The Unbound Limits of Self
As the calendar curtain of 2025 hurriedly comes to a close, and next year stands offstage eagerly queued to premiere in just a few days, I zoom out to look down from 30,000 feet. A borderline obsessiveness with intentionality affords me such treasured lens: Viewing the world both through the central eye of my own mind, and also by way of an empathetic cherished connection with others.
Timeout gut check: If anyone ever promised you that life is going to be easy, and equitable, and beautiful beyond your wildest imagination forever and ever, well…*rhetorical*…duh, they fucking lied. Of course there will continue to be sunny days. Yes, and blissful years. Reasonably even decades at a time when you pinch yourself every morning blessed and thankful for the highly favorable set of circumstances bestowed upon you. Perchance you are highly excited for the near future, focused and committed to seeing, doing, and experiencing more…much-much more than ever before.
But maybe not. Maybe today you are tasting the poison as a parent shunned by your own children. Maybe you are reeling from the recent loss of a loved one. Maybe you are suffering through a debilitating injury, or terminal illness. Maybe you experienced a disastrous Christmas, or shitshow Hanukkah. Maybe you are dreading the harsh personal fiscal forecast of 2026. Maybe none of that, maybe some of it, maybe all of it.
I believe we associate easily with the movies Groundhog Day and Truman Show, able to apply similar sensations to everyday life…feeling someone shoddy is directing this production from behind the scenes. Like stuck on a runaway rollercoaster, or there’s hooks in us and we jerk around wildly trying to break free, like a puppet on strings. So what of it? If we can somehow carry our legacy sustained damage while still standing to bear witness to all the literal crap upcoming; if we can process the veritable reality to see that oh wow, look at that, we factually DID survive all of our awful shit so far; if realizing that hum, weird, we momentarily forgot about the trauma infecting us for a second and mindlessly laughed out loud at some sort of harmless distraction, well if we can do that, if we can do any of that, then maybe we can appreciate the profundity of simply living life as it comes, at least a wee bit at a time.
So much of what we put ourselves through is self-generated. Mainly it comes down to how we process our emotions so to not make matters worse while continuing to get up and work on the tactile objective issues in front of us. It’s about slowing to respond not react. It’s remaining in control of our breath so to regulate our blood pressure and heart rate, thus more easily staying in the here and now. It’s giving time and attention to the important stuff, while keeping some of the pesky urgent tendencies at bay.
IS IT NOT, is it not the process of living rather than the product we produce? Well, it can be anyway. Meaning that for me, in most cases I aim for intention, not the result. Otherwise I might pursue some sort of excessive seeking, some form of unbalanced striving, aka judging what I am doing or not doing as good or bad, right or wrong. Mainly I try to just be, observing then engaging mindfully, and supportively. I am less the manager these days, less the fixer, less than before anyway, thus more the collaborator. I try to love without condition or clause. Yet as it comes down to seeing how small most everything else is, speaking now of the non-critical stuff in my periphery, well, factually-actually the navigation of such pursuits is not so simple. Oh sure I agree, everything I need is already inside me, yeah-yeah, yet the world remains in conflict with itself. Elevated levels of chaos and angst swirl all around. And so therefore and of course, the arena where I exist is sometimes in question. I have to ask a great many things of myself. I have to challenge reality. I have to articulate the hard questions. And I have to spend hours, sometimes days, addressing these important dynamics- to myself.
It’s a connectivity, a sense of belonging, a security inside our own bag of bones and skin, and a felt acceptance of who we are and as we are by the outside world.
At times I have put up walls and imprisoned myself on the small stage of possibilities. I have at times worried too much, thus acted too little. I have at times grown doubtful, cynical even, and subjectively complacent. I have at times lost sight of my inner expanse, that limitless zone of range that occupies me whether I know it or not. Relatively quick upon reflection then, I catch myself. I know what this is, and I know what to do. I parade myself into the bathroom, close the door, and stare into the mirror. Gazing deeper into my central blues, I begin to travel. My mind disengages and a sort of mystery takes over. A quietness arrives, a sort of romance begins, meanwhile something foggy looms over the small sterile room. The entranced field of glass yields an openness, and a new language begins its speak. My breathing slows, my heartrate drops, and something stirs in the cook of both my eyes. Ultimately I am greeted by a ghost-like entity but I know it as pure potential, the unrealized areas inside us all. It’s a showing, a telling of the allowing, the loving, the willingness, and the grace inside us all. Staunch absolutes leave my vocabulary, the gate swings open, and the chanced capacity to absorb all that life offers announces itself to me. It feels right, it feels like my door, and I walk through.
