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.