The No-Games Game

It's easier saying “Life sucks” than admitting is my life, not necessarily life in general, doing the sucking. That's where self-bias breeds; everyone is on denial. Their survival would be at stake if that mechanism were not in place. 

It's just as well easier to blame the job, relatives, friends or your coworkers for what's really going on within. No situation can be remedied from the standpoint of the observer. We need to extricate ourselves from the equation.  Instead of looking at it from the outsider angle, feel it in your gut that it seethes beneath the flesh like an ancient sacrificial cry echoing across timeless lands. Perhaps all of that which surrounds us and makes our daily routines was only created so that our eyes could meet. We may think of all the obstacles, what what are the odds that we’re still here and facing most of them? We don’t need to calculate every move, our minds were meant for chess and here we are stuck in a game of checkers. It’s simpler than it seems: use human warmth and kinship, a sense of wonder and curiosity, like those experienced early in our formation. How much kindness did we get from our loved ones? Did our parents hugged and kissed us often? I know mine did. Mother showered herself with me wrapped in an embrace, kind of incestuous, I know. But consider only that I stem from within her uterus and that should put the whole moral dilemma to rest. Most women cling to their young because that's what nature intended of them. Nature did not leave to chance the need we feel to protect our young. Everything from kindness to orgasms has a evolutionary predisposition. Women are drawn to their children but the sense of sacrifice, the loss of her best years, does not go unnoticed. In her dark moments, Mom would  complain to her young that she could've had an easier life if she would've left us, like our father did. I reminded her soft-spokenly that it took her years to take us with her, but when it finally happened, she stuck out with us and any lover that came along knew her priorities. Everyone in her family denounced her for not "making things work" with dad, but she did try for years to see him settled down, years he spent in another land while she went from her mom's to her mother in law's house, until the humiliation and depravation got to her. Both paternal and maternal mother blamed her for the eventual breakup, not because either woman believed her to be, but because they were ancient relics of another time, chauvinistic at core. Their reasons for believing so differed: one woman believed her son had migrated to secure a better future for his family, arguing that he sent money frequently, money mother did not get because, after all, she lived in her husband's house. Mother's mom believed it was her fault, for having chosen so poorly, a man who was already self-involved.

Mother did make her partner's life miserable, I remember her chasing him around the house with a hot iron, not to throw at him but intent on burning him. 

All because at five years old I had taken my tricicle for a ride from from one grandmother's house to the other, eighteen blocks apart, and when dad finally caught up to me, he reprimanded me harshly out of desperation and lifted his hand as if he were to hit me. Mom was enraged, even though dad had never and would never hit me in his life, perhaps because he wasn't around much it to begin with.

Women's love for their young is not without limits and always boarding on madness. You can see a woman give birth and understand that perhaps nature does after all play favorites. If it had been up to us to give birth, the specie would've long ago disappeared or anesthetic cesareans would've been invented millenniums in advance. Nowadays we find the roles inverted: women graduate in higher numbers and in salaries under one hundred grand, they make more money than men, still do not pay for dates and still live longer than men. 

There are stay-at-home dads, men who either work from home and do all the chores traditionally adhered to women: cooking, cleaning, raising the kids, etc., meanwhile the woman puts food on the table. I haven't met many of these men, though. Recently, I met with an ex lover, told her I was out of work and though things had never been better for her financially, guess who paid for dinner? 

Life's not easy for contemporary men. For eons, we were masters of the universe and then one day in the twentieth century feminism happened. Not only do we still get to play the role of the provider, but we get to pick up the tab of abuse and neglect women have endured since the dawn of time. Never has man been more of a man than he is today, yet the odds set against him have never been higher. Incarceration in astronomical numbers, born-poor die-poorer and younger than women, fighting wars no one cares for, expose to violence and humiliation without protections granted to others because of being men. 

It's true, we descend from troglodytes. But shouldn't that be reason enough to cut men some slack? After all, how much self-improvement can we expect of them? I've outgrown the tendency to overpopulate the earth and aiming at bedding every last cute thingy that crossed my path. What I next propose is that men everywhere learn how to effectively deal with the inner vacuum and form substantial bonds. I believe that these men in positions of power did not make the time to get women. Powerful men link everything in life to the same formula of success: you get more when you have more.

And so, their whole lives they strive to make more and more until nothing is enough. Women have an ornamental value for some of these men. For others, it's all to do with the relationship that they had with their respective mothers. Some mothers made needy men and other turned them into psychopaths. What makes psychopaths especially sickening is that other people close to them do not even see their psychotic ways. In other words, psychopaths know how to pass off as normal, maybe even more so than the rest of us. Psychopaths are unable to feel empathy, to feel for others, and not all psychopaths are violent. Perhaps psychopaths evolved from unwanted children or children raised by uncaring mothers.

Children, especially boys, are drawn to their mothers, not just among humans but all throughout the mammal kingdom. Women complaint about their men but often cultivate in their boys the seeds that’ll one day sprout into a full-grown macho prototype. This maternal legacy of machismo is passed down generation after generation because the biggest fans of men being men is mothers letting their boys grow up to be just that, boys. Boys are conceived of as superior in most cultures throughout history, but males can be far more vulnerable than looks let on. Because of being larger, they may be less insulated by their mother’s womb. A huge stigma is placed on his masculinity, his peers will test his resolve, his parents will expect something, if anything. Friends, girlfriends, future wives, whatever social role we deem worth entertaining for the sake of following down the fateful road of matrimony.

Our parents did not fair out so well, and all statistics are dead-set up against us, but we figure why not give it a second try? If marriage were a product, it would never be as mainstream given its rap and not worth the investment. It’s more like a gamble made in a casino: sometimes someone gets lucky but most of the time it’s the house that wins it. But just because love is more like a gamble than it is a business (for those who own a lot more often is), it doesn’t mean you’re bound to lose at it. Even poker requires skills, and it is not the luckiest hand that wins it; oftentimes, it comes down to how well you play your hand and by “hand”, interjected, we mean “others”.

Here, in place of a “house” that wins most moves we make, we have a much better chance, if we play our hand right. In other words, playing others. Even if your game is elevated to the level of no-games, it still is part of the game and it’s the role you choose to play. It’s not for nothing that a person might adopt a “no-games, no-nonsense” mentality; it’s effective. Only losers rely on luck alone. But even when it looks like “luck” or what others may even call “a miracle”, it is often plainsightedly a natural phenomena. Peck Scott, in his self-improvement classic The Road Less Travel, dedicates a whole chapter about possible miracles. In one instance, he mentions how cars tend to be totalled completely and yet a lot of people survive. If Mr. Scott had known that car safety makes for modern cars to be designed in such a way that in the event of a crash, the blow is absorbed by the less compact front part of the vehicle that folds and screeches back, functioning like a bumper or a cushion. That the car looks destroyed beyond recognition and yet the person at the wheel gets to live to tell the story is nothing more than the triumph of modern engineering, possible by flexible minds, that apply logical solutions to everyday problems. We may choose to pray, but fortunately most of us find it more effective to deploy a tactical approach. It is a mechanism that works well when you’re dealing with a system ruled by well-defined algorithms. People, well… are on a whole ‘nother level. They’re not easy to make out at first, but if you pay close attention things will manifest themselves in time. Sort of like being in the dark and making out what hides there as we grow accustomed to the lack of light.

I may not have found the light, but I’m no longer afraid of the dark.

External lives dwell on the perception others may have of them, the way in which the ones that most matter will view them. Though it’s often downplayed, what others think of us may not be as easy as just letting go. It has some of that, of course. You can’t change others; it’s hard enough to change ourselves, and it’s futile thinking that we may persuade others into seeing things our way. If they happen to be uninteresting to us, leave them to themselves; if they strike our fancy, let them slide. We find forgiveness more appealing when it comes to people we love and cherish most. Why continue with this nonsense? We must put an end to this cruel game of pretense that’s eating us alive.

External people tie success to the achievement of a prestigious position, a title, a professional goal, or material wealth. Those with an external focus will rely on societal freedom to make good on their word regardless of the consequences. The law goes soft on them and so they act with more impunity. It makes the system money so it doesn't make sense to punish harshly those who infringe the rules for personal gains. If players are disciplined too hard, the logic tells us, it may dissuade others from taking chances themselves. Organized crime is big business. A lot of businesses started off illegally.  The drive to turn in a profit make playing fair disadvantageous. The more aggressive tactics are enacted; in many respects, big businesses behave more like psychopaths. They do offer a good product but at what cost? Whatever the cost. That's an answer good for investors to hear; it's not so much so for the rest of us.

Of course, it's oversimplified, but the math is simple: you extend yourself.

You may not find many of them in the greatest of shape though some are quite

Others may sense an eye of the hurricane calm typical of a passive-aggressive storm brewing.  

