Advice

Don’t take any wooden nickels.  Never play cards with a man named “Doc.”  Close cover before striking.  Do not consume the desiccant.  

Back up your work regularly; even more importantly, back up the work of your rivals in the office and call it your own.

Never give a sucker an even break; never give a breaker an uneven suck.

Don’t drink and drive; drinking then driving, though, is fine.

Wait at least half an hour after eating before swimming; wait at least a week after eating at McDonald’s for your bowels to move properly again.

If you see something, say something; if you don’t see anything, then maybe you should get glasses.

Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do unless you’re not me.

Brush after every meal; your teeth, Fool, not your hair!

Consuming raw or undercooked eggs can be dangerous; consuming them with their shells on will be worse.

Keep your options open; make sure your fly is closed.

No one, on their deathbed, ever said, “I wish I’d spent more time at the office,” except, of course, the actors in the sitcom “The Office.”

If you want to live a long and happy life, make sure you don’t die young.

If you do want to die young, it’s too late!  Sorry.

Always plan to arrive at the airport at least 90 minutes before your flight; it’s not a bad idea to do so a day in advance, just to be on the safe side.

Don’t count your chickens before they cross the road.

Be the person your dog thinks you are, unless you have a chihuahua; those dogs are terrible judges of character.

Measure twice, cut once, swear loudly three times because you still fucked it up.

If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life; the same result can also be achieved by getting a degree in Philosophy.

Don’t take my advice; don’t take anyone’s advice, don’t listen to me.

Freedom

 In America (and probably throughout most of the world), the car represents and symbolizes freedom.  

You’ve read On the Road and you know how Dean and Sal roar all over the country in their big bad V-8 powered automobiles.  To be “on the road means” to be free and that means being behind the wheel (or inside as passenger) of a car, presumably the bigger and faster the better.

But oddly enough, everything associated with automobiles that makes a person less free.

Owning a car means you’ve got a lot of “haftas.”  You hafta have a license and registration; you hafta have insurance; you hafta obey the speed limit and traffic lights; you hafta find a place to park; you hafta be sober; and on and on and on.  If that’s freedom, I’m gonna hafta pass.

With a bike, by contrast, you can do whatever you wanna.  You wanna run a red light?  No problem, just don’t get run over.  Wanna pull up right outside your destination?  Sure, just lock to a parking meter or whatever.  Wanna get drunk and ride?  Sure!  You’re free to do so, just don’t get killed.

The bicycle doesn’t just mean freedom; it is freedom.  It’s freedom from car payments, from sitting in traffic, from getting fat and lazy, from being told what to do by electric signs and signals and cops pulling up behind you with their light flashing.

The bicycle makes possible freedom from your parents, your teachers, your crummy (and even good) job; it allows you to be free to ride the wrong way down one way streets, to pedal over closed trails in shuttered parks; on a bike, you're freed from your many responsibilities as a parent, a spouse, even a friend.  

Above all, the bicycle gives you the full freedom to be yourself.

So you can keep the “freedom” the automobile gives you; if that’s freedom, I’ll keep my chains—that is, of course, my bicycle chains!

Adieu

If you do Ashtanga yoga for many years, there will come a time when you begin saying goodbye to poses that you used to be able to do.

Consider the historical trajectory of your practice: you begin my learning some initial postures—the sun salutations, a couple of standing poses, Trikonasana and Uttitha Parsvokanasa, a few sitting poses, Paschimottanasa and Purvottanasana, and then, as you develop flexibility and strength, you add new ones (or, in the traditional model, you teacher “gives” you new ones when you’re ready.)

Perhaps there comes that day when you can bind all by yourself in Marichyasana “D,” and you’re able to roll around with your arms through your lotus in Garbha Pindasana; your teacher “gives” you the first few poses of the Second Series; you’re on your way to being an “Advanced Practitioner,” wow!

But then, maybe you have an injury, or there’s a pandemic and you gain a few pounds, or maybe (or in addition to), you’re just getting older and it’s harder to reach around and clasp that hand that used to be so accessible.  Paschasana goes away first and then, within the passage of a few years or even months, it’s goodbye to Marichyasana “D” and sooner or later, “B.”

No longer is it all about “progress.”  Your teacher’s promise that if you just keep working steadily, you’ll one day be able to achieve postures that are currently out of reach no longer rings true.

The mantra that has kept you going all these years, “Do your practice, all is coming,” has now become “Do your practice, all is going.”

But that’s okay.  You learn to bid a fond adieu to physical postures you were once able to do.  

It’s not about giving up; it’s about giving in—to life, to the impermanence of all things, to your ego’s conception of who you are and what makes you worthwhile.

It’s about giving over to discernment: goodbye, delusion; hello reality.

Eternity

The prospect of eternal life doesn’t sound all that appealing to me.  

Does it to you?

When I’m dead and gone, I’m pretty sure I will prefer to be gone.  I don’t want to spend forever (which is a really long time) figuring out what to do with myself.

I realize that eternal bliss typically goes along with eternal life (unless you’re in Hell, in which case it’s eternal damnation), but even that seems like it would get old.  (Admittedly, this is from someone who has found himself—unlike those around him—getting a little bored during the third hour of a Grateful Dead concert, but I don’t think I’m entirely alone here.)

And sure.  We’re made of matter and matter cannot be destroyed, so technically (as the Mansplainer always puts it) our atoms last forever, but, for me, it would be a great shame if this particular arrangement of them, that identifies with this particular arrangement of them, continued identifying with this particular arrangement of them after this particular arrangement of them ceases to be.

