“There is grandeur in this view” - Darwin
My therapist speaks fluent Rivas, or as he calls it, empathic attunement. “We are attuned in harmony,” he says. It’s true, we are. It’s why for years I have called him in times of crisis, confusion, or in times of simply needing an ear. When the noise in my head is too loud, Jeremy helps me find quiet… That said, Jeremy does not sugar coat. He is kind, but he is honest, and sometimes speaking Rivas comes at the cost of me being called out, being seen.
On a recent call, in a depressed state, in a bout of mental health struggles, I told Jeremy how I was finally ready for that three month long silent vipassana retreat I always talk about. That’s three months of no phone, no internet, no books, no journals, no talking, just me, myself, and my noisy mind. I told him, “If I don’t give this gift to myself now, I’ll never do it. How my two year plan for my career will turn into a five year plan, and then another plan, and at some point I’ll look back and I’ll have this great resume, and I won’t be sure if I was actually present for any of it. If I enjoyed any of it. Never having the courage to rest, to stop, to look deeply.”
And in classic Jeremy fashion he asked, “Do you actually think you could do it? Or are you just gonna talk about it some more? It’s fine if you just wanna talk about it, that’s one of the reasons you pay me… But, you’ve been talking about it for years, for years you’ve even been talking about taking just one day off a week, a day of Sabbath, but you still haven’t done that.”
He’s right, I have been talking about taking a sabbath for years - one day a week of doing nothing. No phone, no emails, no TV, no work, no writing, just rest. For years I’ve been repeating myself about how I’m constantly pushed to my edge, the burnout and stress of my digital addictions and hustle culture — how I need to make room to unplug. In Genesis, God rests after creating the world; in Exodus, God commands the Israelites to rest: “Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath... On it you shall not do any work.” This commandment for rest was revolutionary, it’s believed to be the first time a religious or political authority, instead of requiring work, required rest. So moved by this idea of a day of nothing, I even went and bought the light phone, a phone that is essentially a dumb phone, which is rude - why is social media, clickbait news, email at my fingertips every second, an internet browser, or any other anxiety inducing infinite feed the way to intelligence?
It’s a minimal phone. Or, it’s simply a phone phone, it calls and texts. But I never used it. Not once. It stares at me every day, covered in dust, every time I open my bedside dresser. I was so deep in scheduling and emailing and building my career that I never actually got around to using it. It just sits there.
“So you really gonna stop your life,” Jeremy said, “stop building your resume, stop making money, tell your agents and your team not put any offers or deals on the table for three months. Can you really commit to that? What if you say I’m going away in February, and in January you are offered a dream job, would you say no and trust that the space was worth it? What would you need to let go of in order to actually make this happen? Could you stop running somewhere, and for long enough to just be?”
Answers, rise or fall to the questions they meet. “Could you stop running .. and just be?”
“But I’m so good at running Jeremy, damn good at it,” I said.
Not in the way you might be thinking, not in the way my homies run, they run as a hobby, they run for exercise, and sometimes they run marathons for fun. I’m not a runner like that, I don’t understand it. I never have. I’ve never seen a runner's face look joyful, they always look like they’re suffering. Aren’t we all? Maybe they just have the courage to admit it.
I can play basketball for hours, but that feels different, like there’s a purpose, as if there always has to be a purpose to life. But running, just to run - horrible. There was that one time though - I started dating a woman who’s a runner, she ran collegiate long distance, and as can happen, I went on a few runs with her, because I was crushing super hard, and thinking this might be our thing. I bought legit running sneakers and everything, I even made a short film about running (because I’m extra), the film got a big write up and was published in Outside Magazine, and after our fourth run, I never ran with her or anyone else again.
And yet, I am a great runner. A masterful one. My whole life I’ve been running from thing to thing to thing. Maybe it’s the New Yorker in me who was never taught to walk slow, to slow down, to stop, to breathe, to look up. Never taught to enjoy the moment, enjoy the minutia. But actively taught to not look around, to not take in the sights and sounds, to not just stop, because then I will most likely be yelled at.
My running is more internal than external. Pushed and pulled back and forth, running from one emotional high to another high, from one low to another less low (hopefully), birth-death, coming-going, sadness-otherness, gain-loss. My running is more of a habit than a chosen exercise. A habit that’s been nurtured in me from day one, handed down to me by my father and mother, their stories of hustle, hard work, and turning nothing into something. Handed down by stock markets and ancestors alike. Handed down by the storyteller who sold us the idea that happiness is not actually possible in the place I currently am, but that it’s off in a distant future, a future where I accomplish and acquire enough to finally be peaceful, free and happy, a place I have to get to by any means necessary, because YOLO, and because I’m getting older, and because they (my competition) are getting younger, and said person had this much or accomplished this thing by when!?
I run through the world without any awareness of what I’m actually doing. And if my body isn’t moving, my mind is - running, planning, organizing, worrying, in a rush. Even in my dreams, I’m often running and looking for something.
New Yorkers aside, I think there is a tendency to run in each of us. The habit of running is ingrained in our culture. Running all our life instead of living. Running after happiness, love, romance, success. I went and spent a day walking and breathing at Thich Nhat Hanh’s Deer Park monastery in San Diego. I remember how hard it was for me just to be able to walk mindfully and slowly. It felt like work, agonizing work. I remember the practitioner saying, “We can walk in such a way that every step can help us to stop running the useless race and get in touch with the wonders of life that are available in the here now.”
“We can!?” I said, “I can!?”
