My dad called. After 14 months without contact.

Not that I wasn’t expecting it. He e-mailed me two weeks ago (flagged with the little red exclamation point to note that it was important), telling me that he was having a party on New Years. “Can you come and join us?”, it said.

“Us?”

Is he dating now, I wondered. Married?

I sat on this e-mail, unsure of what to say. A little while before this, Merv struck up a conversation with me about fishing. I told him I used to go to this one fishing spot at a lift-lock in Peterborough with my dad, and it made me wonder what I would say if I ever talked to him again. He didn’t even know me when we were on speaking terms, how would he know me now? I’ve changed so drastically in the last year.

We never left things off on bad terms. We just stopped talking to each other, so there wasn’t any animosity, on my part, at least. I never contacted him because I never felt like it, and I was expecting years to go by before he contacted me.

Then he called on the weekend. It took me by surprise. I thought e-mail was a way for him to stay distant, while fulfilling the minimum parental responsibility. I had guests over and was entertaining and somewhat charged up. He started talking to me in Chinese, and I could only reply in English. It was too much for my mind, and I was too much on my guard. So I told him to call me next week.

And he did.

Continue reading

I’ve come to realize that as much as I’ve grown and gained, I still seek approval from others, albeit to a much smaller extent than before. This approval is how I define my self worth.

It’s an old, bad habit.

I can trace this habit back to my parents. I would always do things to try to win their approval, only to be met with a comment about not being good enough, or unsupportive silence. Their constant criticism led to low self-esteem and feelings of inadequacy. Yet another example of how they mindfucked me.

At this point, it’s just a knee-jerk reaction. Remnants of my old, insecure self creeping up. I know that one day, I’ll be able to break the habit completely.

Until then, I have to remind myself that it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of you.

I’m facing the very tangible possibility that I’ll be single for the rest of my life. Sometimes I wonder how I’ll survive. The strange part is that I feel like I was meant to be in a relationship. Quixotic ideas and romantic ideals have always pointed me in that direction, but either the right person hasn’t come along, or they’re taken.

At the same time, I wonder if I can be in another relationship. I’ve grown so accustomed to living alone, having things exactly my way, with time to work on my projects. No maintenance, as it were. How I do enjoy the freedom.

One situation isn’t better than the other, of course. Both have their pros and cons.

Still.

The quick acknowledgment of love in the form of a peck, or the intimacy of a make-out session.

Has the winter brought this feeling? Has the sight of snow and snowfall reminded me of how frigid the nights can be when you’re by yourself?

Or maybe it’s from being single for this long.

This is one of the strangest times of my life. I remember feeling something similar to this over four years ago, but I haven’t had it since.

I’m fighting my old self again. Fighting against these feelings and past habits.

I wish I could define and explain it. Vincent Gallo has a song he titled “Glad To Be Unhappy”, filled his distinctly minimalistic piano and acoustic guitar sounds, so sparse you don’t know where the downbeat falls. But there are no lyrics, and I think I’m starting to understand why.

Everything is so simple when you’re set in your heart. But when you’re filled with such paradoxical, contradictory feelings, nothing makes any sense. The world is turned upside down.

I think a part of me wants to think about it. I want to keep this feeling, where every song sounds as good as the first time you heard it, and the leaden sky is urging you forward with every step you take. To be so inspired.

And while part of me knows that to fight against ones inner nature is foolish², another part of me knows how destructive it can be.

1. The original title of that post was actually just a 5×5 pixel square, meant to confuse the reader into not knowing what to think. Trolley tried to correct me once and told me the title was broken, and I had to let him know it was done on purpose. With my new headline images plugin, the graphic title doesn’t quite work so I had to change it. [↑]
2. To add another level to this, I’m fighting against fighting myself [↑]

At the core of our beings, Pat and I are the same person.

What separates us is our emotion, or lack thereof. Pat’s the logical one, I’m the emotional one. I’ve always looked up to him — his strength, his morals, his personality — without really understanding why.

It’s only in the last year that I’ve come to realize Pat is a Taoist. This comes with the realization that I’m a Taoist myself, and explains why I try to be more like him.

The interesting part is that he doesn’t even know that he’s a Taoist — sort of like Winnie the Pooh — which is exactly what makes him a true Taoist.

One of Chuang Tzŭ’s parables illustrates this point. In an abbreviated version, Knowledge seeks a conscious reflection to know the Tao, and asked Silent Do Nothing and Reckless Blurter, before asking The Yellow Emperor (ahhh, the Romantic personification of Chinese fables):

Knowledge said to The Yellow Emperor, “I asked Silent Do Nothing and he kept quiet. Not only didn’t he answer me, but he didn’t even know how to answer. I asked Reckless Blurter, and though he wanted to tell me, he didn’t, and even forgot my questions. Now I’ve asked you, and you know all about it. Why do you say that you’re far from it?”.

The Yellow Emperor said, “Silent Do Nothing was truly right, because he didn’t know anything. Reckless Blurter was nearly right, because he’d forgotten it. You and I are far from right, because we know far too much“.

The same is true for Tai Chi¹, or any martial art for that matter. Dissect it too much, and you lose the meaning. Think about it too much, and you don’t react. As Michael Babin wrote in his article on self-defense training:

It is sad but true that real skill comes from seemingly endless drilling of the basics and then learning how to transcend/forget most of what you have so patiently learned.

In other words, learning structure is essential to learning to react to a complete lack of structure (i.e. a real fight); but if you focus on structure for too long it becomes counter-productive to “being without structure” in martial terms. One of the many annoying paradoxes in the internal arts.

One of the many paradoxes in the Taoist philosophy as well. As much as I try to study it, learn it, and apply it, I find myself thinking about it too much. As a result, I occasionally stray from being centered, and lose my balance.

It’s the conscious reflection which Knowledge is seeking that preemptively dooms his search. This is my problem as well. I buy Taoist books with a thirst for knowledge, but they’re all telling me the same thing now. Not that the books haven’t helped at all, but I feel like I’ve reached a limit. Perhaps even the simple act of writing about this is counter-productive.

I have the understanding, but I can’t apply it without thinking about it first, and it’s the attempt to apply it that ruins the point. I’ve yet to reach a stage of pure reaction and spontaneity, like Pat.

But I’m getting there.

1. Yet another example of how Tai Chi is the physical expression of the philosophy. Or perhaps this could be reverse-generalized, and said that the Taoist philosophy is reflected in everything, such as martial arts. [↑]