Life’s a fucking mess.
My resolutions this year are about being more relaxed and in tune with my body and mind, as I’m told they possess all the solutions to all the problems.
Ben’s 2016 New Year’s Resolutions:
Meditate twice a day.
Write three pages a day (more than 1000 pages when all’s said and done).
Exercise six days a week; heart rate above 110 for at least 30 minutes. I’m told it’s as effective as an anti-depressant.
The last is to engage in three ceremonial activities. A 10 day silent meditation retreat, a trip to meet Achuar shamans, an ayahuasca ceremony in Asheville, all is fair game.
Oh and I need to have a resolution about yoga.
OK yoga two times a week.
Also, learn jujitsu.
Is that too ambitious? Recently I’ve been of
the mindset that there’s no such thing.
Since I turned 30 (May 11, 2015, I’m a Taurus, Aquarius rising, 8 of Diamonds for the Asheville crowd) I’ve been all about doing the things I’ve been always meaning to do but, for whatever reason, did not. I started painting again. I started meditating every day. I started writing.
I didn’t do much in my twenties. I did engage in an endless and unsettled debate about what I should do with myself, if I should do anything, and why u cared. All the while I suspected that when I decided to get up off my ass and actually do something I would be really successful at it. But that was just a suspicion.
I recently heard that anxiety is caused by having two ways of being simultaneously battling for attention in your mind: an old way of being and a new one. For me, the new one is a life of meaningful work, integrity, commitment to being vulnerable…basically, an overall awareness of that whole one-ness thing that they describe so well on the Dr. Bronner’s bottle.
That’s what I’m doing this year, and with my thirties. Helping create awareness of the Dr. Bronner’s oneness thing all the time, in my life and the lives of those around me, via good and sincere art. I hope to make money at it too, because as someone recently told me: we live in a world where you have to have money all the time–and that’s a big problem.
But like all problems, this one has a solution. It says so on the Dr Bronner’s bottle.