Even sitting at the right hand of God would get tiresome, wouldn’t it?  I’m sure it would be awesome (in the old-fashioned sense of awesome) to see His Mighty Mightiness in action, making Universes or helping the Chicago Cubs to win the World Series or whatever, but at some point, you’ve seen something emerging from nothing or another miraculous game-saving catch once, you’ve seen them all, right?

Life is made meaningful (and sure, also incredibly sad and frustrating) because it’s ephemeral.  If Being-ness goes on and on without end, wouldn’t that meaning be lost?

Don’t get me wrong: I would like to live a long—and healthy—life.  I’m not in a tearing hurry to arrive at the end of my existence.  But I do want to arrive at such an end.

But it’s like this little piece of writing.  Maybe nice while it lasts, but better that it stops here.

Inside

As reported by the late-great Roger Angell in his brilliant essay, “This Old Man: Life in the Nineties,” the actor Laurence Olivier, reflecting on aging, once said in an interview. “Inside, we’re all seventeen, with red lips.”

Maybe, but I think that’s more poetry than reality.

For someone my age (five and sixty as I write this), it’s more like “Inside, we’re all 35, with full heads of hair.”

When I close my eyes and imagine who I am, I don’t feel like a teenager.

But I do see myself as no different really, than the young man I was in my prime—physical prime, that is.  I’m still mostly wrinkle-free, with a pretty flat stomach, and a hairline that doesn’t start in the middle of my cranium.

The face that stares back at me these days from the mirror or even worse, the Zoom call, isn’t who I am.  That’s some old guy masquerading as me.  He’s okay, I guess, but I can’t help thinking that whoever sees him, doesn’t really see me.  Even when I look his way, I can’t really make the connection to my true self.

No doubt this will continue to become more pronounced with each passing year.  By the time I’m eighty or so, the difference between my outward appearance and my inward self-conception will be half a century apart.  Maybe that’s what ultimately leads to death: your immaterial homunculus becomes so detached from your physical body that you just slip away to nothingness, leaving a dried-up husk of what you looked like but really weren’t.

I don’t mind aging; as mom always said, the alternative is much worse.  But it’s sort of confounding because to some extent, what’s aging isn’t me.  Not to get all Cartesian, but, since I  can imagine my being without my body, then my body can’t be me.

So, I probably shouldn’t worry that the container is past its “best by” date; what’s inside remains fresh.

Humbled

 Isn’t it marvelous how the Universe arranges itself to create you and me?

How fantastic is it that all of the atoms that exist configure themselves in a manner that results in our Sun, the Earth, and eventually, me, here, writing this and you, there, reading it?

Can you believe how incredible it is that somehow, the informational structure of everything that is leads ultimately, from the very beginning of time, through all eternity, to these ephemeral moments in which you and I find ourselves and each other?

That the vastness pinpoints like this, that the infinite focuses this way, that endless possibilities emerge as such singular unlikeliness is mind-boggling, heart-opening, and absolutely humbling.

I know that it’s not at all all for me (or you, or anyone), so that we get to experience it like this—or even, indeed, at all—is something we need to be aware of and grateful for every second of every day, especially in those moments we’re unaware and ungrateful—that is, most of the time.

Picture yourself in relationship to the globe and recognize what an infinitesimal spot each of us is on Mother Earth, and then remember that she is an incomprehensibly smaller spot on our galaxy, which is even a tinier spot on the Universe; if that doesn’t put into perspective getting cut off in traffic or having your favorite team lose, then something is surely amiss.

Complaining about anything is a wonderful privilege; merely existing in order to be able to do so is such an unlikely concurrence of events that every time we even think about being upset, we should get down on our knees and thank our lucky stars (and atoms) for the opportunity.

This isn’t to say that some people don’t have legitimate beef; the world is often a terrible, awful place, with tragic amounts of suffering.

However.

As I sit here  observing all that allows me to observe, I humbly observe: wow. Wow.  And more wow.

Ignorance

 There are so many things I just don’t understand.

For instance, how is it possible to simultaneously believe that an all-powerful God puts an immaterial soul into a zygote while also believing that that it’s morally imperative that this zygote be carried to birth by the woman whether she wants to or not?  If what matters is this immaterial soul, then why should the zygote matter at all?  Can’t God just put the soul into another zygote, no questions asked?  I don’t get it.

Or, why do some cars (or, that is, the people driving them) just have to pass me on my bike when I’m going downhill at the speed limit?  Would they feel the same way if I were in a small car?  Is it really just the pace I’m traveling at or is it something about being behind a bicycle that just makes them crazy?

Or, what’s the fascination with prepping a survivalist bunker for the apocalypse?  Who wants to live underground eating canned food after the nuclear holocaust or whatever?  Just let me die along with the rest of humanity when the asteroid hits.

And, on a related note, I’m sorry, I can’t see the point of pursuing immortality, or even, like all these Silicon Valley billionaires, wanting to live to be 200 years old or so.  It’s hard enough to make a meaningful life into one’s eighties (or, hell, even one’s thirties!), much less forever.  So, count me out.

Speaking of billionaires, I'm still puzzled about a hu-manned mission to Mars,  Just go to Burning Man for two weeks; it’s essentially the same environment, only with more sequins and glowsticks.

I don’t really get Soylent, either.  If you don’t have time to eat food, it seems like time to change your lifestyle, not your diet, if you ask me.

Finally, the most puzzling thing of all: why are so many people so mean to others?  What's so hard to understand about the Golden Rule?