Whether it is business, romance,spiritual quests, etc. It's how denial works: we externalize the matter. “This sucks” sounds better than “I suck.” Taking responsibility is about taking charge. You have the option to shift the direction in which the boat steers. Instead of moping about it, do something about it. Initially it feels like a burden to confront a situation, to find common ground, to minimize tensions. But the more you wait, the worse things will get. We should do something that we are saying away from or denying ourselves.

If fear is all that's holding you back, then you're a coward.

It takes more resources to keep up with useless resentments; that's how life turns into a continuous drama. To minimize drama, the needless drive to theatrical malabarism, often masking itself in the heat-of-the-moment when in retrospect it's been brewing inside for a while now. It's the way we've seen others do that we follow the norm. We're a highly social creature and our success relies on collaborating effectively in massive numbers. Counterintuitively, we do care a great deal what others think of us, what do they say about us when we turn our backs? What is their real essence when they speak in monosyllabic and laconic terms as the cool kids do nowadays.

A heightened emotional state is more contagious than the common cold. I haven't got the cold in no less than a decade. But it's common to find myself vexed and irritated from time to time with other people's stupidities. Low energy people will suck the life out and one way they aim to achieve this is antagonizing us. It's best to avoid them like the plague, to be brief and cordial in our dealings with them. It's not their fault but if someone is infected with anger madness it could easily spread. Keep your distance, be discreet so as not to provoke the beast and use discretion and courtesy. The way we deal with strangers who exhibit signs of sickness. We stay away and let those more qualified to deal with their shitty ways. Dramatic people will always find the opportunity, or make it if necessary, to devise the full-scale infrastructure of misery. I see selfishness in the mirror staring back at me. Perhaps mirrors reflect the one we are in a not-so-distant universe. Either way, the image we see is not the one we are but the ones we were a fraction of a second ago. We should know only madmen immerse themselves in the present. We may find peace the more we do the things that regenerate ourselves.

Grow thicker skin and make sharper tools.

There's no present and there's no silence. There's no solace either, just an ever increasing anxiety that finds release in meditation, exercise and nutrition.  

We live in a pervasive fleeting moment that turns to past and pours unto oblivion all the tiny illusory shreds of fantasies that seduce us at every turn. In all of these delicacies and intricacies, we find what's wrong with the picture and focus on petty things. We turn on each other to prove who's the most vicious. I always come out uneschathed. I don't start fights; I end them. The best victory is psychological warfare in which the conqueror subdues its adversary without a single shot fired. We're not who we think we are so long as we keep on with this charade.

You can't escape drama, sooner or later it will turn out and seduce you. You know them because of how they always gravitate towards an emotional vortex that sucks the life out of all of us. If anything, let's stay away from those who seem infected with the propensity to make matters worse, all in the name of their ego. Again, a healthy dose of ego goes a long way. Too much of it gets in your way.

All things considered, even the mere act of writing which fills me with a sense of pride that I am finally doing what I said I would, the satisfaction of conveying inner quests into outspoken posts. It has an element of drama. And that's okay.

A bit of spice is what makes life tolerable. We ought to make mistakes, to do the opposite of what we preach. We can be stupid. And we often are. That's why we must forgive others’ stupidities: not because they deserve it but because we all tend to be so. Some, more than others.

Another thing is staying away from angry people.  Extricate them from your life and even if you find yourself under their same roof, you can go about your way and be as if they were infirmities apart. We scare easily.

Courage is rare and yet it is what's most needed.  It's not as hard as it seems. Since most people tend to be submissive, that is where dominance lies. You know your domain and understand that being agreeable and laconic will get you out of the way of cold people.

There are four kind of people. Cold people, cool people, warm and hot respectively people.. 

Nomad's Land

I grew up reading fiction, writers of the literary generation known as the Latin American Boom. Love of literature was accidental, in my case, as is the nature of all ills befallen under the noun love. It’s not for lack of empathy that I denounce it as somewhat maddening, a self-serving need dwelling deep inside each and every last one of us. 

And so it was with the world of books in the early nineties, Grover Cleveland High School; shelves full of them, in a small room adjacent to the Language Dept. office where my A.P. Spanish Italian teacher had made me stay to put in alphabetical order the mess of books that would never to make it to the classroom. The best books of humankind either burned or lie hidden somewhere in a secret compartment, never to see the light of day. 

Literature happened the day I wanted to impress my Italian A.P. Spanish teacher in high school. Back then, I made it as far as a class below A.P. (Advanced Placements) in the English Language, even though I doctored in a couple of times helping others in the language department. It was that office at the end of the hall where linguistic teachers would convene to grade papers, drink coffee, eat their lunch and gossip about the other teachers in school. I was there to assist them, since the principal wanted my head on a platter for being a troublemaker, an English teacher interceded and proposed I spend time helping out. 

Why would I submit to child labor? I asked. 

My wit has never known how to shut its mouth in times like this. I knew damn well why the kid I was back then was sent there, even then. Even the Social Studies teacher, who had sent me to detention once, interceded and said I should be given a second chance. Mr Margulies was an Argentinian teacher, favorite among the students because of how receptive to humor he was and how he spoke his mind. He treated us like adults without forgetting that we were, at heart, kids. And that we will, some more than others, remain kids for the remaining part of our lives. It’s the kid that rules at heart and in a moment of anger, Mr. Margulies could have used his faculty clout to simply dismiss another squarelsome kid. We adopt male role models, father figures, that we keep fine-tuning for future utility. We ingest our experiences raw subconsciously and filtered memories repress the awe and vexation of those turbulent years that turn the boy into a man.

The kid in us never goes away, it stays in a dormant state if you nurture upscale habits of self-control, but you can only hold it back for so long. Kids deserve to be treated with more dignity and openness, and as parents we ought to embody the person we want out of them on a situation. If we talk to them in an austere tone, we’re sort of like a bad boss who works things out throughout his ego. So, if we want kids to listen to us, we must listen to them. If we want discipline, we ought to impart it and be disciplined ourselves. What’s more, if our methods are harsh in tonality due to stressors outside our good-will nature, the kid is going to form a different picture of the episode in his/her mind. The kid will associate discipline with pain. Either, it will turn the kid neurotic or depressed overtime. The tonality we use to talk to our kids should be the one we expect of others, even strangers; it should and, in my case is, filled with compassion towards this tinier versions of ourselves we’re raising. We can raise them or we can raise hell. If we think of our kids as daredevils, then that’s what they’ll be. Look, I know children can be difficult but so can we, at times, be so. And we aren’t children. Yet, when we reprimand our mini-me, we can be such kids. We lose control and we want to get it back shouting? We want them to respect them but who respects a boss who has no respect? You can fear your master and develop all this psychosis around those in charge, or you can be in charge of yourself. When you take charges, others have no option but to follow suit. Everyone loves leadership and in any high animal hierarchy setting, the most alpha isn’t the strongest but it is his strongest; the alpha isn’t the wisest, but it is wise. The alpha is not even the man in a position of power. Or the richest. Or the most spiritual.

All you need to do is look at a pack and in that crowd you’ll see that there are few, just a handful of alphas. As to which is more alpha among them, is hard to say. It’s not easy being the alpha, just as is not easy being boss.

The Italian teacher entered the class and her first words were: “By the end of this school year, I will get to know you more than your parents ever did or will.”

There was utter silence.

“That’s not so much” I jokingly interjected: “Considering that they don’t really know me much at all.”

The teacher walked near me and asked my name. She wrote it down and that was that. I ended in detention.

So, you see. My mouth and my wit have this sadistic interaction that oftentimes superseded my otherwise objective judgment.

“It’s either that or you’ll end up being spelled or transfer to another high school” one of the teachers said. They were five in total, but no more than three at a time were were to coexist  there. Astoundingly, they got along with one another and there was an aura of diligence and serenity that you felt as you entered the room.

I got along with them well. I reorganized the bookshelf, cleared and dusted their tables, took out the garbage, water the plants, made sure there was a fresh po

Not bad for a boy who had

A more organic, vibrant definition of the fair sex comes way of the German great Schopenhauer’s On Women. Not so long ago, in a land that seems far, far away, a land that is still very much tactile, unravelling in the ever-fleeting presence, bounded by all that was and is as it will always be. Time that was and is, and ever was and will be, exists all at once. We awake to the realization that life is lived in a progressive past tense. The presence is an illusion as is the past, all that ever was and that will ever be taking place simultaneously: you're literally staring into the abyss of timelessness when you look upon the celestial bodies disseminated across the night sky.. The way things were millions of years ago. It is not just with stars that time has stretched out and left us behind light-eons away.

We’re ruled by illusions all throughout. Our senses are deceptive sensors of heat, smell, touch and taste, the primitive sensors nature endowed us with are, quite frankly, inept.

A stick submerged halfway into a calm water lake, ancient philosophers observed, looked bent. Yet, it is not. Our eyes must be deceiving us. Little did we know then that light on the submerged part of the stick is retracted when it goes from air to liquid and therefore the stick looks bent. As light passes, it bends away from the norm. It's what happens similarly when you decide to swim in water rather than walk on earth.

