How I rationalize having a beer when trying to write an essay

I like to think of being efficient as an enzymatic driven curve: you ride the slumps and exert enough energy to get your through the reaction with multiple energy shifts. Having a nice meal: go into a relaxed slump. Then have a nice easy cup of coffee to peak out again. Then, have a delicious beer (depressant) to get you back in a relaxed, low energy state. Then BAM energy drink and you're on a parabolic overdrive. 

Time Transcendent

I have been given, a week from today:

10 Months to train hard, develop, prepare my body, and begin to immerse myself into the next level of my capoeira.

10 Months until I find out if everything I have done up until that moment is worthy of a new belt. 

10 Months of self cultivation in all ways. 

10. 

Excited for the future. 

ADAPTIVE

Another zen pencils piece. Beautiful, meaningful. (edit: this is goin' on my wall. Hi-Res. No doubt.)

I taught my last class today...you know I'm still not comfortable calling it teaching cause I really don't teach. I think teaching implies long years of training and hard earned wisdom, self development, and finally the absolute knowledge (or close enough) of whatever it is that you are teaching. By the way by my saying "teaching" I mean capoeira. 

I do not have years of and years of experience nor do I have a rooted sense of wisdom. If anything the philosophies that I live by are scattered and still require refining before you could even use them as a reasonable life philosophy. I'm still currently developing my sense of self and I have nowhere near the time and skill to consider what I know absolute knowledge of the art. 

So why am I teaching? Even more, why did my mestre approve of my tuesday night forays into teaching the art, skill, and philosophy of capoeira? One could say that he was simply allowing me to open up a space in order to train among friends and peers but somehow I see it as a bit of a grander gesture. I've been with the group at San Francisco State (and of course by proxy with Capoeira Ijexá) since its inception those 4-5 years ago. I've worked hard to keep it alive (and there is no need for job titles to do the things you love) and I feel like, at some point, I've proven myself a capable and reliable person. And so something like in spring 2011 I asked mestre if I could open up a tuesday session (as at the time I was under a large workload and was not able to make it regularly to train, using this as my chance to open up another time for training) and he said yes, though with the warning to be careful. 

And so since the fall of 2011 I've been teaching (as I haven't come up with a word for what I do, let's just use it) these tuesday night classes and its sort of grown from simply a casual training time to full on class. For the most part I work with more experienced students (around 6-7 of them) so it's not like I'm teaching beginning capoeira....I'm actually working with core concepts in capoeira aimed at people who have experience in it! 

I've been training for 4 going on 5 years now and I've picked up many things along the way. If you noticed any of my past posts concerning the matter, I've learned quite a bit about life and philosophy simply by watching, training, and listening to my mestre and I feel like I've come quite aways in both capoeira and personal development (I watch videos of myself playing capoeira and now I'm slowly...not feeling embarrassed watching it!)

At the end of class after we did a fun end exercise (capoeira to funk, soul, and house music!) I imparted a bit of wisdom that was given to me by one of my mestre's oldest students and my own instructor by relation Professor Bodinho: 

Adaptability. Everything in life revolves around that core concept. Everything we do is dictated by how well we adapt and respond to a situation. Like in capoeira we train with traditional capoeira music. But at the same time, we should be open, ready and willing to play with any kind of tune as our philosophy is of movement and adaptability. And that adaptability is developed from our own unique perspective: no one else's. My mestre teaches simply by showing us the bare-bones movement and nothing else. I find that to be the best way of teaching as it allows the student to utilize the movement in whatever way they see fit: not weighed down by length tutorials about how you should shift your body a certain moment or how you should balance your weight: no, its simply this is the movement. Interpret it and adapt.  

Though the Buddhist quote above speaks of happiness, I think I can interpret it to mean something else as well: that in life, knowledge is imparted upon us and there are a thousand ways we can interpret and understand it. It is in our power to seek what works best for us: adapt to it and apply it to our life in the most beneficial way. Thus we can be satisfied because we've gained a skill and/or knowledge and have tailored it specifically to ourselves through hard work and dedication.  

I think that's something that resonates so well in capoeira and even every endeavor we undertake in life: that we must tailor our skills and knowledge we gain in the best way that works for us. We are intelligent and highly adaptable creatures: it would only be foolish to undersell that concept to ourselves. 

......

But beyond that philosophical mumbo-jumbo.

I'm happy, if only for the simple quote that the Buddha said so succinctly and so well. I'm happy that I could, for the time that I was given, be able to impart some wisdom that was given to me. Sure I'm not a teacher in the most classical sense but I think that we as people are all capable of sharing thoughts and philosophies without fear of reprimanding for if our goal is to spread knowledge, we would be successful instead of committing a crime. 

