Life Crises and Lou Reed

Anthony has finally taken a break from his crises to give me a few minutes to speak. It got me to thinking about mid-life, quarter-life and other fractional portions of life crises. Anthony experienced his first (shall we call it quarter-) life crisis in 1991 when he fled rural Virginia mountains for Mt. Madonna, a yoga community in the mountains above Monterrey Bay, California. He did yoga, worked an organic farm, cooked in vegetarian kitchen for 150+ members of the community, built houses for extra cash, met fascinating characters also escaping their previous lives and generally led a simple life for 8 mos. He hung out with Thich Nhat Hanh, Baba Hari Dass and other wise and peaceful bearded and non-bearded fellows from around the world. He ultimately decided to try out his previous life again, bringing with him a sense of potentially renewable personal peace, balance and purpose. Did it work? Well, sort of... More recently he has been experiencing what one might call a mid-life crisis, riding a scooter, getting divorced, moving out of the first home he ever purchased, questioning his job and role as a dad, worrying about the future and the past in equal measure. Basically he has been struggling with his dreams, nightmares, expectations for life in general.

So... what's with this labeling of mid-, quarter-, again, pick your fraction, life crisis? I mean, really, humans don't really have any idea how long they're going to live, right? So how does anyone know what portion of their lives is being represented by his/her current crisis? Paul Walker just died. What were, when were his crises? What about Lou Reed? Anthony was too caught up in his own crap to reflect on the passing of the great Lou. How many crises did he have? If he were to look back on his life, how would he fractionally apportion them given how long he ended up inhabiting Earth?

I guess my point is, humans are so silly and idealistic to think they only get to have less than a handful of crises neatly tucked into slices of the pie that represents the fullness of their lives. I don't know what Anthony took/is taking away from so much crisis, but if he was paying attention at all he would realize, if only from his studies of Buddhism, that life is full of suffering that comes directly from the failure to recognize the relationship between expectations and the realization of them, or desires and the lack of materialization of them. Isn't a crisis just the result of the gap between what one hopes will happen, what actually happens, and what one does (mentally, physically, emotionally) with that result? In that case, doesn't that happen pretty much constantly throughout human lives in varying waves resulting both from pebbles gently dropping in a calm pond to tsunamis wrecking total havoc on not just individuals, but entire social structures on the planet? Doesn't it happen every day, if not in almost every moment, when humans do that thing that I've come to refer to as "spinning?"... They hope for something, see what happens and have some sort of reaction ranging from, "great, just what I hoped would happen" or "wow, this is so unexpectedly wonderful" to "I knew it, nothing ever goes my way. I'm doomed." Or sometimes humans just quietly remove themselves to cry, drink, eat, throw up, have migraines...

Anyway, I guess my message to humans reading this is: Enjoy your current and future crises and don't worry about how they fit into what will eventually be your history. You have no idea, really. And if you find yourself looking back at past crises, why not do it with kindness and curiosity? Anthony's therapist gave him this amazingly simple tool to slow the spinning long enough to have a different experience of current and future crises because, really, why would you or he want to experience them the same every time? The instruction is, should you find yourself "spinning" in the muck of your familiarly boring thoughts, stop. Engage your senses in something else. Anthony's favorite is to play "I spy" with the color red... or squares. A friend of his prefers circles. Whatever. Stop the spinning. Look around you for all the color red you can find. Are they the same color red? Is some of it really more magenta, pink or orange? Look for squares. What's up with those squares? What are they? Why are they there? Is that really a square or more of a rectangle, or a rhombus?

And then return the supposed crisis at hand or to the crisis from the past you were spinning about. What had you expected to happen? What actually happened? Do you have any different conclusions now about what happened? Can you do something about it? Then do it. Can't do anything? Time to let it go, there are more crises coming... And, ultimately, all crises are the same.

Crisis=Life

Consider greeting your human friends this week with, instead of "How's it going?" try "How's your crisis?"

And when you take leave, how about, "See you tomorrow. Enjoy your crises!"

"You try anything once
You try anything twice
You do what you gotta do
But I love you, Suzanne
You do what you gotta do
You do what you can
Do what you wanna do
Oooh, I love you, Suzanne
You try anything once
You try anything twice
You do what you wanna do
Oooh, I love you, Suzanne
I love you when you're good, honey
I love you when you're bad
You do what you wanna do"

Thank you, Lou. Do what ya gotta do, humans.

A moment of Zen? [9:26]