Sometimes I really struggle with writing.  It’s the thing I’m most passionate about, it’s what I most want to do with my life, and what I have spent decades (ok..like A decade) learning to do better.   But when it actually comes time to write the book that has been floating like a phantom menace in my head, I freeze.  What if it isn’t good enough?  What if I learn I’m a crap writer?  What if I learn I’m a really good writer? What will people think when I eventually get it out there?  With these thoughts running through my head, the cursor has stayed frozen on page 2…and there’s only a page 2 because page 1 has a quote on it that I’m not even responsible for concocting.

Well recently something very interesting happened–I got a little tipsy.  So with the help of some beers with names I couldn’t pronounce,  I sat down…and didn’t stop writing.   I finally understood why Hemingway came up with A Movable Feast, Farewell to Arms, and The Sun Also Rises while inebriated; alcohol lowers our inhibitions, takes off social restraints, allows you to throw up your middle finger to the world and not really care what other people think.  You see, society has done an impeccable job creating norms and dictating the boundaries of the people we should be and become.  It has told us that the way to judge our worth and accomplishments is by comparing ourselves to others.    Now with social media, that world has become even harder to live in.  All around us are signs of perfection–people with the ideal careers, charming partners, jet setting schedules..and they’re probably 22.  So we are primed to believe that these people are the norm and we can’t fail because we have to be like them and in our quest to be perfect, we have become terrified of failure.

But as E to the Hemingway would tell you, and as I’m telling you now, failure is actually pretty fun, especially when there is liquor involved.   I can’t tell you whether what I wrote the other night will ever be worth reading, but I finally sat down and wrote it and for that brief  hour I was in the zone, a passionate writer, and so simply happy I didn’t need anything else but the space I was in.  So maybe we should all drink a little more so we can get use to the feeling of living without inhibitions and throwing conventionality to the wind.  We’ll get so use to the freedom of being ourselves that eventually we won’t need the liquor.  Until then, think of something you fear, take two shots, and just do it.

This apartment is no worse than anything I had lived in before; it is just Different and sometimes different is ten times more awesome than finding something better.  I realized moving apartments for me was not about validation, but about leaving the past behind, letting go of painful memories, and starting with something fresh…and the start is often more significant than the place you start from.  And only by leaving the past behind, starting each day with a clean slate rather than a rolodex of comparisons, can you find a blissful existence.  For these reasons, finding a new apartment was seamless and I walked into a place that filled my soul with joy and was hit by an energy and warmth that screamed “THIS IS HOME!”  No, my new home is not a mansion or a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park, but it’s home for now and each day I get to wake up with gratitude that things are different; I have a new neighborhood to explore, new roommates to get to know, a cleaner soul, and the realization that I never really needed things to get better because they’re already good enough.

We tend to shy away from the things that hurt us because who wants more pain in a world that seems to never be in short supply of it?  So we distract our minds with Facebook, drinks, and visits to bars where we become regulars, all in an effort to hide away from reality and keep the pain at a distance.  We seek comfort in the words of enablers, who are often friends, and tend to reaffirm that we are the victims and that whatever the problem was, it happened to us and was far from the grasp of our control.

Yet recently, I wanted something different.  I wanted true, honest advice, and turned to someone who has become like a  brother to me.  In addition to a strong cultural divide that separates us, the Atlantic also poses a slight problem in us sitting down face to face to discuss life and woes.  But what I got from this brother was something I had been missing–honest, unfiltered, even slightly hard to hear words, but they were the words of someone who wanted the best for me, could look at my situation objectively, and knew that for me to ever be touched by the gentle grace of pleasure, I had to first accept and submerge in the pain.

He was on the outside looking in and knew that to be happy all I had to do was take a step back, reevaluate, reach into myself, and connect with my core.   His words chilled me because the evident truth of what I needed to do was right in front of me, but I hadn’t seen it, or rather refused to do so.  And in our world of constant distractions, it is so easy to choose not to see the truth.