I'm not super smart nor am I incredibly talented but I think that if I have been given ability and the will to develop myself and my art, I think that it is worth sharing, regardless of time...

...don't you?

Easy Does It

I went out with a girl recently that I had met after a pretty cool performance with my capoeira group (HA! Suck it mestre! Thought I was too chicken, huh?!) at the AAU. It wasn't particularly impressive but I had a good time: girl was sweet and had a good head on her shoulder (which I'm actually surprise that I think that due to my innate disapproval of all art majors, friends or not...just me bein' a dick). After a nice conversation with her (we had gelato and then went to a cool beer joint), I gained a better appreciation of how art majors operate and that some of the stuff is actually pretty cool (she was talking about a typography project she was working on based on windmills....I couldn't even wrap my head around that). 

But beyond that she made a comment that really struck a chord in me...no no not in a bad way at all! She commented that I seemed like a really sociable person and that she was kind of surprised and flattered through some of the earlier texts that I sent her, saying that it seemed like I do this with a lot of girls... of course I was at that point feelin' pretty inflated (I mean, realistically, who doesn't like to hear that they have a way with words?) and that immediately attributed it, however crude it may be, to the fact that my father was a cad in his younger days (and my brother as well: young, in a relationship, yet still a cad) and that it had just percolated down the ol' blood line. 

In all seriousness though I was really surprised because at that moment I had a striking realization of just how far along I have come from my earlier days. You see, in high school and all, none of that...knowing how to talk really mattered (well, for some it did but I'm sure it wasn't their apex). It was high school and you were goofy and that was it. Come time for college it becomes a whole 'nother palooza: you're on your own, doin' your own thing, no back up plans, no fall back positions. Just you and the greater social world. And its daunting because when you were young you had parents to protect you and you had cliques from middle school but when you moved up you became your own man, young man!

And the way I talked to this girl I would have never ever been able to do 4, 5 years earlier. That got me searching: what changed? What set the ball rolling to just be the person I am today? My brother and sister never had an issue: they were certainly of the life in their college days. Me? It didn't start until maybe...at least a year ago. I can trace the origin, sure, but not really the genesis. Maybe it was that one moment when my friend and I spoke of just not caring or that "fuck it all" ideology that I walked around with for some time...but at that moment and at the moment I got home and poured myself another rye and even in this moment sitting here...I feel as if, you know, I'm okay with it. 

I remember a number of posts back when I shpeeled about the nature of "fuck it all" and how much it worked and that it worked to well to the point where I felt apathetic. And I realized now that, yea, for the most part I'm a little apathetic about things (concerning relationships) but I think that its more than just simply not caring about the outcome of things but rather just not caring to scrutinize, well, me. Over analyzing and ruminating on pointless or nonexistent motives that I or someone else might have: that was what I used to be. And now I think that apathy has subconsciously evolved into social release from who I am. 

The whole time as I was talking to this girl I felt not a moment self concious (to extreme of course) but rather at ease. And I can honestly say it wasn't because of her (well...maybe a little) but I felt that I had released context of the situation and, like my friend said, had zero expectations for the outcome. Instead of worrying whether I was going to take this girl home or not, how my hair looked, if my skin was okay, if we are talking enough, or if I smelled alright I just felt like, nah, I'm just gonna get to know this girl and have a reasonably good time.

Is this really all that it is?

I can't say I'm impressed but neither am I disappointed. Sure it'd be great to woo this girl back to my room (yea...I'm a cad) but I'm perfectly at ease just knowing who she is and shpeeling about nonsense (I talked about science a lot...haha might have been the major social faux pas of the night). 

As I was walking back to the muni that night, wind blowing and the ephemeral San Francisco warmth coming to its end, I didn't feel bad or wrong about anything. My coworkers love to say "It is what it is" (and if you can imagine that with a proper latino accent, you get more flavor out of the saying) and I couldn't help just saying that to myself. Not in an overtly bad way either: I just felt like I wasn't worried and I wasn't about to lose sleep on the words that came out of my mouth that night like I would have done maybe 2 years ago.  

There are things in my life and things that I've said that I still regret, some of my most recent failures still somehow resonating in my bones. But like the couple of posts before this one, I've come to terms with them and sometimes you just have to say what you have to say, no regrets. When you come to a very clear and apparent realization of what you are and what you've evolved to be, I think you gain a better sense of yourself, accomplished or not, and its something worth mulling over and appreciating. And that Buddhist philosophical outlook couldn't be truer: that we are constantly in a state of not-being because we are constantly evolving from one moment to the next. I know I always end on a Buddhist note but its such an obvious truth that I can't help the glaring realization of it. 

