06. Hearing something a dozen times and then finally understanding what it means only when it becomes the answer to a problem you have.
07. When physical, human age has no bearing on connectedness, intelligence, ability.
08. The parenting style that consists of trying to punish, embarrass, scold, and oppress children into being functional, kind, successful members of society.
09. Wanting to have a spiritual-sexual experience with someone, sex that is more than just a grinding race to orgasm.
10. The mental preparation that occurs before you step into a social situation in which you have to play a “role” for the sake of maintaining a relationship: i.e., rehearsing your conversations with yourself by yourself.
11. The feeling of absolute peacefulness right before you fall asleep.
12. Not just assuming we know what other people are thinking and feeling, but acting on that “knowing,” judging them for that knowing, and really in a lot of ways capping off their potential with what we think we know of them.
13. The feeling of lightness in your whole body.
14. The love you know has an expiration date.
15. The love you know you’re eventually “meant” for.
16. People who are funny without being mean.
17. People who are deep without being negative.
18. The frustration you feel when somebody is mad or upset over completely false things that they’ve made up in their mind, a complete lack of understanding on a situation.
19. The random, weird, scary, embarrassing thoughts that cross your mind and sometimes freak you out that you think you’re alone in having because everybody else is scared and embarrassed by them, too.
20. The art of trying to figure out someone’s intentions by piecing together a bunch of random bits of “evidence.”
21. The kind of stuck feeling of knowing something isn’t quite right, but you’re not yet aware of what the alternative would be.
22. The comfort that comes with arriving at small, safe conclusions now and again.
23. The real peace of dissolving those illusions.
24. The feeling of realizing that your “purpose” won’t usually feel like a “purpose” as you have to do the work regardless and so the whole act of “finding it” was just a mechanism of the ego in the first place.
25. How we define periods of our lives and personal development beyond years or grades or segments of schooling.
26. The space between raindrops.
27. A course of study that teaches you the art of the non-traditionally-academic things that take up the majority of our lives: love, relationships, doubt, faith, parenting, work, friendship, self-image, etc.
28. Being in love with someone who you only used to know, and at some level still feel as though you do.
29. The happy tired feeling you get after you eat a big meal.
30. The sensation of looking back on something far more fondly than when it was actually happening; the idea that maybe this kind of enjoyment is not to be fought or transcended, but just appreciated for what it is.
31. The feeling of feeling a feeling.
32. A person or thing that also feels like “home” (a non-house home).
33. The idea that is “all is as it should be.”
46
HOW TO
become your own
WORST ENEMY
(without ever realizing it)
Let yourself be governed by the illusion of separateness. Believe that you are always in competition with those around you, that you are only as good as you are better than someone else. Believe your conditioning is the only one, the right one. Drown your desire for connection by manically scrolling through feed after feed, day after day. Live your life waiting, waiting, waiting for someone else to make you feel love. Put it all in their hands.
Condemn them when they don’t perform. Believe you’re not enough on your own, that there’s something in this world that will save you, and can, and should.
Believe that marriage licenses mean love, job titles success, religion goodness, money contentment. Trust fully in the powers that be; let them teach you how to let your fear control you.
Do not let yourself feel anything other than what other people say it’s okay to feel. If your life looks good from the outside, don’t take the liberty to say it doesn’t feel good on the inside. Act only in accordance with what will make sense to other people. Make the most important facet of your existence being palatable to anyone and everyone else. Trick yourself into thinking that kind of numb safety is happiness.
Hate yourself for still caring about the person you aren’t supposed to care about anymore. Shame yourself until you’re completely suppressing everything you feel. Spend days and months and years checking their status updates and new pictures in search of something, anything, that justifies the feelings you just want to kill off. Tie yourself in mental knots trying to get your head and heart to coexist. Make caring a bad thing. Make loving worse.
Assume that the line between “good” and “bad” runs between religions, or races, or creeds, or nations, rather than in each human heart. Disregard our universal capacity to drown in our denseness.
Fail to recognize the sameness and beauty in the people you’ve condemned because they were born with genetics or practices or perceptions that are different than yours…because they were conditioned the opposite way to which you were.