But in the end, the truth is the only thing we really have that is of value, anything else is a lie, degraded, dirty, and poor.   So when someone asks you for your advice don’t do them a disservice by offering condolescences that you hope will make them feel better.  It is not your responsibility to make someone feel better; it is your responsibility to offer honest, truthful advice when their vision may be clouded; otherwise, you are just another liar in a world already stewing in lies.

I’ve been reading a lot about human behavior lately and happened to fall upon Predictably Irrational and The Paradox of Choice, two books that suggest there is a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde very close to the surface of each of us (so I decided to read that one too).  And so Toni Morrison was wrong when she told us we should believe people when they tell us who they are, because honestly, even we don’t know what is lurking in our own shadowy depths.  Instead of being rational, we’re plagued with the qualms of irrationality.  Our thoughts, often clear and straightforward, are laced with villains lying deep in our subconscious, and our actions, sometimes lauded, are often tainted with the residue of malicious intentions. 
So how do we tell someone who we are when we don’t even know?  How do you know what the truth is when you can’t differentiate it from the lies? Do we even really know when we are being genuine, when our words and actions differ?  Do we listen to ourselves or look to others for a more accurate reflection?
Then I found the answer in one of my own blogs.  We’re whoever we are we say in the moment, but after that, it’s anyone’s guess.  We’re not static creatures that evolve to a certain point, stay at that level, and then evolve to another one.  Instead, we sway like prairie grass.  In the morning I’m a focused, business-oriented, take no prisoners, real estate agent, who feels confident and on top of the world.  In the evening, I may be sensitive, crying about the things and people I think I have lost and may never have again.  Sometimes I’m a liar to avoid conflict.  Sometimes I’m a truth teller to start a conflict. 
Maybe we would know who we were if we lived in a bubble, sheltered from an environment that plays with our emotions, often shatters our spirits, only to bring them up again.  We’re swayed by the weather, advertisements plastered on subways, or by inaccurate perceptions of others who we wish we were like, only to realize they wish they were like us.  I’m swayed by hormones, dreams that change throughout the day.  Right now I want to be on iconic in real estate, tomorrow move to Ohio with a husband and a few kids. 
So who am I?  I’m a real estate agent, a writer, a challenge.  I have limitless love to give, but can hate with ferocity.  I think I can fix everything, but only after I break it first.  I’m really funny and oftentimes way too serious.  We’re all like this.  Sometimes fickle, sometimes stubborn and unfaltering in our beliefs.  But isn’t life more interesting this way?  Otherwise, we would all be drones, robots, not even worthy of our own existence. 
So when someone asks you who you are, say “everything you see before you.  What I’ll be tomorrow?  I can only take a guess.”

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either.

Fell in love with this quote.

Rest in the Mess – the first Jackson Pollock I ever saw and fell in love with. Paris ’06

I’ve always been a black and white person to a fault.  The gray area was a danger zone that I avoided at all costs, premeditating anything that could go wrong that would inevitably lead me to treading water in the gray.  So I invariably envisioned myself running along a seasaw trying to balance both ends without realizing that all I needed to do was stand in the middle.  Meanwhile, I would experience the extremes of emotions, anything in between being perfectly unacceptable–so I loved passionately or hated feverishly, laughed uncontrollably or cried never-endingly.  These actions were of no service to me and instead caused me to live in a world precariously on the edge of collapse, while missing the essence of life because I wasn’t living in the moment.

Then someone told me to “rest in the mess.”  What the who?  This person had the audacity to suggest that I was suppose to be comfortable in the gray area, if not happy in it.  I was suppose to accept things as they were rather than brazenly trying to mold my career, relationships, and the world as I thought it should be–into a perfect balance of black and white.  But it has become unrelentingly clear that the world is not perfect and; therefore, an ugly, black and white existence has no place in a world that is beautiful in it’s imperfection.

I am coming to understand (VERY SLOWLY) that resting in the mess is all we can do to ever really be happy.  Rather than fighting against that which is unpleasant or troubling or hurtful, accept the mess that sometimes or rather, often, is life and if possible…embrace or move on.  At the end of it all, we can look back and think: “Oh what a beautiful, imperfect mess we’ve made.”