We tend to think of matter as congruent and solid. The comedian David Chappelle once joked about how he marveled at the awesomeness of his son and to think that he had come from his penis. We all did, but only partly so. And only at one stage of the evolution. Nether the ovum nor the sperm hold the key to the kingdom of a given organism. Some of that jazz you can pretty much paraphrase your way out of the selfish nature of our genes,. (Nothing more than allusion to Richard Dawkins’ Selfish Gene). We could very well be working in the gene's favor and not the other way around. We're ruled by both inner and outer forces, and if consider for a moment that there's nothing out there

It is of importance because we may think that we are running the show when we’re just running through the notions.. Or, at times, just running,

Imagine buffalos in stampede chased away by a few weaklings sapiens on the savanna: why not just turn around and face their aggressor. It's only then that you meet your destiny. Just like the scared away buffaloes, we’re stronger than told.  We run like the buffalo because we find ourselves on autopilot most of the time. This life form, always on in the background, runs the show that is our lives. We have little saying into the way things are. Just like the buffalo.

Of course, it's not the same predicament for the hunter. Be more like the hunter instead. An ethical predator that eats only that which is alive. The hunter had to catch big game first before the feast. It's not as coward an act to hunt them as it is to raise them in slaughterhouses for mass consumption. It's not the same animal meat either. Hence the word “process”.

You have strength and  power over others, use it wisely. You do not want to hurt any living creature for as small as it appears.

We do the same. We run. We hide of an opportunity that will only make us grow. But growth takes pain. Aren't we built to avoid pain? Yes, but one thing is pain that takes your hand off the stove and another thing is laziness taking mind off the issue. If you focus too intently, your target will notice and flight along with the rest of the herd. You can see a parallel instance in a crowded public place when there's a loud noise or a sign of distress. If suddenly a few run in panic, soon all others will follow suit, like pigeons.

In case you haven't already heard, real isn't really real. Reality it's a byproduct of the culture, or age, it is strictly a subjective experience and conceivable only in the collective mind. It may seem real enough to find ourselves here and now in an embryonic yoga position in order to facilitate sleep.  It brings us back to the comfort of our uterine sack, skin deep a womb that belongs to a female human for the next nine months. Maybe we can replicate this effect on a massive level and disseminate humanoid emissaries on a voyage mission all over the universe squeezed like organic toothpaste in a nutrient-rich mushy uterus-like spacecraft large enough to one-dimensional-size fits all. Who wouldn't like to drift off through the vacuum of space sealed off in an organic sack Matrix-style? Isn't sex, from the evolutionary standpoint, just a vain attempt to thrust our way back into the maternal cavern, just a handful of inches deep? What is that preposition compared to the prodigious interstellar space adventure that it'd be rumbling thru the celestial bodies in the sky with no fixed destination in mind?

Why hold such rigidity ourselves when the very fabric of all that surrounding us is cosmic vacancy. There's nothing solid about matter. So, whatever matters can wait.

Let us proceed steadfastly towards the most magnetic goals.

In my mid teens, I was a scrawny, rowdy, undisciplined, introvert, reckless student I once was, was in for a rude awakening. Is there any other kind? A boy who hadn’t spent much time at the gym, slacking off as the last among the track runners. No bully could ever catch up to me, but I wasn’t competing, just sort of loved running as fast as only I could. How did I get such strong legs? The lower part of my body had been the only mom gave me permission to train hard. I attempted to work out my upper body, but mother stopped me from doing so, arguing that lifting weights would stunt my growth. Since mother lived in constant fear of the outdoors, she’d keep us mostly inside, so squats, kicks and jumping rope and running errands outside made me stronger from the waist down. All legs and a slender torso, no upper body, that was all there to make me faster than most. Not nearly as fast as I could’ve been. Thanks, mom.

I had wanted to be an astronaut in my early formation. Mother wouldn’t hear of it, the fearful creature she was, her  overly nurturing ways had turned me into a more reclusive, introspect fellow who had the least of ideas just how much the presence of a father matters. You get to pick up your manhood in bits, like all the boys, but you put up with a lot if you grow up sheltered from it by a pampering mother.

In its way, blocking growth, is the irrational fear with which mother loved us, passing her dysfunctionality down to us. Of course, mother is not to blame, she’s but a statistical footnote in the countless encyclopedias of primitive cousins and ancient relatives that once inhabited and coexisted within our reach. Do you think I speak of Sapiens, the evolution of the species and so forth? No, of course. I speak instead of immediate family who were around just a few decades ago, but it feels like eons and their backwardness is not a model suitable for imitation. I feel like I am an evolved being, leaving behind my past animal selves and all the circus that followed it in the name of the father, but not my sons. My boys are sacred to me, that for which I work for ever since having them. I enjoy seeing them take after me as they evolve into something other everyday.  My priorities changed from a despondent way of life to a more structured and concerted effort.

It probably has something to do with nature ensuring the survival of some part of me into the next generation, it is not accidental to love. Look, I’m not one to embellish, of all things, love. Everywhere you’ll see either side of two extremes: denial or attachment.

We do so operate with simultaneous forces all around. Take, for instance, when you love blindly or when you’d rather play the cynic and play cool. In youth, we probably loved more impulsively than in our later days, and for obvious reasons. We learn, as we grow, and we know that Santa Clause does not exist. But still we believe in things like God, a sort of Santa for adults.

And so, we tackle the most pernicious sources of suffering. In reducing the things that make us miserable, we make time for contemplation and relaxation. Pain is relieved so long as the basics are covered: a balanced diet, a fitness regimen, a renewed commitment to be better, knowing that it takes less effort to love than to hate, we all talk of doing but few of us ever do. It’s not difficult once it becomes a part of your routine, you don’t see people struggling at the gym; you see people struggle outside of it.

Before we knew words, long ago when there was no recorded history, then and there was love. Animals’ way of loving their young, the sacrifices made, the struggle endured, specially when it comes to mammals. Loving your offspring isn’t a choice; it’s encoded deep within your genetic make-up. When science argues that nature did not have in mind our happiness, and was there to just ensure our survival, those of us who have been involved in childbearing know a thing or two about masochism. Undoubtedly, we love our children vehemently, without knowing if our love is corresponded, if we are as much a part of their lives as they’re of ours. We’re intuned, you could say almost addicted when it comes to our siblings. Why bring that up here and now? Well, because it has everything to do with the subject discussed. If only we were inclined to care for and appreciate our partners and lovers half as much as we do our very own flesh and bone, what then would be the result? Half as much may be too much, really: we’d do just fine with one tenth of the effort involved in raising a semi-functional kid nowadays. We’re all damaged somehow, but the good news is that there are ways to go about reversing wrongs by not engaging the torments of the past. What worries you is really the enemy, pre-occupation. It’s what you do before taking care of business. We stress unimportant things. Say you’re traveling underground and experience a delay, understandably, you’ll feel a bit discomfort; but if it’s something you experience daily, more or less in a similar manner, shouldn’t it be filed under categorical routine? It’s not so much the hardship and wrongs life bestows upon that baffle us, it’s the lack of resolve to withstand the storm and press forward. We give in way too easily, and that’s not an option with our little ones. Sure, lovers aren’t “little” people, but when in dealing with love it is best to understand: we’re all children.

As to how we fall to such condition, well…

It’s accidental the way it happens sometimes. Accidents can be quantified, measured and studied in order to be understood. We may then anticipate their volatility, enact damage control protocols, assist the injured as best suited. Except love can be tricky because it deals with the individual, and if one is to be understood, then one must first explain: we do not love others per say. We’re utterly and hopelessly infatuated with ourselves. The trick is to rid of the “hopelessly” part, and start building from there. Look, just because love is downright inwardly obtuse and unnecessarily complicated, it doesn’t make it any less “hopeless.” We gotta be tougher than that.

Some of us may get the wrong idea about toughness. A tough lover is not aggressive, as aggression plays no part in dominance. Aggression is a response we need to counter a credible and imminent danger before us: you don’t reason with aggressors, like thieves sneaking into your property. There, and only then, you need to make good use of aggression. You can’t fight off a killer with kind words.

So, there are situations in life that demand an aggressive response. Fortunately, the majority of the experiences lived daily will not require such effort. We overreact to things, and that’s a sign of weakness. We think it’s strength to go all out; on the contrary, strength is built in temperance, centeredness, restraint. Dominant animals do not overreact, running for the hills; part of the problem, according to the author of the book Sapiens, Professor Harari, this anxiety towards life, this easily shaken nature of ours, has its evolutionary roots in the fact that we weren’t meant to used to finding ourselves as top predators. We react sheepishly to any affront, and we’re far more dangerous because we’re not used to being at the top of the food chain. We’re sheep with nuclear weapons, and it’d be preferable, according to Mr. Harari, if we were ruled by a wise wolf or leopard. These magnificent beasts really know how not to buckle under the pressure.

