Life Isn't "Pass/Fail."
"Good morning" from Santa Fe, NM!
Last night, while sitting in my hotel room in complete exhaustion, I was having a moment of “God, I am feeling so dense right now.”
My normal, high-vibrating self had taken a backseat to a tired, confused, irritable slab of human flesh.
Succumbed to my animal tendencies, I wrote a brief “Beat” piece talking about living in my upper chakras, masturbation, eating cheese-covered tater tots with bacon, and taking a feral, hot piss in the woods. This was the sort of energy I was emanating.
I posted it on Medium, only to be overcome with this feeling of “after all this time, there she is, my Beatnik self, as alive as ever. Here I am in the Southwest on a spiritual quest writing about cum denial handjobs.”
And then, of course, I had to face the identity crisis of “what will my followers say about this?”
And then I thought - “I owe it to them to be exactly as I am. Because this is how life really looks.”
I just want to let you know, when you begin making changes in your life, people will jump at any opportunity to look for a perceived “failure,” because they are trained to do so. And likely, you will look for the same in yourself.
But the truth is, progress is not linear, and life is not “pass/fail.”
We evolve through experience, and sometimes, different experiences will bring up unpleasantness within you. That is perfectly normal.
We are trained that life is “pass/fail” in Western society from a very young age. We’re herded like sheep to learn a standardized curriculum, and then tested on said curriculum to make sure we’re smooth, round pegs when they shove us into the career hole. Curiosity is all but a foreign concept.
From childhood, Western children are trained that you either pass, or you fail. So, when someone takes up a new sport, a new habit, a new identity, (:: gasp ::) any pause, setback, wrong turn, etc, they tend to see as “failure.”
So what happens is, as adults, to avoid this failure, which is really just learning, people will outright avoid the unpleasantness to fool themselves into the illusion that they’re doing great. Because, after all, it’s better to have a string of “passes” in things we do well, then have any sort of “failure” what-so-ever in an area we have opportunity to improve in, right? That was what we were taught. Passes = good. Failures = bad.
That’s not life.
Life is for learning. It’s for discovery.
Every experience you have in the learning line of life is going to have moments of upset, confusion, poor performance, hurt, irritability.
That’s called “being human.”
The positive mindset does not mean “being happy all the time.” It means to live in full acceptance of what is.
Life isn’t “pass/fail.”
So, if you’re working on yourself in an area, and you experience a setback, it’s normal. It’s OK to post about it on Instagram. It’s OK to tell the world “hey, I had this experience, and this is what I learned.”
People will respect you for your honesty, and you will be giving yourself the gift of being in full acceptance of where you are right now.
Right now is the starting place. Not “in 20 pounds.” Not “when I make more money.” Not “when I am happier.”
No, right now. Whatever’s happening right now is not failure. It’s the class.
Email me if you want to talk. I’m just fucking around out here in the Southwest.
I’ll write soon.
Stay beautiful.
PS: This went out to my email subscribers on December 3rd, 2021. If you’d like to subscribe, you can do so below!
