Life is an Acid Trip, Zoomed Way Out
Life is an acid trip, zoomed way out
Beauty and terror woven throughout
Gimme the fractals and feelings of gratitude
without the unbearable insecurity, fear, and anger too
But it don't work like that and that's ok
There's no white without black thatās just the way
Remember love hits harder after our heart's been broken
So just embrace, trust, this present moment
A Real Acid Trip
Years ago a friend (weāll call him Rupert) told me about an acid trip he had. It started out... really bad. His wife (weāll call her Sally Joe) thought she was birthing a baby that she didn't know she had until she was birthing it... on acid. She also convinced herself he was leaving her. Eventually they both thought they were losing their minds. They paced around their house with scary and painful thoughts for hours.
Finally he walked outside and looked back at her through a big glass sliding door. The song changed, and instantly their moods transformed to elation. Pure bliss. They smiled at each other through the glass. Then they danced, sang, cried tears of gratitude, and felt about the most connected they had in their entire relationship.Ā
Shit Monster
A few weeks ago I opened the door to my son's room to wake him up. As the door cracked open, something hit me. I smelled a disaster. Bracing myself, I finished opening the door and my son was standing a few feet in front of me with a huge grin on his face. He yelled, "I poo poo everywhere!" I turned on the light to find a scene out of Dexter, but instead of red blood there was brown shit e.v.e.r.y.w.h.e.r.e. š©š§Øš„
I looked up adoption agencies.
Two days later, standing on his stool eating dinner, he sang his first song - the Barney song (I love you, you love me, we're a happy family...)
My heart exploded with love, pride and joy.
Shift Your Perspective - Shift Your Reality
Like a song change on an acid trip.
Sometimes life is chaotic, overwhelming and painful. Sometimes it's dancing, singing and crying tears of gratitude.
The joy-filled parts aren't inherently better than the dark parts. The ones that threaten to destroy us in the moment are often the ones that transform us most.
So when there is shit on the walls and our children are trying to eat it in front of us, how can we shift our perspective to find our way through more gracefully?
When we are fighting with our partners or when something is going wrong at work, how can we regulate ourselves enough to remain open to learning something new?
And if the present moment is the only moment that truly exists, how can we embrace our heartbreaks as just another part of life, no better or worse than any other?
A couple other things I want to share with you
Rick is the GOAT. He has produced music with everyone from Johnny Cash, to Beastie Boys, to ACDC, to Chili Peppers, to JAY-Z, to Adele.
In this episode, instead of āproducer,ā he refers to himself as a āreducer,ā because one of the things he does is help people find beauty through simplicity.
He says that one of the reasons simplicity is beautiful is because there are less things at play. When there are less things at play you can hear each one of them more clearly. And there is more space between them. Sounds a lot like life.
In our society we have a strong recency bias - when it comes to books that means we value the new and exciting over the old and tested. I believe one of the best judges of somethingās value is how well it stands the test of time. In other words if something has been around for 20, 100, or 3500 years and people are still reading it, itās probably pretty fucking good.
My buddy Nat Eliason created a list of many of the best books of all time as a part of his Great Books Project. I just started it. Iām sure Iāll take tangents to read other things Iām interested in, but this feels like the beginning of a very long, and very fruitful reading journey.
Thatās all Iāve got for you this week.
Peace,
Michael