We die everyday, in indeleble ways, the minute we shy away, the moment we give in, over that project that did not come to fruition or the death staring at us from the mirror as the reflection we see ourselves in, momentarily, the ever-present now vanishes before our eyes.

We’ll never attain immortality, not in the way we may conceive of it: as in a flux, sort of like jumping rope, you await the right nanosecond fraction of the moment in which the rope swings away and hop in as the rope hits the floor.  Not a moment later or before, or else you'll hit the rope and miss the empty target in time.

We ought to consider that our brains operate similarly. We may miss an attempt because we failed to make that bold leap of faith, shattering for good the ambivalent agony of uncertainty. We all enjoy a little mystery and it's not like they say that uncertainty causes stress. Life is stressful but more so for those who don't work out. Strength makes life outside the gym a walk in the park. Suddenly, the urge to take on the world and come up on top materializes. We seize the moment because after putting ourselves through a workout sessions, experiences that would normally vex us do not faze us.

Part of it is owed to the level of confidence that strength brings to the equation, and that only hitting the gym hard and often brings. People often claim not having time. Who are these people? Who doesn't have time thirty minutes or so a day to function optimally? To experience an enhanced version of yourself, any takers?

Not only will it make us look and feel good but it'll also give us a decisive edge over our bummed-out, couch-potato self. Exercise should be as essential as hygiene; fit people tend to be well-groomed. They tend to be healthier in other aspects of their lives. They lead indeed a more exciting life than they would, say, without it. You only need to look at yourself in the mirror and see if you're one step closer to the best version of yourself.

Upgrade.

What  we should be grateful for is the because we’re never a whole, a complete set, a unique entity… we’re transient beings in the way we live, the way we are wired, organically. Within us, everything is in flux, nothing is fixed, immigrants on this transcendental journey. When A.I. finally maps out all the neural intricacies, all the chemical compounds’ mix and misses that make us who we are at any given moment, then A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) will have a rendition of the person we were just a moment ago, never of the person that we are now. If, somehow, the person we are gets mapped out completely, replicating the whole genome in the machine may differ vastly from the genetic whims exhibited in said organism. We can be sure that we may find a machine vastly similar to the way in which we function, but once the mapping out ends all similarities soon fade and you can see the futility of sequencing that which is not only random but intractable such as the mind. In that the mind can be replicated but not produce therefore the same input/output. We can find a mind very much like ours, the closest assimilation ever, and the minute we drift apart from the replica, these two like-minded organs of creation will go about their separate ways.

But love isn’t statistical, or static. We can’t quantify emotions… yet. As in happiness, it’s not that love is beyond our grasp; few things, if you consider, are… if only for the time being. Solving the problem of love is not then beyond the realm of probabilities. And it needn’t be as harsh as it is often portrayed. It’s so simple that no honest man would derive much pride over it.

When it comes to literature, it truly is love. If that’s not love, then I don’t know what is.

That I had been thrown out of class and one day in public threatened by the very principal, the most feared man within the premises of Grover Cleveland high school, who praised my work in some classes but warned me about the mayhem I had laid upon other curriculum: “Next time I hear anything bad about you, I’ll walk you outside this school myself.”

I knew I had to change, not so much so that the principal would approve. Just enough to keep him off my sight for the duration of high school. And so, I did.

We get to pick the ones that serve us best only if we’re any good at detecting being part of it. Not just the silly stories we hear about others’ stupidities, or ours. We’re prone to make mistakes. But what if they’re not really mistakes but only a failed attempt. You’ll fail miserably only when you learn to give up.

It’s been a while since I’ve written. I started other blogs and kept piling up material for an ebook later on this year and thought of many releasing mini-books of no more than a hundred pages. I’d have

Thought I’d dive right into the chain of events that led me here.

Let’s not forget it was a celibate monk who wrote the Kamasutra. It’s unusual to think of things as taking place all at once. This causes our collective mind to act like that of a hive mind.

As to what kind of manuscript this present book applies to, it’s a fictionalized and downright untrue, embellished and upgraded overtime. Why wouldn’t I add, omit, fictionalize or even rename each path undertaken? Aren’t we such capable fablers, toiling day in and out in the realm of imagination, simply because it takes far too long for things in real life to materialize? What to do with ourselves, in the meantime, as we await for the imagined to take the real world hostage and run with it into the proverbial sunset?

We polish our nails, but still pay attention to other fashionable: clothes that fit, not too tight or loose.

Eat well, that is: stay from animal protein; sleep between six and eight hours, and keep active all throughout, go to the gym and hit it hard for approximately an hour, three to five times a week. Think of fitness as taking a shower: you may get away skipping the shower a day or two before you start to stink. Same is true of exercise: you get so much more from it than just looking good naked. You get to be the very best version of yourself. Who doesn’t have time for that? When someone argues not having enough time to work out, you can inwardly argue who doesn’t have time to feel great? Most of us -provided that we’re healthy enough individuals- come out of a fitness regimen not just looking and feeling better in a relatively short span of time, but also more capable, alive, cheerful, dynamic, energized, upbeat. We’re ready to take on the world… and why wouldn’t we be able to deal with things more efficiently than we’d normally so? Contrast the feeling you get when the discipline to excel takes you first stop in the morning to the gym. What comes out of there isn’t the same grumpy, restless, wicked soul that went in. What comes out is someone who has mastered himself to the point that the very act of going to the gym first off is not just a priority; it’s on, autopilot. It’s not even a question and it’s not like you’d go there to show off or to make unbelievable demands of your body in order to smooth out other shortcomings popping in and out of the rear view mirroring of a self-reflected voice. Whatever it is you do, you can and must do so in part because of pride. The pride you take in your craft, your dedication, the patience to see it unravel, the strength to push forth. It’s not through an enlightened path through which we make our way. We make it through darkness in the bitterest of winters with sunny steps, fluorescent hops, bright insights, incandescent anecdotes.

When the focus widens, guts vicerate, eyes brighten.

Who doesn’t have forty minutes five a day to feel like you’re on top of the world. The contrast between the same you that skips the gym and the one that decides to go for it can be compared to that of a standard definition to a higher standard of definition. We simply are and operate so much better when we hit the gym first thing in the morning. Nonsense, to say there ain’t time to do so; every moment is an opportunity welcoming us to do so. We can decide right here and now to become more active and realize that in order to achieve that, all you need to do is move.

How About the Experiences described in this book?

Again, every piece of paper ever written is a form of fiction. There’s always another side to each story. But instead of omitting grotesque content, let’s tell the story from the truest form daoism.

Of course, it’d still be fiction to depict events in full detail, even if I were to use real names, no matter how realistic, matter-of-fact a story is, if language is used to convey meaning, it means it’s an illusion. Being an illusion doesn’t make it any less real.

So long as I use language, any idiom would simply be categorized as a work of fiction. Even when it comes to greater, far-reaching issues such as galaxies exceedingly accelerated away from us, words are of little, if any, symbolic use. One may argue that the universe is vast and mostly empty, but it doesn’t begin to illustrate everything that goes on in there at any given moment and for as long as it has been or ever was and all that it will. It turns out past, present and future are all happening all at once: when you look at a starry night, what you see is not what is but rather what those stars were hundreds of millions of years ago. You’re literally staring at the cosmological past of a swarm of stellar bodies hanging out suspended a moment in time, again: an illusion. Consider this: the speed of light is 299,792,458 meters per second in a vacuum. The fact that it took the actual projection of those celestial bodies of gas to travel here millions of years should serve as a testament of just how far and stretched out the universe is and if we will ever win at this game of catch-up.

As a specie, we devised methods of studying in depth more complex phenomenon. Mathematics evolved into still more advanced ways of equating, yet quantum physics has yielded a subatomic world at odds with ours. We live in a delusion (as in being within the illusion, no way to look out); whatever theories others might prophesize misses the proverbial bullseye: truth is an elusive target, not a fixed one. As a species, we come close to the ultimate truth but the minute that we get there, it’ll mutate into untold and mystifying proportions. Looking for the “truth” is a lot like finding out the marital status of a constellation. As humans, we understand very little because our brains are ill-equipped for higher mathematical problems. Overtime the genetic mutations that prompted the dawning of an era in which there really is nothing that is out of cognitive reach. If suddenly the fish in bowl would stare at you and wink, it’ll prompt you to recognize its extraordinary ability at self-recognition. This foreign creature has no way of communicating just how precious its life is, but the mere fact that it still ruminates back and forth and oftentimes in suspended animation to stare back at the observer from  within the confines of a three-dimensional water-packed crystal ball-like sphere.  

Since little, I familiarized with this notion that all we see is nothing more than an illusion. Except now I may add, “Being an illusion doesn’t make it any less real.” It is that eccentricity

Some devised the metrics, others the sweat; we’re moral beings. So, we want to abide by an ethical guideline along the way, choose the path that fits best the codes and designs of our surroundings. Blend in, get inside and from within bring the whole system down? Once you enter this system, you become part of it. No point in trying to take on the biggest guy in the room: see where the evolutionary chips would fall and pick every tantalizing bit so that you can reconstruct the mess in your mind. Except this very tool with which we analyze data is intrinsically linked to all that is. A puzzle is solved one piece in the right spot at a time, but seeing how every last one of us is an integral part of the puzzle, it is best to start by solving ourselves first.

