Destroying the World

I have begun to include the unthinkable into my routine: jogging.

It was my last resort. I really don’t want to run. I prefer walking. I’d rather be the guy taking his time down the street, looking at the people jogging by him and thinking, Thank God I don’t need to do that! But when you’re stuck in a rut, as I have been, you need to mix things up.

How quickly I forget the importance of exercise. It’s been pushed to the back of my agenda for the better part of a year. Until something had to give. Voila. I forget how wonderfully it clears the mind in a way that other activities like working and writing can’t.

The runner’s high is real. 

I just got back from a surreal experience on the trail. Maybe it was the endorphins, or maybe it was the mind of my dehydrated body hallucinating, but I began to physically see things differently. The road ahead seemed to rise ahead of me as if there was some propulsion at my feet not pushing me forward, but launching me up.

I had this weird thought come to me as I stared at the flat concrete ahead. Because our eyes are off the ground, the road, even when flat, will always have to rise to meet us. It appears in life that we are running uphill even when the way is flat as a pancake. But if we just keep putting one foot in front of the other, we needn’t worry about any of that. 

Jogging is also allowing me to return to my love of books on tape. 

And yes, I will still call them books on tape despite no longer owning a cassette player. For this jog, I returned to Herman Hesse’s Demian, a book I have read four or five times.

Apparently, though, along with forgetting the importance of exercise, I have forgotten the remarkable philosophy of Hesse the writer. And this is after spending a year in early sobriety committed to reading everything he wrote because I loved it so much.

Demian espouses that there is a religious life within all of us. Not that each person is capable of practicing organized religion, but that there is an organized religion within each of us that needs practicing. As young Sinclair discovers, there is no greater discovery than the discovery of one’s self. It’s what all great seekers have done: Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad. And yet, seekers mistakenly think they need to go where these people went to find truth. The great lesson of Max Demian, Sinclair’s mentor, is that the truth is already in us, and we can’t use someone else’s roadmap to find it; we’ve got to go our own way.

Hesse’s words have served as my spiritual guide, shaping what I can now call my life. I found my voice as a poet, followed my heart to my wife, satisfied my soul in front of the classroom. And still, I can return to Hesse for something new. 

Sinclair learns from both Demian and his musician friend Pistorias to embrace all sides of himself, even the sinful ones. 

Those sins are given to us, to everybody. Too often people are reluctant to search themselves because they are afraid of what they might find. What if there is something wholly unacceptable or unworthy in me? Well, of course there is. It is in all of us. We all have the murderer and the rapist in us. The most depraved threads of all humanity are stitched into our soul. We are human. 

The difficulty is accepting in us what the world tells us is unacceptable.

I can’t think of a better illustration of this than my alcoholism. 

Part of recovery is the continued admission that I suffer from a type of mental illness that, if left unchecked, would ruin my life. Addiction is in me. Forever a part of my makeup. It could consume me. It could assume control if I let it. Am I any better than the recidivist who has never discovered the tools to tame that wild side of himself? I can’t say that I am. And I think one of Hesse’s points is that, in order to know freedom and self-mastery, I must never let that inner-addict leave my sight. Not that I should slouch through the world ashamed of who I am, but that I should embrace all that I am in order to find my straight and narrow way through the world. 

We are not very supportive of this idea as a culture.

I have always wondered if my democrats can’t see how republican they act and why republicans can’t see how democrat they act. It baffles me, actually. If you removed what they are saying and only look at how they say it, there is no difference. Our ill does not stem from which side wins but that each side is blind to the existence of the opposite in itself. We seem to have lost the ability to recognize that our differences make us laughably similar. And so long as we believe any rhetoric hinged upon “us verse them” we will never fight that more glorious and worthy warfare of “us verse ourselves.”

Addicts don’t have the luxury of blaming our problems on others. We must never forget the fire that once fueled our addiction. We always tend the flame of our lower nature to avoid burning alive in it. And when we see others die in flames, we know that their fire began as ours did, with a single spark.

Incredible, what can come of a jog. 

Are you in a rut? Sick of following a news cycle or social media feed? Tired of living in a world created for you while being told its the world you made for yourself?

Take a note from the pages of Hesse. 

Destroy the world. 

Destroy it like a bird breaks its egg before it flies. The world is the egg. Find a rebirth in your fear and doubt, your lust and anger. These unite us as much as our virtues do. 

Chart your own way back to yourself. Even if you don’t like what you find, no one can ever take what you find away from you. And it’s in there whether you like it or not.

Part of my re-birth is a new job in addition to teaching, and a re-imagined approached to publishing a book. As a result, I am going to post only once a month for further notice, most likely the second Monday of each month. But I ain’t going anywhere, people. And I sure appreciate all you continue to give—support, comments, clicks, shares, likes, whatever. I appreciate you. Thank you.