And as I was drowning in my misery, I heard a voice: “Smile, beautiful!”  I turned my head to find a homeless man sitting on the corner of 65th and 1st offering me his platitudes.  He didn’t ask for money; there was no cup of jingling coins in his hand; he just sat there with a toothless grin on his rugged face.  And slowly a feeling of gratitude came over me.  I who had everything, family and friends with limitless love, a career that finally felt right in every way, a passport that allowed me to travel the world more than once…I who have everything, was getting lessons from the man who had nothing.

And smile I did…all the way back to my office, where my mission became clearer, my fingers typed faster, and my goals became less cloudy.  I think about this man on the street.  Maybe he was crazy, plagued by a psychological disorder I had once read about in a psychology textbook.  Maybe he had lost himself while wadding through marshes in Vietnam, holding a gun in one hand, his fear in the other.  Maybe he had stepped over the thresholds of rehabs for decades and fought with demons I had yet to discover.  Whatever his story was, he continued to serve and give in the only way he could and I decided to give back too.  I put the smile back on my face, my mission back in perspective, my gratitude for my life, love, and fate back in it’s rightful place.  Sometimes we all need a little perspective and have to stay open to getting it from the most unexpected of places.

According to the writer Jorge Luis Borges, the idea of the Zahir comes from Islamic tradition and is thought to have arisen at some point in the eighteenth century. Zahir, in Arabic, means visible, present, incapable of going unnoticed. It is someone or something which, once we have come into contact with them or it, gradually occupies our every thought, until we can think of nothing else. This can be considered either a state of holiness or madness.

Faubourg Saint-Perez (1953)

Hoping everyone can find at least one Zahir in life.

Of all the things I have dreamed of being in my life, probably only an astronaut was not one of them.  My dreams took me to the catwalks of Fashion Week, the inside of gritty New York City hospitals, off roading through the Australian Outback with an SLR slinging around my neck, and driving across the Sahara as part of a heavily armed envoy.  But none of this seemed like enough.  I had a lot of dreams, but was looking for something concrete.  I should be a world-famous writer, a doctor, or a lawyer.  I wanted to be one of those people who knew what they wanted to be since they were 5, drawing pictures of skyscrapers and stethoscopes; already too smart to ingest the Crayolas they were drawing with.   Instead, I kept transitioning between dreams in a not so seamless process.  I felt like I was being led down different roads by a crappy GPS that kept recalibrating. I really relate to that guy in those Allstate commercials.

Until recently, I realized that I am not static and neither is life.  Things keep changing, moving, shifting, sometimes towards us and sometimes away from us.  Our only goal should be to run with the current rather than fighting against it.  So I asked myself why should dreams be static and held in place by some notion of what we think we want?  Dreams should be elastic, revolutionizing themselves every day as we get a better idea of not only what we want, but what it is that we truly need.  Right now I dream of becoming the best writer and real estate agent I can be.  In a few years from now, those dreams will still be present, but I may be dreaming of becoming a wife and mother.

So maybe striving towards our dreams every day is secondary and creativity becomes primary.  Creativity in living the life of our dreams every day, rather than waiting and striving for some notion of our dream life that is only supposedly going to occur in the future.  So let’s be creative every day in what we do and who we are. And we might even find that our dreams are actualized every day when we’re living a life we’re actually happy about NOW.  So let your dreams be elastic, but you’re creativity in seeking happiness everyday be undeterred. <3

This blog was originally a part of a community post on According to Aletheia.  Check out the other contributors at;

• The Unlost
• Further Bound
• Own Awesome
• Meme and He
• Karen Hammons

This blog is the full version from my contribution to Therese Schwenkler’s, The Unlost!

A number of months after ending a long-term relationship, I thought I was ready to start dating again.  But before the words left my heart, came to my head and out of my mouth, my girlfriends were ready to share their hard-acquired dating advice:

”So, OKCupid is a free online dating site, you should try it and give sexting a chance,” said one friend.