Just do as good as possible with what you got, devise your own mechanisms of survival overtime and prosper gradually. What good is it to decipher the mechanics of an ethereal cage in which one finds itself trapped and worse still, deteriorating conditions that will not improve? Slowly decaying, bit by bit entropy makes its way in.

There comes a time in fight or a workout session in which we give up. Everyone gives in. Ironically, it is the opponent that throws such a ferocious blow it immediately demands of the referee to intervene. and stop the fight. It's the rival that crushes us with much more vigor and stamina, the one that promotes us to grow. At the gym, you may have given your all up to that last rep and it bear you good; ironically that's the rep that makes all the difference. It's also the rival that defeated you the one that exposes your weakness and now you have something to improve. It is the lover that never was the one that stays in your mind. Winning is oftentimes circumstantial. But that we take it always so personally says a lot about our own fragile ego. By the same token, you learn little from coming out

It need not be a physical fight which rarely happens; it's everything, everywhere and everyone, a psychological dogfight. The skills at your disposal will determine the outcome. Here's a few social cues that will enhance your experience.

Listen.

Look others in the eye.

Use compassion and empathy.

Science consists of making out the composition of a fleeting cloud in the horizon through the bars of the prison that lacks our collective mind inside, as some of those men around cling to the angel or devil behind that mass of condensed water in the sky.

You never fucked with the likes of.me.

It’s a success to have all the time in the world to dedicate ourselves to the trades that most reward our nature. What that may very well be depends on your natural constitution and proclivity.

In my case, it’s simple, really. It’s not just one thing, but it could be: acquiring the know-how to getting what I want out of life. And, I found, that in order to get what you want, invariably you need to transcend yourself. Self-improvement? No, because more than improvement, I sought out mastery of emotions: that most elusive condition of all, tranquility. Women came much more later, by accident, and when I thought I had already found nirvana.

I moved into an rv, rode until I found a small piece of land in the middle of nowhere and there, next to a lake, I found solace. That was all I needed initially.

I found it long ago, I’ve read as many books as I’ve seen movies, but it’s not so much the quantity, but the selectiveness in subjects to be explored. Neuroscience, technology, quantum physics, but the thing that initially obsessed me the most was women.

I found more perplexing than science, more fascinating than knowledge, more enigmatic than life itself. What I find more of a mystery than women is men’s unwillingness to become more curious as to how it is that the mind of that which obsess them throughout most of their lives, first  as our mothers and sisters, then distant relatives and among strangers, staring at us from a distance and having us figured out before we even said a word.

Girls were always a different kind of menacing. They weren’t strong like us, but we were somehow held back from hitting them. It’s been part of who we are or how we’re raised, but hitting girls is a no-no. What’s no so much of a no-no is all the discreet humiliations suffered at their hands throughout all our lives.

We all remember dealing with our mothers. Our fathers? Not so much, or at least not as negatively. If there was any downside to dad’s behavior, it was only when it was out of the extraordinary in their ruthlessness. A degree of madness, we’ve all been exposed to in life. We’ve been subjected to our good share of evil and it resides now within. It’s part of the voices we’ve followed that led us here, and it’s not going anywhere. We’re capable of it.

I mean, what kind of awful things most of us would be willing to do to spare our life or the life of someone us. And I speak of no crime, either. Let’s not call it prostitution, for instance, but mom used to sleep around and bluntly ask for men to help her out. She’d initially go for boys she’d like until these boys gossiped about her and then there were other men at her doorstep or in the shop who’d ask her if she would go with them that they’d pay her. She did not go with the ones that weren’t her type, she’d say. And her type was always a generous kind. If they called her demeaning names in bed, they didn’t find her out on the streets and there were kids sleeping in the same room. She was really doing it to have the best time being a single, having her fun and providing for her kids.

It's Not that Complicated

Some say love, among other things, has a lot to do with geography. It turns out, location is key. As to which location is disease-free, no one knows but we should be heading there. You know, in the opposite direction.

Now why should I sound so cynical about an emotion most people see as positive? Because of the pain such illusion inflicts into our daily lives. Just as it is with food, we are all somewhat addicted to the elated feelings associated with romantic love. Not that a little adventure, a brush with madness on an otherwise placid horizon would spell doom. At festive times, we ought to welcome shady elements into the mix, it spices things up. But just like condiments, a dash much of it would spoil the whole dish. 

It's boring to always play it safe. It's risky business to want to live on the edge, however. Buddhism speaks of a Middle Path when Siddhartha observes that too much of anything (except meditation) is bad, but a little bit of it, even madness, is a welcome sight. 

It's an expensive habit to date, especially if you're a man. Eliminating the need for a romantic attachment does not rid of the wanting a partner/lover with whom to journey. Rare are those who adhere to a life of abnegation and solitude but that's what ironically awaits us in the end if we fail to see that at its core we are born and die alone. Therefore, we ought to welcome times of abstinence, temperance and penance; times of fasting though there might be plenty of food, moments of quietude when the impetuous crowds dance and drink; time alone when there are no welcoming arms to embrace. You ought to go without if you seek to find solace within. Nothing rules over you except the inner wisdom that serves as a compass to guide your deeply rooted steps.

It strikes us as somewhat nihistic insanity to hear from Buddhism that attachment is the root of all suffering. After all, if it's not because how much we cherish our lives, why bother at all fearing death? It even goes as far as suggesting to kill your desire.

It's so anti-establishment, such a radical way of thinking. Nothing more than a mere ascetic eccentricity.

There are some contrasts, of course, with the Buddhist way and our way of life. We grew up in obnoxious luxury in comparison to our ancestors who not so long ago, say about a hundred years ago or so, were dying half our age. Things will probably continue to get better, and we live in a culture that promotes selfish behavior by praising individualism as a tenet.  Old sages all across a vast scope of millennials knew of wisdom in frugality, abstinence, temperance, self-control. We lack some of that wisdom nowadays. The greatest spiritual leaders of all time, such as Siddhartha, the Buddha; Jesus of Jerusalem; Lao Tzu; among others… did not tell us to go out there and be all that we could be. People were instructed to be pious, to seek spiritual guidance, to spend time alone, to commulgate or meditate. Theological doctrine gravitated towards centeredness. We may see it suspect that religion forbids so much and allows for so little, but true spirituality doesn’t suggest we find someone and perpetuate the gruesome cultural phenomenon of marriage. Think of it as two animals put in a box, never to see the light again. That we have such a high rate of divorce says a lot about the state of affairs in modern relationships. In a hunter-gatherer tribe, much like is the case with bononos, the chimpanzee specie closest to human sapiens DNA, our closest living relatives, use sex as means to create social bonds; in other words, anything goes. With the advent of agriculture, we left the nomad life for good and traded a substantial part of our leisure to working even more than we did when roaming the savanna as hunter-gatherers. In such primitive cultures, it was common to see members engage in sex for all sorts of things. I may be wrong, but it was a time when money did not yet exist and so it makes sense that paying for things with sex was a common practice. Sex may have been the first monetary system. Unlike gorillas who are ruled by an alpha male who has unique access to all the females, bonobos share theirs. Sex among bonobos isn’t a privilege of the most dominant male.

Another modern setback is monogamy. Major human societies such as the Roman did not advocate for it. Out of the 500 species of mammals left on earth, about less than 5 percent are monogamous, forming  lifelong bonds among which, interesting enough, is the wolf. Arguably, about the same percentage may be true for us humans, too. In other words, a tiny percentage of us does want to be in sexually exclusive relationships. Some of us find predictability kind of sexy. Human beings are complex creatures, who say one thing and do the exact opposite. We find appalling that the adult Roman men had sexual relationships with young boys. The God of the Old Testament committed infanticide. The freedoms and ideals we hold today may seem the right ones, but everyone who ever lived was subject to the era and bounded by the ironclad of its rituals. No one can completely escape this predicament, otherwise we are called sociopaths, etc. But is there anything more psychopathic than individualism. It reeks of narcissistic viscosity. It is what caused the modern calamity of fatherless homes. Children raised by children who wanted to live their childhood all over again, never to be seen as a parental figure, often bitter and down with the feeling that we were cheated out of this hand life dealt us. We feel as if there ought to be a way to make sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again.

Truly, religions weren’t interested in the individual experience, one may argue. Life was way too much a serious matter, and so individualism was reserved for those at the top of the food chain, the kings and rulers, the masters, the bishops, the Pope. The treatment saved for the very elite. Interestingly, in adopting this lavish style of living, we do not find ourselves any less insignificant. Here, too, a bit of Taoism can be applied: we thrive in life so that we can show off to others just how much of it we’ve amassed. If we must point at a thing we own in order to validate our existence, there is an inner lack exposed.

