Ben Folds, "Sentimental Guy"

As I was driving in, Ben was streaming his amazing melodies, personal-touching-powerful-human experience lyrics and mind numbingly beautiful piano playing out of my MP3, through my car stereo and straight into my soul. God, I love him.

His message to me, encapsulated in these two lines of lyrics, struck me dumb with realization, "And I never thought so much could change
Now I don't miss anyone I don't miss anything"

Why did those words so strongly resonate? Well, because I never thought I would be sitting here, typing away, knowing that so much has changed. I fear tempting the fates in declaring my satisfaction with my current state of becoming, that my pride, which I hope is outweighed by my humility, will cause some force in the universe, with a flick of a mighty finger, to knock me off the mountaintop where I now sit. While facing these mythic fears I still am driven to quietly revel in the present joy of my becoming, so different, so changed, in how I view the world.

I am balanced in positive equanimity, in appreciation for what is, and that is so much to me and I never thought so much could change, or would change, from my previous preferred state of internal emotional volatility. A combination of dedication to my becoming and pure luck have propelled me. It is not over, there are many more beautiful vistas and unknown pitfalls ahead, lord knows I still struggle in many ways with envy, but I would be remiss if I passed this opportunity to settle for a bit on this plateau, enjoy the wide open, sunny views and reflect a bit, in humble appreciation, on the road I walked and the place I stand.

For new readers, or those not closely following my psychological progression, the importance of what has changed is captured in the second line - "...I don't miss..." I find myself freed from much, although not all, of the melancholy driven by an ego whose primary drive is to pay attention to what is missing. This primary egoic instinct of mine pushed me to find constant faults in myself, others and in whatever current environment I lived. As you can imagine, a mind that is predisposed to focus on what is not good about a situation leads to a heart easily moved to sadness and to eyes clouded against the light of what can be appreciated.

It hasn't all changed, don't get me wrong, but my attention now much more than ever goes to what is present and my heart beats strongly with appreciation. It is a gift for which I cannot express enough gratitude and a treasure I want to share with the world. Yet, it's hard to find words to adequately explain how this all plays out on a practical daily level, even though that explanation is vitally important.

Maybe an analogy will help; which my best friend and wife are much more blessed at crafting than I. Okay, so lets give it a try - What are you looking at right now? Your computer I would guess. Now, imagine all the benefits of your computer: it connects you to the rest of the world, it allows you to process and share information very quickly, it provides storage for music, pictures and other media, it allows you to complete a host of business and personal activities in a streamlined fashion that frees up time for other things, like reading my blog. Now, what are all the downsides of a computer: they often don't work properly, they can allow criminals and thieves to access your private information, they can create a virtual tether between you and your employer, you can lose stored information you thought would be preserved forever. You get the point, right? Positives and negatives, the ying and the yang, all that. In the same way there is good and bad to your computer, I believe there is good and bad to everything, all of existence and everyone who has ever lived.

And, it is up to us not only which side we see, the light or the dark, but also what we do with that information, how we process it and how we let if affect our mental, emotional and spiritual state. It is a choice, the option is there, and I attempt to take full advantage of my ability, as a human, to discern, as much as humanly possible, how the stimuli that is constantly bombarding me affects how I decide to live.

Now, imagine, that you had a button you could push in your brain that automatically defaulted your world view to first off, see both the good and bad, second, accept that both poles exist without judgment, third, allow you to not worry so much about the bad and fourth, really appreciate the good in what you see, in everything and everyone around you, wouldn't that be nice?

I am not claiming ascension or transcendence, simply, I am saying I have developed strategies to connect the synapses in my brain which allow the process of pushing the "appreciation button" to happen much more quickly than I ever thought possible, for me. For some it is automatic, they are built in sunny-sides up kind of people - which, by the way, I have always been externally, most people wouldn't know the heaviness with which my inner critic weighed on me for much of my life.

So, when faced with a difficult coworker, or a bad mood, or feeling fat, or trying to figure out how to relate with my family, or whatever it is, I can much more quickly assess the good and the bad of the situation, try to not judge myself or the situation, and maximize the upsides. It is freeing and it makes me happy, in a relaxed way, in a real way, happy just being, instead of trying so hard to be happy.

I know it's kind of nebulous and a lot ambiguous, it just...just, I never thought I would be here, I never thought so much could change.