I wanted that. I still want it. I want to get in touch with the wonders of life that are available in the here now.
There’s a line in a Junot Diaz short story titled Aurora, and from the moment I read it I knew I would never forget it, “I know cats who wake up one day, smell something different, and change their whole lives.”
It takes tremendous courage to change your whole life. To wake up, know it ain’t working, and have the courage to just stop, pivot, and change. Letting go. Turning the wheel. Smelling something and changing course. God gave us brakes and a steering wheel for a reason, right?
And this is where Liberation comes into play. Jeremy asked me, “What would you need to let go of in order to actually make that happen?”
To liberate means to let go.
To let go of something. That something may be an object of my mind, something I’ve created, an idea, feeling, a story, a desire, a belief. Maybe it’s something I’d like to let go of but I don’t know how. Maybe it’s something I need to let go of but I can’t see a way out. I can’t see my own legs running, I can’t see rest, I can’t see the bars keeping me locked up, I can’t see that I’m holding the keys.
How do I do this? How do I let go in this way and open myself to the idea that there are better, more peaceful ways of moving through the world?
First, I have to stop running.
I have to stop.
I have to arrive.
For long enough to actually see. To look deeply.
Body, mind, and breath all in this one place. “A wave doesn’t have to go and look for water. It is water right in the here and now,” said the monk as I was walking agitated, “A cedar tree doesn’t have any desire to be a pine or a cypress or even a bird. It’s a wonderful manifestation of the cosmos just as it is. You are the manifestation of the cosmos. You are wonderful just like that.”
I am wonderful like that.
Take a second to think about a moment in your life when you weren’t running. When you felt wonderful as you were. When you actually arrived… Don’t get it twisted with the image of you standing still, sitting down, or sleeping. Even in inactivity we can be running on the inside, our anxiety and our fears, all our worries and stories, the noise in our minds - running, running, running.
Take a second and be with this moment. Just as it is. Just as you are.
Now feel your body, be aware of it - where is it? How does it feel?
Does even slowing down while reading this feel intense, like you should be more productive?
Take a moment and check in on your breath. You have breath, which means you are alive, something that is not guaranteed in that future we are often running too. Is your breath deep? Shallow? Comforting? Tight? Stressful? Nourishing?
I’m not asking you to believe in anything. Liberation is not about blind belief. It’s about clarity and understanding. Understanding is an essential ingredient. Understanding why and how we got stuck to the things we got stuck to. Understanding why we’re finally ready to get unstuck and how we’re ready to set ourselves free. You don’t have to believe it, you get to practice it.
Liberation is the practice of getting free, remembering that life and living can be a source of joy not just anxiety. Something we have to train ourselves to have. It’s not something that comes automatically. Liberated living is an art, and each of us has to train to be an artist.
Liberation feels like a sense of completeness, nothing needs to be added or subtracted. Liberation reminds us that we are already whole.
When liberated, we’re not overwhelmed by anger or anxiety. When liberated we begin to see how capitalism is always shining dangling things before us, trying to awaken our competitiveness, resentment, and desire to be seen. When liberated we aren’t trapped thinking about the past, or things that might happen in future or will never happen at all. When liberated we arrive in the only moment that life has given us.
Liberation is like borders dissolving. No separation. No separate parts to pick from, between you, me, what I like, what I don’t like, more of this, less of that.
It’s because of this dissolution that liberation is also scary, because we might not be who we thought we were when we stop being who we think we should be. When you get free of all the stories and sticky things that make up the idea of who you say you are, there’s less to do or run after. We’re even liberated from our idea of happiness, our idea of happiness may be the very thing preventing us from being happy.
Mostly, liberation creates space in us. We get so full of things, we need space. To expand and open. To let life in. To push at the edges of what we think we know, to push at the edges of our play range, expanding our ability to play. I once read that bears in the wild who play the most, live the longest. How much do you play in your life? If I’m being honest, the more manufactured “success” I touched, the more caught up in “making it”, in. my two and five year plans, and maintaining that said success, the more I forgot to play. Liberation allows me to enjoy, rest, relax and play.
Why not get straight with ourselves? Why not get free? There isn’t a person who isn’t trying to get free. We’ve all had at least one moment in our life when we truly felt free, and it’s something else. Nina Simone called freedom, “No Fear!” No fear. “If I could have that half of my life,” she said. “It’s something, to really have no fear.”
Don’t you want that? Don’t you want to be free? And what will happen if you are? What will your entire self, with all its atoms and vast empty space, do if it was?
Liberation is not about trying to get by, but trying to be free.
Liberation is about healing my gut from all this anxiety.
Maybe my friends and family can heal too.
Maybe the climate can heal.
Maybe liberated, we’ll be able to truly listen to the Earth, which is always giving us opportunities to listen.
Because, the future is not fixed. The “future” is not a destination as is often touted and shouted in speeches from various podiums about the devastation of the climate or the filibuster, the future is a relational practice of now. The future is a co-created set of decisions, of happenings, and loved-out-loud questions in the only moment where there is breath. Now.
“Whatever you touch, you change,” the monk whispers on our walk. Liberation is a way to change the future and touch the present. What we are choosing now is the future.
Every morning I recite one of my favorite Dharmic chants, to which the last line reads, “Do not squander your life.”
To place liberation at the front of our heart-minds is to say that we are committed to not squandering our life.
A genius of a human being I know, Leila Ghaznavi once said to me, “Liberation happens in pockets. The space between these pockets can get closer and closer…” Maybe one day they even touch. Maybe.
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