At its core, Buddhism and many other ancient philosophy, most notably that of Taoism, spoke of empathy and a pious life. These doctrines were about the liberation of our souls which may sound a bit sketchy for us all now but back then it meant that there simply can't be any peace of mind or greater self-fulfilment than in the dissolution of the ego. These doctrines did not speak of self-expression but more like a denial of such self. In Taoism, for instance, just getting excited to see something as “beautiful” implied that there is also a polarity of ugliness thrown into the equation.

How can I translate that? Every time you see a beautiful girl, your response is primal. You look at her, you give off micro expressions that tell unequivocally that you're seeing something you like. Your heart races. Your pupils dilate. How many times a day you'd put yourself through misery this way? You know you won't say anything so why not shut up that whole nonsensical animalistic reaction to a beautiful woman? Now, you may have an edge over the rest of those around, if you instead focus your energy and strength for more personally-oriented fruitful tasks.  

You're better off going about your business without such internal turmoil. You wouldn't respond that way if you had been married to that beautiful stranger for a year. In such heightened state of mind, you rarely have 20/20 vision. If you were to buy shoes that'd fit your heart, chances are you'll go for two sizes smaller when it comes to lizard-brain love. Do you really want the hippocampus cerebral district in charge of your destiny? You should know, it is here within this nutty-nutshell one-dimensional-size fits all running the show? Might as well hire a fat New York native subway rat to play the flute while your larger mammal brain is on hold.

We make more mistakes and spend more lavishly when in love. And the madness doesn't seem to end there. Somehow they make us want what can't have 24/7. We're constantly assailed by waves of commercials that show us the fanciest new toy, the best cars, the most beautiful women. All these superstars.

It's kind of depressing if we do not measure up.

If we don't have the same income as our peers, if we don't do at least better than our parents did. Everything in modern life revolves around a static wheel in a laboratory and we're the rat in the cage racing madly. Of course, wisdom in antiquity can resonate with our modern ways and we can integrate some off its most fundamental aspects into our lives without the necessity to become a celibate monk. But one thing is to go out there and enjoy yourself All the way and another thinking that you need a lot of money to do so. Love is a business, just think how expensive a wedding is. How much is a drink at a bar? Why are the lights dimmed and the music so loud in places where you’re supposedly meeting people up. What of all the dates we go on and the gifts, it all adds up to no point. Of course, generosity is a virtue. But it is a virtue that stems from piety, as in giving to those in need and serving the ones we love. You need not spend too much to show appreciation, to pay attention to detail, to give of yourself. That is the true testament of wealth. Instead, we spend too much because we cannot give much else. We’re what we have and it leaves us feeling empty at times. Look, don’t get me wrong. It’s great to enjoy the luxuries of our time, but it’s even greater to untangle ourselves from it all and see that we already have far greater riches within reach. All we need to do is seize the right moment. Not perfect, just right.

It may feel so wrong, because it is wrong, because we do not deserve to be loved the way we are. Because we want to love what we cannot have. Because we have more than we need and want more than should, and should more than would, and would not in the end. What cowards are we. After all, drinking is for drunks and shy people. We function better in bed and elsewhere when we abstain from alcoholic beverages. We’re sold into the idea that it takes money to love. And, in a way, it does. Love can be expensive when you don’t want it. I didn’t want to have a child but for religious beliefs, my girlfriend at the time did, and so I found just how expensive a baby can be. Before having my first son, I’d buy me new shoes every other week. Why did I need that many shoes? As you see, sometimes love can save you from a life gone astray.

Whenever I spoke to my cousin Alan about cutting down on drinking and quitting smoking for a few days, along the same lines the subject of having kids came up. He’d spend a few nights a week or so in local bars, and it is not that the bar scene doesn’t have its fine hour. But if you’re in your mid thirties, still hanging out at the same pace you did when you were in your twenties, you’ve been had. Why not settle down? I’d ask him. Not so much so that he’d suddenly listen to me and do as told, but more because I wanted to see what was on his mind.
“I don’t want to lose my freedom” he’d say.

“What freedom? “The freedom to get drunk four nights a week? That’s not freedom.”

“It is to me” he’d say.

I wouldn’t know if it were all that much in the end. He’d confess being sick of the place, the booze, the cigarettes. But he still went and sat there and drank and smoke. Not that he had, to my knowledge, a drinking problem and not that it was my problem. But I’ve always been who I am and the way that part of that deal is letting those I care for, just a handful of them, what I think of them. If it’s good, too. And, of course, do so in a light manner, no judgmentality.

We should probably turn off our cell phones at night. We do not need to be connected all the time. There ought to be a time for us to be spent in quietude, alone, doing absolutely nothing more than being. We should get away from it all from time to time. Get off at a different train station, visit another country, spice things up. Lovers come and go; friends are forever. We ought to find a better way to go about it. This way of doing things, all vamped up and wired, can’t be good for us. It gets in the way we should ideally bond and connect to one another. No offense, but we can do better than just getting numbers and asking people we don’t know out in the hopes that some sex might lift the heavy feelings and make us yet again kings of the world.

We won’t if we keep staring at our phones, seeing if there’s any updates, who posted what and how it compares to my own posts? We ought to lift our head from our lap and see each other as we are, here and now.

You know, face to face… kind of the way you're doing now staring at your phone.

Now, where were we? Ah yes, geography.

You know, the fact that you may end up loving someone you're close to, as in someone nearby.

Either someone who is a friend of your family or lives in the same neighborhood or is in the same line of work.

In essence, love has to always be geographical unless, of course, is of the platonic kind. Why does the platonic kind get a bad rap? We all live in our heads. And platonic can be the start of something or an ideal plateau or climax from which you can turn back or somehow exorcise. The demon of love knows no boundaries, it knows no common ground; it's downright despicable. Garcia Marquez was right to sum it all up in his novel on the subject, Love in the Time of Cholera with the opening line: “It was inevitable.”

Much more than mere geography is needed for this to work. After all, we end up sometimes with people who end up living not just in a different zip code but an altogether country. Nonetheless, it's an illusion.

We'll never be closer than we are right now because no matter the distance we can hop on a plane and be down with sickness. Love, that is.

We're ill -equipped when it comes down just about most things but specially if it involves that class we all had Emotions 101. Remember? With friends who knew just as little as we did and parents who knew a whole lot less than their soon-to-be-teenagers, temperamental boys.

Adolescence is not easy. Growing up requires certain rite of passage at almost every turn. We don't master the game of life -or love, for that matter- with gimmicks; instead we master a single move that gives us an edge over our unforeseen opportunities. There are tons of machinations and lavish iterations we've undergone so far, and no one is as good in everything as someone is good with something, something.

You only one of three elements to give a rough meaning to life and in order to thrive and build as you walk upon the uncarved stony road: the enlightened path is cemented in the collective shadow that once proceeded it.

So that not all of us are good at most things. Which is why it only makes sense to do what's most important to us. Which is usually the most challenging one. What matters is, the time we spend at work with familiar strangers or on our way to work with unknown strangers.

Not all strangers are created equal. We're all strangers to ourselves and to others. Who knows what kind of stranger I'll be when we meet again? We've been nothing but strangers so far. But of all these strangers that I unrecognised myself in, none of them is as precious as the stranger I become each time our eyes met around.  

We all come with an expiration date and everyone should know their number could be up any moment. To know when and where would only adrenalize the way we approach life.  Taoism speaks of nature not rushing, not eager at the seams, but that it eventually takes shape and form. It is a gradual but certain shift, like that of the stone cutter.

We should all live as if we had been declared with an incurable disease --for what is the human condition if not sickness? We are like the demon nature has summoned to do it's biding and end the ecological equilibrium. Like most monsters in a film, we are unaware of our condition; other conscious monsters, an elite minority, machinate the existential grinder.

nd so when we find ourselves in the midst of warm, cozy feelings, we forget as men that evolution never meant for us to sit idly and let emotions run its course. We rebel against this idea of giving up, of utter surrender. We deny our own vulnerability. And it causes us pain. And when we hurt, we may get used to it and go about our business and not shout out loud that something is amiss. All that awaits us in just the next two hours before I head off to work:

Relax. Sit back, tiger. Do a set of pull-,ups, go for a run, meditate half hour, get to work on time, sit nearby to a beautiful stranger and calmly breath in her aesthetic bliss. Let that world that surrounds us engulf the two of us in its embrace. It's just a taste but it's there, you're never as alive as when you can no longer make sense. We get there way of extasis or way of contemplative ritual. Either way, it's the way in which we lose ourselves.

What we have until then is containment. We await as hunters for the right moment. It can't take forever. It must begin now.

