I remember nights working in hot restaurants with a small team rapidly grouping orders then sending them smoothly to the guests. I remember being proud of the cleanliness of my plates, the consistency of my plating, and the communication of my team. Cooking lost its zeal quickly when the reward of a refreshing beer became the most meaningful moment. When “simple” comradery, skill, and passion failed to be enough, drunkenness was. We had successfully and skillfully as a team completed a good job. I hated my job, so who cared? I stopped caring once I realized cooking was my life. I was somehow better than where I had found myself. I abandoned values for the escape of pleasure seeking, immediacy over long term accomplishment. I escaped every moment I could because I refused to accept the moments that made up my life. I gave up stewardship over my own life. I abandoned life for disintegrated dance of conditioned reflexes focused around the gratification of a single appendage. My only connection to life was the input of food for the output of sex, if you want to call masturbation, sex.
Over the course of seven years or so, I systematically stumbled helplessly toward destruction trapped by my inherently lack-luster connections and incoherent purpose and meaning. I was trapped in a pattern. A pattern I did not see. My life had warped into a weird sense of strict exceptionalism and irresponsible disassociation. Vacillating more and more rapidly between the two until everything felt like burning chaos, then the shining example of stability in my life called me out of my cage.
My wife, Rachael, was the one who showed me the gates to stability, focused growth, and creative self-expression. Our lives with me in it, was chaotic for quite awhile before I finally woke up to my reality, I was constantly escaping. Outside of relationships all I ever did was escape my own life, why would it change inside of a relationship. After high-school, and my failure to launch college career, my life suddenly lacked connections I relied upon, having never recognized the importance of these connections. Suddenly my purpose was trapped to a very small identity, being a chef. I am chef, and I fucking hated it. I had now found one of the most meaningful relationships and connections I had ever found, but I was still running away. I didn’t know what else to do. I was compulsively escaping. The only way I could be present was by stepping firmly away with a couple pints of alcohol. I am alcohol, and I fucking hated it.
Getting some help, helped. I stop so clearly and regularly identifying with things that made me feel bad. “I am an alcoholic” was truly a shameful place to be, no one wants to live that reality, and when “I am” is all you know it can be hard to connect with a meaningful reality. I had to start recognizing my feelings. I had to start facing my fears. A reclaiming of my inner resources, as to have more guides in my life than the rational guide that brought me to my knees in the pits of nihilism. I started identifying new, “I ams” and recognized these started to form around connections with other people. “I am” is only an important statement when someone else is there to experience who you are, otherwise we are pretty free to be whoever and whatever inside our own heads. When I stopped so intensely identifying, my feelings more fluidly released, my fears became more apparent, and less threatening, and so I felt more free to be where I felt good, even in the face of fear. My life was still hot and challenging, and like the heat of a hot tub the heat subsided and I was starting to feel less constrained. I could finally breathe.
I tried new things, applied for jobs despite the financial risk looking for anything to feel like a better fit. I was still really unsure and the financial risk would overcome the desire to change professions. Until a fateful trip to Costa Rica where I was starting to create new connections with Rachael’s family, her cousin showed us a kundalini meditation, which blew my mind right open. It was unexpected and came down on me like the weight of the world. I came home, and immediately set to work and committed to a 120 day practice, which changed my life. I opened myself up to the freedom of opportunity and experience. My life had a new layer of meaning, I didn't quite understand. I then realized the power of physical movement to help people drop back into their lives with more energy, focus and meaning. I wanted to become a yoga teacher. I looked up trainings in India. I looked up local trainings. Found one! Bam! Cambio Yoga, Colorado Springs. I completed a 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Training program! I expanded my comfort zone, regulated new emotional experiences into my life and finally used my ration brain to guide me to places that feel good. And not the “feel good” with the ignorant absence of fear or the blatant ignoring of emotional cues through substance. I actually felt good, and I was loving it.
I still work through a lot of difficult emotional situations and am not immune to life’s challenges. With the realization that through connection comes purpose, we can reconnect to ourselves and accept our current lives. We can then purposefully start to steward our own lives. I am not better than my own life, simply because I can dissociate after hours. I cannot watch over the connections in my life without recognizing that I am a part of that connection. I fundamentally connect as a part of my life, and through various connections I can now direct myself through these connections. I can cultivate responsible associations and be exceptionally curious. I can now run a simple dinner service for four, where my family is snuggled cozy together. I can communicate with my team when I need support, and plate every dish with health and love in mind. I am fulfilled. I am loving it.
Through the breakdown of stability, the loss of connection, and the limited perspectives of my life, I learned mental flexibility. I learned resilience. I learned how to shift my reality from meaningless to meaningful. Connections fill my life with purpose, and I am happy to serve those around me, because simple comradery, skill and passion will always be enough. We can easily break life down to simple input and output, but input and output is a gross oversimplification. When we learn to embody the meaningful emotions we crave through meaningful actions, the world opens up our connections, collaboration and creative expression.
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