“Also, there is this look you can give them, just like this…that shows that you want them.”  I tried, but my contact fell out.

“When you meet a guy, just don’t talk about politics,” said another. (But wait, it’s election year and there is nothing hotter than talking about the proliferation of fiat currencies).

And finally, “After a break-up, when you want to feel new again, you should dye your hair.”

Upon realizing that sexting reminded me of an old college fling, forgoing snide remarks about Santorum, adding blonde highlights to my virgin hair, and buying new skinny jeans, I realized I had been getting advice not worth a penny and had actually uttered the phrase, “but I’m a bit scared of boys.”  In fact, sitting next to a cute one made me cringe, going to my doctor had me sweating like nun in a brothel, and actually having to talk to one made paper look like it had a better personality.  So after sprucing up the outside, I realized the inside was still a total mess.  Retail therapy and facials were only going to cloud a problem that only wanted to shine brighter.

When living in New York, we blame the City for somehow corrupting all of these men and turning them into monkeys in suits.  We complain about their growing egos, fueled by their high-powered careers and the fact that so many other women are ready, willing and able in every sense of the words.  So how could the girl that wants a stable relationship ever have a chance?   This City has, in fact, little to do with the quality of the men.  Our issues with men instead come from the advice that women give each other!  We’ve been raised thinking that a makeover is going to save our soul and we’ll get the guy of our dreams to finally like us (Thank you every movie of the late 90s).  But the fact of the matter is, is that we give superficial advice while blaming men for their superficiality.  We complain about how fake guys can be as we plop on makeup, glue on eyelashes, buy jelly cutlets to enhance our boobs (damnit, where did I put my pair?) and rouge our lips all to create a reality that maybe….well, fake.  We see our exteriors as important, if not more so than our interiors, and we conform to someone else’s vision of beauty as we speak about empowerment and the new age of WOMAN.

But in terms of dating advice, I would like to tell my friends and admit that “WE DON’T KNOW SHIT!” My longest relationship started with a 3-hour conversation on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Blonde highlights ARE NOT my color, YOU DO NOT KNOW WHO YOU ARE SEXTING, and you don’t have to fake a look for him to know you’re interested.  Just be your gorgeous, incredible, spirited, intelligent, and worthy self.

And in order to be yourself, you must first learn to love yourself unconditionally, because if you don’t, no one else truly will. And if you don’t learn to love yourself, the most precious thing on the planet, how can you know what is means to truly love another?

Loving yourself is so much more than just declaring the words ‘I love me’ when you look in the mirror.  It involves some words that can be pretty scary, such as defiance, risk, and discipline.  Defiance is needed so you can disregard the unhealthy, toxic advice, norms and standards of society and finally accept that who you truly are is the new norm and standard for you.  It takes defiance to disregard negative whispers that come into your mind and into your life and understand that the best advice comes from the person who knows you best, you!  Risk is essential because some people may not understand or like that you are embracing all of your quirky, dorky, silly traits, while becoming proud of who you are.  Risk also because when you start to love yourself you often realize that people around you don’t appreciate your beauty as they should and many times, these people have to be shown the door.  Discipline is also important so you can do the things you need to every day so you can start living the meaningful and satisfying life that was meant for you.  And when you become satisfied, if not fulfilled, by your life and what you do, only then can you be fully satisfied with someone standing next to you.  And guess what?  Do you know when you find exactly what you are looking for?  Right at the time when you are too busy doing something else.

There are some less scary words associated with learning to love yourself, which need less explanation.  Respect, (of yourself and others), kindness (to yourself and others), and understanding that “some days are diamonds and some days are stone” (props to John Denver for that one) and finding our truest self to love is a journey with ups and downs.

You will have your whole life to love someone, to meet the person that will sweep you off your feet.  But you don’t have all of the time to start loving yourself because THAT requires strength, which only grows over time.  AND when you finally meet him, you want to be strong enough and know love enough to be able to accept the freefall of love that he is going to give you.