It rubs us off with a streak of madness, this love issue. How fast are we willing to move on if the object of our affection doesn't justify our yearning? What we want is oftentimes so much greater than we need. What needs are met and how often? See, it's complicated. Some may be inclined to believe that it is the very satisfaction of need that gives rise to addiction overtime. Few are willing to withstand the withdrawal symptoms. Moodiness, restlessness, a bit of misery to be left alone to ourselves. It's the same with people. We love each other because it makes less lonely, more sexy, less obtuse, more shiny. It's feels good to be wanted and loved and praised. But should we live only for the  chemistry aesthetics and the cool crowd brings in? It may sound astounding, but living long periods as a celibate and not having too much human contact can be good for your health.

What's so good about alienation? First it isn't for everyone as most people desire to be with someone, be it family or friend. What we need most are friends but the way things are set, of which we'll deal with later here, we tend to focus on other frivolous routines. People is horrified to open up to one another. That's what social media is for. Right?

Well, no. Most of our lives have been ruled by idiocy. It takes us long enough to realize, and some may never come such realization, that those who were in charge of imparting the know-hows in life, rarely had time for emotional input. There was no 101 Human Emotions. There ought to be. And while we're at it, let's scratch romance right off the board. Well, maybe not just yet. We still need to debunk some of these myths.

It goes beyond geography.

Someone you can bring home to your folks wouldn't fall under the category of geography. It's simple, really, if you match your illusion with some balls. When we guys tease one another, we may denounce behaviors less in accord with our masculine identity as “file-like", in a derogatory, non-sexist way. Why is it that we lack the resolve to bring things to fruition? It takes far less energy to take life as one would a bull by the thorns, but unwise. We need to be assertive in our quest, neither passive nor aggressive. In a decisive swing of the cut-right-thru the bullshit sword, you can slay one giant juicy dragon. Make your pick and stick to your guns. If a girl slaps you, turn the other chick.

But that person would still need to be within the geographical sphere of proximity for something to happen. We may therefore argue that geography rules the day because two people cannot for a relationship unless there is physical component that can bring these two (or more) into a cohesive bond. Even in the realm of long-distance partnerships, ties of all kinds may be formed thanks to the advent of wireless technologies. It may not convey the same level of intimacy and connection that a one-on-one, but it works and seems to be enough for some.

It's all complicated business, as most of us tend to form mixed-feelings when it comes down to romance. In the modern application of the word, romance is all about power. Everything, more or less, is. It varies according to the land and its culture, but everywhere there's a wicked interpretation of what it constitutes. It's all about getting the girl as the hero in the story sets off to save the day. We can be interstellar conquerors on our days off.

Romance is not the sole property of modernity. It started with the Age of Romanticism. And we had to name a culprit, it'd have to be thanks to one of Enlightenment's very best mind: Rousseau. Every age that succeeded it and reincarnated it made it user-friendly. Each subsequent cultural stepping stone have rise to  a system more and more apt for general consumption. As it often happens with anything that strikes humanity's fancy, it was gradually turned into a business.

Not just love but everything else, since society's elitists figured that being now the most present time ever, who is to say we are not better than we were before? It's not like people in the Middle Ages were aware of the dark times that had befallen them.  We sleepwalk through these times of colossal prosperity, unrivaled wealth, but if we do not tighten our ecological whip, we may very well be living our last days as a specie here on earth.

Except ages do not always move forward and we may ourselves be in the midst of a new dark age. Agriculture two one evolutionary step ahead, two steps back for mankind. The solution is perhaps in the very word but instead of its individual stance, divide it, as in mankind. It doesn't get any simpler than that. Kindness, to one another. Selflessness. Empathy with our fellow organisms trapped in slaughterhouses.

Those at the heap of the hierarchy were not very much “progressive.” It was in the interest of a sovereign land to keep their populace in doubt, if not frightened, but most definitely “in the dark.” We, too, live in the dark and one ought to just consider our situation here.  The little we do know is that up until now we were wrong about all our presumptions. What we do, the way of doing it, tells a story about ourselves. We're not who we think we are. Not the ones we thought ourselves to be either. Our minds are hardwired on denial and biases.

Since early in our formation, the concept of romance is instilled. At home and in school, through dogma at the hand of our educators who foment a governmental agenda and under the roof we grow, the people we meet along the way, the books we read, the music we listen to. It all shows a fierce anecdote of love and courage, but movies are theatrical masturbation: we get our fix of adrenaline in a rather conformist and passive way, deluding ourselves in the projection of a pixelated reality with bombastic rhetoric and sound-effects. It all leaves a footprint in the trajectory flux of a reality that is, if we are to be honest, ever-present, always evolving and never at once. So is love.

Just a few decades back, look and it’ll be easily found. In the early nineties, without smartphones, it was common to use a beeper. It wasn’t until the latter half of that decade people began to really unravel and create in the process the demand that Apple started with the iPhone. The smartphone has redefined, if not transformed, the way we relate to one another. And to think that this an industry that made it big only a decade ago. It continues to grow, but those of us born in the early seventies see things no different. We wouldn’t go back to the way things were and things were good, not great but consistently more so. No one wants to go to last year flagship. And today’s flagships will be primitive artifacts in just a few years from now.

We can only imagine what great things will come in a few months from now. Tomorrow is here and if we take good care of the primal casing in which we carry ourselves, exercise some, eat right, meditate and avoid stress, we may end up hooking ourselves to a higher state of consciousness. Be one with the machine. It may be a matter of sticking around for the next decade or so.

Every movie we see, every sitcom we watch, every book we read.. offers familiar dynamics that imprint our observant and constantly upgrading self, every action and reaction, every thought, is being recorded in the subconscious with thoughts as to what is considered the norm: Instagram pics with your romantic partner, or most significant other whomever that might be, doing whatever it is that will foment the notion that both of you are living it up in this life. But, are we? Really?

Are we really as alive behind the scenes? Do we really face life with a smile or is that just for the flash? Aren’t we just uploading miniature digital replicas of ourselves as we were moments ago? And doesn't that flashy misrepresentation of aesthetics make us feel a little less ugly?

In Taoism, yeah, sure. No such a thing as “ugly” or “pretty”, as these are one and the same, ying yang. So, each complements the other, sponsoring empathy, forming bonds, so long as no one’s entity separates the two from their intrinsic knot, until someone casts light on the less aesthetically, saying: “There’s ugly!” it is thereof implied that there might be a beautiful counterpart, a parallel dimension in which such condition has been remedied. All of these are just illusions that work well in keeping life as is.

We’ve done so effectively in the past: come up with solutions to what would have constituted a physical handicap, a cognitive decline, there’s nothing that modern science and its army of neuroscientific bees always buzzing around and stinging, noisily as it’s inherent of our specie and gossip cannot wait until the erudite acknowledgment of things to come, discoveries found, it is nowadays a science of a moment to moment. If something doesn’t have a solution yet, give it a few days and google it again.

I learnt so with my firstborn son’s diagnosis of autism. Little things depress as much, it felt as if the world had finally passed me the bill for having had oh so much fun up until that point. Now I know better. His diagnosys changed me fundamentally.

I resolved to be around longer and so I gave up on certain bad habits immediately and I aimed at finding the answer to the riddle of the autistic syndrome. Having read very little, I knew it was a haunting prognosis. I immediately broke down and did so without much reserve, holding him in my arms and already mapping the way out of this freak of nature, son of a gun dilemma. I knew there was no how and even less than a way, but in searching for an answer, I stumbled upon something far greater. Let’s skip ahead the anecdotes and say with good confidence that nothing has changed me more for the better than wanting to stick around not just longer but healthier than ever before. Because of the simple premise that my son help would need me around in order to father him for all the time my father wasn’t around and all the time I will be. Yes, being around when they grow old and see our children have children of their own and see these children grow and still be around, healthy and strong.

Progress has been the motto of our existential thrive. We’ve been arrogant in our quest, rarely looking back at flawed things and moving on with the best product. Sometimes, it’s best to know that the rat-race makes no one genuinely fulfilled. Or as others might call it, “happy.” Here’s the problem: happiness isn’t compatible with progress, since we want things to be better, finding ourselves at ease with the way things are may shatter that notion. We no longer find the need to propel ourselves into the very next big thing in the evolving laboratory wheel that we call life and put on our dopamine engines and fly the ethereal, proverbial heaven of things to come. We enjoy our way of life, the way we’re all wired and interconnected. But we miss the privacy and lonesomeness of our craft, the need to retreat and not to be found, to go back to the inner cave from which we’ve never emerged. Our inner lives are at stake, whenever we find outer expectations of us by close ones who sit at the sidelines, tilting the balance of our lives with their weight and opinions. We want to make progress, yes, but what kid of progress will do us more good? The kind that not only is good for us as individuals but as a collective entity. Whether we like it or not, and certainly I do not like nor dislike it one way or another, we belong to a group, a pack. The more your pack has your back, the better off you’ll fair.