Sometimes to be better person you just have to let go of the vices of being you.

Flow and adaptability; its like water as a metaphor for an even soul.  

I think most of us should be familiar with this meme but if not, you can read all about it here. 

Its pretty funny as most of the the content is stuff that is actually pretty relevant to the problems we face in day to day first world life. And they're all trivial to the point where it becomes mundane which is the point. 

Its funny and all but recently I've become so much aware of this notion of "first world problems" that I start feeling like my faith in the modern world is slipping. As much as we as a collective of ever evolving humans are all connected in some way, I start feeling a bit alienated and frustrated with all this...first world nonsense that I hear. 

My coworker (yea I write about my coworkers a lot) is...the queen of first world problems. Every time I'm at work its always some problem about "should I get the white or black beats by dre? Because I'm only gonna use them when I'm snowboarding..." and "gosh I have to sit in a rented escalade for 6 hours with this person as we drive down to LA to go to disneyland. Jeez!" And it's so irritating to the point where I get mildly infuriated. And its not just this individual with these individualistic notions. Its that I begin to realize that these same problems are, in fact, equally shared among people in first world society. These things that my coworker tells me are not unique: there are multitudes of young privileged people that harbor the same issues and spout the same nonsense to each other over 4 dollar coffees. 

I was sitting in a coffee shop today. There was a wonderful jazz band playing and these two girls (well...one of them was doing all the talking) were spouting on about their issues with boys and one of the girls' proclivities for sex and sexual related things. And as I couldn't help but listen because one of them was trying to talk over the music, all that was running through my head was "Jesus, fucking first world problems man." 

I don't claim to be the judge of all character nor do I believe my way of living is superior. What I simply can't wrap my head around is the fact that there is so much the world has to offer: the beauty of music, science, knowledge, and understanding yet for the most part we live in a cubed up and boxed up world of our individual problems we call problems. And they're not even problems! There would be complaints that one got too drunk or that one dropped one's ridiculously expensive phone in water and now it won't work and therefore life sucks...yada yada yada man. 

From here you could easily begin assuming that I am gonna go on a tangent regarding kids in Africa or something but I'm not because that's stupid. I believe that, though they differ in absolute magnitude, problems are problems. A problem in California is equal in weight to a problem in Sudan. Why? Because that's all they've ever known. Losing my phone at Coachella feels real just like not having enough water in Cote D'Ivoire because, again, that is all I've ever known. We don't understand what it's like elsewhere because we've never experienced it and, being sensory creatures, they don't exist in our world unless we experience it first hand. Sure there's news and reasons to raise awareness, but at the end of the day we wrap ourselves in a bubble of first world problems just like a human in the Congo wraps themselves in Third world problems. 

You could say that what I'm writing is a first world problem. But that's the scary thing: if my problem is the frustration I feel when encountered with all of these problems that are negligible in the grand world scheme, what does that say about first world society? It seems that our own awareness of privileged has superseded our ability to view the world in a broader sense. We become goal oriented in our bubble of first world safety (and thus fabricated issues) versus goal oriented for the world. Maybe it was rapid cultural and technological advancement. Maybe it was upbringing in absolute safety. 

I'm a proponent of experience. Sometimes I think the world would be better if everyone, just once, gets hit by a car and lives to tell about it. Because you gain a better understanding of what life is when you are faced with the notion that your life is just as fragile as some kid in India or Vietnam. That because we live in a technological world that induces a drug like stupor in us via technological dependency does not mean we are immune to the very basic concepts of life: we're fragile and we die. 

I despise with a passion listening to these nonsensical first world issues. When people tell me about their debate as to whether they should screw this person or get a new phone, I just lose faith in these people. We are so much greater than these things and we are blessed with great opportunity yet we, in a way, willingly buy into this concept of first world absolutes. We shouldn't be denied the chance at happiness in this world, first world or not, but I think that we could be a better people if we focus less on the concepts of this first world slot we're so tightly wedged in. 

How can we better ourselves?

How can we form better relationships with the people around us?

What better ideas can we develop from the technology that we have worked so hard and so quickly to produce?

Even the most mundane thing doesn't have to be about progressivness: maybe what's good music?

What recent art piece we saw that really evoked great feelings in us?

The way I see it we shouldn't make the world we live in a problem for our very existence is upheld because of this world we live in: if it were not for the technology and culture of our first world setting, we would find it much harder to live. 

I don't want to know about who you don't want to fuck or what shoes you want to buy but the stripes on the side are too tacky.

What I want to know are the things in your life that you can change or that you want to make you a better person.