Day 19

 No wind again today. I’m not working out today to see if I can get my HRV into a normal range and so I can be ready for my run test tomorrow.  I sat around the house most of the morning (made pancakes, and helped Kim overcome an AT&T outage).  I did my morning “death meditation”.  This one was the classic 9 stage Buddhist death meditation. I think on a scale form 1-10 I started this trip about a 1 or 2 on the “am I comfortable and aware of my own death or am I avoiding thinking about it and a bit fearful” scale.  Intellectually I’m probably a 5 now, but I’m still probably just about a 3.  I’m aware I will die, but I’m not sure I know I will.  I don’t like to think about it. It is easy to take the superficial “it happens to all of us” type approach to dismiss having to grow comfortable with it, that is what I have done my entire life.  I’m starting to get more comfortable sitting with it in meditation, but still only a 3.  I think the best experience so far is the almost daily recognition during the meditation that at the moment of my death the only regret I feel I would have (I have had a totally kick ass life) is that of not saying something out of fear of offending somebody else. I spend so much time in anxiety trying to avoid upsetting somebody that I set things pass by unsaid. I should have told my parents they were wrong. I should have just left the career early on when I knew it wasn’t for me. I should tell people who are important to me that they are important to me and also tell them when they are troubling me. I have done so much in my life on my bucket list and this next year I will do so much more of the bucket list. But as I contemplate my deathbed I don’t see having a regret of not seeing or doing (Fill in the blank), but I do see a regret in not saying something that should have been said. When I think about why I don’t say things, it is out of fear of upsetting the person and then having them leave. That Bullshit is from Teri. I need to recognize that and be OK with the fact that most people are not mentally ill.

Around noon I realized I was wasting a day and grabbed my stuff and moved to the beach to listen to my “waking up” book.  The book is a bit hard to follow at times. He is now talking about how one half of our brain thinks one way and has language and how the other part of our brain thinks another way but doesn’t have language and if we split the brain we have two versions of our consciousness… I get what he is doing (trying to get the reader to feel/understand the complexities and nuances of consciousness) but fuck, it is hard to follow some times.  The books main thesis is on spirituality outside of religion (really nailing down my beliefs is one of my 2024 goals) so I’m excited about the book overall. It is hard to read in the afternoon after the mornings death meditation… but I’m at a deserted beach beach, under a tent, with a laptop, a cooler, a nice breeze and a few too many ants.  I’m going to go jump in the water now and look at fish instead of contemplating my death or if I believe in an existential  existence for my consciousness.  

Today’s sentence: Beneath my tent, the sea’s waves call, trading the darkness of death’s ponder for the light dancing on fish; I am swayed.  

Many people ask what I do on these sabbaticals. It is my happy place. I’m at a bar. Drinking a really nice cocktail. There is club dance music playing. A hot girl in a thong (with her beefcake boy-toy) is dancing over my shoulder. I have a bacon cheeseburger on order and I’m listening to a physiologist explain consciousness and existential dread via the teleportation paradox, while watching the sun set.   The only thing that would make it better is if Kim were here… May #walkabout.