It’s imperative that we polish our social skills, serve others well without an agenda in mind. When we do things in expectation of others, we fall under the same trap of taking other people’s opinions of us into regard. Pay no mind to any voice that dwells within you, wrestling against it is futile. It’s best to analyze ourselves first before passing judgment on others. Everyone notices the soulful step that tracks back its form and presses forward regardless, but after countless steps there’s a stop on the way there to anywhere, making a pause, pacing ourselves, too, counts as part of the journey. It is then that we find ourselves midway of the chosen path. Sweat dripping down your face, you breathe in deep and hold your breath until it leaves you breathless: each moment affords us with an indefinite amount of choices that could better our actual condition.

We can always find a way to feel better if we are willing to take action and make the right choices. Being always busy and having little time for leisure is just as bad as having nothing better to do, but oftentimes extremes make us who we are and no one should dissuade you from your aim, whatever that may be. Similarly, we should decide for ourselves what it is that makes us feel more at home and “happy”.

I don’t know that happiness is the right choice of word. Some would call it “fulfillment”, but still: what are you as you await to fulfill a wish or a goal of yours? Fulfillment may err closer home, but what we may be looking for is “contentment”. Somewhere along the way between the outwardly hedonic preposition of “happiness”and its polar iteration “negation” lies that middle path the Buddha spoke of: equilibrium.

We do not want extreme “happiness” or, as its passive counterpart would have it, being actively engaged in fruitless tasks. Some of us search for broader existential meaning than just the right snapshot to post on a media outlet. More than a title, a relationship status, or a brand new toy, what a sensible individual most wants is a human connection. Isn't that what we're all after posting a pic of ours?

What we get are superlatives. Look at our anatomy: we aren't much and we demand so much. We got enough goods but it is never good enough. Our discontentment is not as a result of lacking. Something else is amiss.

In order to compensate, we overeat. We use porn, to satisfy our sexual drive. We watch movies to get the chemistry of action mimicking. We drink coffee to get there -somewhere fast. We masturbate to spare our ego.

It's not that we should all ascribe to celibacy. It's not as bad as it sounds. I think you're happier when you give up the illusion. It is ironic nonetheless that the minute you give up trying to get something, the more it comes your way. Say you worry about money, then you shall never have more than you fear you should. The same is true of all these intricacies we denominate as falling in love. Love is nothing short of a business. First off, you gotta go out and find it, and in the process spend a good penny doing so. They may induce you to drink or eat lavishly, and if it is a proper romantic holiday such as Valentine's or mom's day, it may demand more of you, offer expensive gifts per say.

Think of dating. The idea is pretty simple. You call and ask a girl out. You take this girl out. You spend some money.  Talk about yourselves. Or at the very least the selves worth recalling. We all want to paint a flattering rendition of ourselves to a potential mate.

Now, I ask, is it really pertinent to take a girl out of her element and woo her unto the wild outdoors in order to have a good time, especially when you go out and find that there are a constellation of girls out there already ready to party the night away.

Next, you gotta be up at a time designed to be tucked in bed. Look, I know many of you youngsters consider the nightlife a coming of age staple in maturity. Fine, but no one's mature at 21 and it'd take me no less than a decade of boozing every other day to find out. I won't be hypocritical: it was fun. But it wasn't all that is cut out to be and most party-hard souls are terribly lonesome. We pay dearly for a neurotoxic agent that literally wipes out brain cells and destroys the kidneys. Ten percent of the alcohol we digest crosses the threshold into the mind.

We're only given that which is effective at killing us: alcohol, cigarettes, and a sickening diet. I understand someone may enjoy a drink every now and then, but having multiple platforms of self-destruction at our disposal and enacting one or more of these at any given conjunction, it can backfire. Our bodies and minds are well-equipped to rid of toxins. But what good is a cleaning device if you just keep shitting on it?

Look closer and you'll see it materialize out of thick air, those who push forth and are quite satisfied with never being satisfied often prevail. But at what cost? Those whose satisfaction is in the lack thereof are the richest souls.

Take what you'd consider a “happy” dog. Such dog would run about freely and pee all over the furniture or lick the faces of its human companions with the same tongue that it used to lick another dog’s butt. Say the dog would happily disregard any commands by its human leader.

The dog, of course, is unbalanced. Similarly it happens with people that if they lack, as the dog in the analogy, discipline and purpose, they are rendered useless beasts. What made the dog the most successful non-verbal, non-human creature was, for sure, its unique social abilities and its sound loyalty. We can trust a loyal dog as the most loyal of friends because. It is humans, and more appropriately so sapiens, our very own specie, the monster nature cooked up in seeking its own destruction. In the brief history of humankind, we've wiped out the vast majority of species.

What's left are billions of animals in slaughterhouses and the other billion or so we've domesticated in the form of personal companions, aka pets. It seems that whatever it is of no use for consumption or amusement has really no place therein.

We know what little we know from those who came before us. Advances in technology allow us to outlive our ancestors in any periodic timetable. When we could in the past relegate the responsibility on a divine and whimsical force, unknown to our condition, we now know there's a method to apply that will confer better results. We know what it needs to be done, steps that will lead us out of the mess that we're in.

But how do we know if this is the right path forward? Who am I to say that snubbism and having an intellectual knack are the foolproof ways to a higher state of consciousness? Who says we need such a state of affairs?

Romance, that is, can only complicate things. It's overrated. No one has time for jealousy, anger, but we hang on to the notion that we belong to one another.

I'm sure it's worked for others. And if that works for you, as well, and you happen to find someone willing to go along with it, the more power to you.

No one's saying you should change the way you are. Why should I press on what may be in your interest of doing. To each its own.

It's hard enough to be ourselves that we now have to bring someone else's randomness into the equation. And the worst part is that we follow these rituals, modeled after people who sucked at it, our parents did their best and in some cases not nearly enough but we don't have to do parenting the archaic way of theirs. We have more efficient techniques and coping mechanisms. We can adopt the right course of action and see it through. It can be a little thing long forgotten and then one day taken upon and you get to be more yourself by yourself. Our misery stems from not loving ourselves enough to know that we really need no one. It's a hassle to deal with romantic rituals such as dating. Everything is turned into a business. Even love.

There's a disconnect here. We go out and ingest a fair amount of alcohol at a time way past our bedtime. Is that what is fun? What a ripoff.

You go and drink and do so but not because you'll find the love of your life. Or who knows? Maybe so. But what are the odds that life, hard as it already is, would turn out the way you want it to. If anything, the present moment teaches us how different things turn out. It will require effort and effortlessness.

Why is it that we must get tipsy in order to get to talk to someone we may not find as amusing once the night ends. No need to be saying that you want to be just friends. You can enjoy life more when you don't owe any of your time to a second party. No matter how good a person, things turn sour sooner or later. Is it worth it? Well, yeah and no. It's worth the pain to know that I try to fend off that route and climb instead mountains of countless possibilities. We no longer see others as potential anythings.

It all started with not wanting to date in the sense that we go on dates and eat ice cream or that sort of thing.  Then it turned into not wanting to date period. I know, at this pace I'd end up being a monk. But you know what? It's peace of mind and freedom over which you can put a price on.

Love is complicated as it is, best to keep it out of the workplace. You can't help but feel attracted to one another. That's fine. How you deal with that tension determines your success. It's a rule I never broke: I kept romance out all along.

I may have fallen madly in love a couple of times. It happens to everyone and the more you fight how you feel, the worse it gets.

But I'm a big boy and I kept things casual. Then it turned out I didn't want to date anyone outside either. It's just a boring game. Read Games We Play.

If you're not man enough to be without her, then you're not man enough for her.

I gave up the myth of love eons ago. But I'd still go out and mingle. It's easier not to seek out adventure once the thrill of the unknown gets all too familiar. You know where it ends. Out in the cold of night, downing shots… it's not that there's no fun. There is. But at what cost?  If you drink, you can't drive, and if you drink, you'll end up eating. Overeating and bad stuff for sure and at that time. Working nights take years off your life. No one will you back the sleep you miss.

I fell in love with good sleep habits and I go to bed early and I rise early. A little before dawn, Awake and meditate your way into the dawning day, write for one hour and meditate afterwards for another twenty or thirty minutes. Not a single hangover in over a year and I have a very low tolerance for it. In Miami, I had water because the couple of times I tried some vodka, I fell asleep. The thing is, I did enjoy myself or whatever self I was back then. And I didn't need alcohol to do so. It was a lot more fun. I'm six feet one inch tall, and in the best shape of my life. All I had to do was to exercise more often and eat right. I had to get nutrition right. I let go of that which is non-essential. It has to have a purpose or else it is not a service I'd pay for.

I don't date. I don't go out. I don't drink alcohol. I don't even have a cellular connection. I do carry my smartphone and keep offline content like digital music, YouTube Red videos, ebooks, etc. I eat only food I've prepared. I don't take showers everyday but I keep hygienic. We're mostly composed of germs and the bugs that make us up are mean enough to fend off disease. We need them.

Root out the most vicious habits and there still are plenty of ill-fated decisions made on a regular basis. I'm far from perfect but I am a little better each day, somehow, some way.