universe was saying, “you need to figure this one out on your own.”
I ended up finding a quiet spot at a bend in the river and sat with the intention to meditate. Sitting with my eyes partially open, I watched the water flow through a little pile of rocks. The interaction between rock and water caused whirlpools to form and then these whirlpools were swept over a small waterfall a few feet later. I found the process fascinating. Eventually I came to see the forming of a whirlpool as birth and its going over the waterfall, death. As I observed the cycle of birth and death repeatedly, I allowed myself to focus on the feeling of the extra piece floating around in my mind. Gradually, I was able to label it as unhappiness and felt crippled by the resulting question; “why am I so fucking unhappy?” I felt (and still do) that I really have nothing to complain about, yet the feeling was there nonetheless.
At the time my answer was “I'm sick and tired of living my life for the benefit of other people, of feeling like I can't do what I love without asking for permission, of feeling trapped/smothered and utterly alone at the same time.” Looking back I realize I was really sick and tired of the cage I had built around myself and around my relationships. I'd eventually realize that the problem wasn't with the relationships, it was with my beliefs about the relationships.
As I walked away from the waters edge, without any conscious direction to do so, I heard my voice ask aloud “are you suffering enough yet?” and I burst out laughing as I thought of Paul. And then, as if the universe wanted to acknowledge what I was feeling, I started to hear the mantra “Om Mani Padme Hum” softly repeating like a song that was stuck in my head. I used it to guide my steps, like a soft drumbeat, for the majority of the walk back. I'd never used this particular mantra (or any other) in the past, so I had to look up the meaning. It turns out it's an invocation for compassion. In this case a meditation on self compassion would have been helpful, but I was too busy trying to figure out how I could address the source of my unhappiness. The problem was I had no idea what the source was.
Over the following weeks and months, I had a series of epiphanies. One of them allowed me to recall exactly when I disconnected my head and heart; it was the night I found out we were expecting our first child.
To say she was a surprise would be putting it lightly. I was completely unprepared to deal with raising another human being. Still in shock from the news, I remember driving to Home Depot to get a new pair of waterproof work gloves. As I stood there evaluating my options, the fear and unknown lashed my mind like ocean waves. I had no idea how I was going to do it, but I knew one thing, the leather ones weren't going to keep my hands dry. :-)
With regards to everything else I was thinking about at the time, there was never really a choice for me. It was a feeling that was coming from the deepest parts of my soul; it was grit, determination, a single pointedness. I was going to be a Dad and I was going to Fully. Fucking. Own. It. To me this meant all of my childish dreams about my future and all of my personal desires needed to be expunged. “I” simply didn't matter anymore.
For the past 20 years, I'd think back to that moment and consider it “the moment I grew up”, but like Paul, it was really the moment I stomped my heart down and gave the reins to my rational mind.
As time went by I dealt with any conflicted emotions by calling them irrelevant, not part of the plan, etc, and looked for a place to stick them. I mean I knew I couldn't look at the emotions too carefully because I was terrified of what I'd find. I knew I couldn't let the cycle of single parenting continue. I had to be a good Dad and that meant very specific things to me. So as the emotions, doubts and fears came up, the only thing I felt I could do was to swallow them, unopened.
It wasn't really difficult to do, I just used fear of being a bad parent as my fuel and took any useless emotions whether they be related to issues with my marriage or parenting in general and just swallowed. If it didn't get me closer to what I felt a perfect parent looked like it wasn't relevant to my experience.
I don't want to pretend that I even kind of succeeded at matching my vision of the perfect parent, or husband, or friend for that matter but I consoled myself when these gaps in my parenting skills manifested that “at least I'm here”.
Over the weeks that followed my time with the whirlpools, I watched Inner Workings and Moana two more times. Eventually I realized that while I was physically present in my relationships, I wasn't emotionally present. I was focused exclusively on providing means for physical survival. I was frequently terrified of losing my job and not having enough for the kids to eat or suddenly becoming homeless. Consequently I did the only thing I could do to address these concerns, “work harder”. I made a career of losing myself into my job completely. Karen was staying home with the kids and I felt like their emotional well being was her domain. I'm the guy who “puts food on the table and keeps the lights on.” Don't ask me who their teachers were or when their next Dr's appointment was but at any given moment I could tell you exactly how long we would have a place to live if I lost my job. In short, I was all about the first chakra.
There are several obvious problems with the approach I had taken to parenting, marriage and life in general.
The first being an inability to enjoy life; being disconnected from my heart closed me off to the vast majority of what it means to be alive. The real treasures in life like enjoying an afternoon with the family were mostly overlooked in favor of being “productive”.
But as bad as the disconnection was, it was nothing compared to the issues that swallowing my emotions was causing. I thought the emotions were just simply going away, but they weren't. Like a black hole that converts matter and energy into Hawking radiation, the black hole at the center of our Universe (our being) converts the emotions we bury into physical ailments, mental illness and, especially in my case, frustration.
It was this frustration that I was emitting in an omnidirectional pattern. I could feel it's reflection from those around me. As I thought back upon my unhappiness, I realized that the lack of connection I was feeling and the profound loneliness was self inflicted; through a combination of inattention and outright “asshole-ery” I had alienated almost all of my friends. They just weren't relevant for physical survival.
Over the past few weeks, I've also started to realize that this intense focus on survival also served another purpose. It provided me with a great excuse to remain Emotionally Unavailable in certain relationships. This realization was incredibly insightful for me because it explained why I was having such a hard time connecting with the most important people in my life.
The reason for the Emotional Unavailability may someday be the subject of a blog post, but for now let me just say that I experienced some trauma when I was younger and for the past 40 years I've held the resulting emotions in. I guess you could say I dealt with them by not dealing with them. This approach has caused me much more pain and suffering than anything another person's opinion of me could have.
The one piece of advice I'll share is this; please do not carry burdens that don't belong to you, let them go or else they will infect every relationship you have and crush your ability to have deep and meaningful connections with others.
As I was discussing this blog and the series of events that led up to it with my Daughter, I expressed embarrassment over the fact that all of this had come to a head because of a short film before a Disney movie. If you know Caroline, you won't be surprised to discover that she said something that was incredibly insightful; it was along the lines of:
“that's the point of art Dad, to make us feel.”
Thank you Leonardo Matsuda, you succeeded.
Finally, I have to acknowledge my wife Karen for being an incredibly understanding and compassionate human being. I love you. I am in awe of you. Thank you for your persistence and your patience. I couldn't get through all of this without you.
Namaste!
