The Earth Turns, But We Don’t Feel It Move

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I’m not exactly sure when this article will release, or when you’ll be reading it, but on September 28th I’ll enter my third decade on this earth. In the spirit of self-improvement and the constant journey that is this life, I feel like this is as good a time as ever to take a moment to pause and look back at where I’ve been and what I’ve done.

I guess I’ll start with the obvious. I really expected to have more Super Bowl trophies by this time in my life. Maybe not the most ever, but I was bound to have two and revving up for one last title run before I hung up my cleats and entered the Hall of Fame. By those standards I guess I’m a failure.

Ten-year-old me wouldn’t be all that impressed with my current life.

Because even if it wasn’t through sports, I remember writing a bunch of compositions and essays around that age about how I was going to change the world. I remember studying famous people whose names were etched in the annals of history for their great deeds and contributions. When you’re young those are the only people schools seem to think it’s worth your time learning about. So in your adolescent brain, it seems like those are the only people worth being.

But that’s not really what I’ve found to be true.

When I turned 18, I got my first tattoo. My mom cried. She thought that I came out perfect and clean and that I should return to the dirt the same way. She’s come a long way since then, even sporting a small tattoo on her ankle that my sister and I got her for her fiftieth birthday.

My first tattoo is an interesting one.

At this point I have enough that I can get stupid tattoos or matching tattoos or tattoos that align with my current fantasy, but the first one is important. The first one is that one that is going to be on you forever so it really has to mean something. It has to mean something at 18 and it has to mean something at 80. I was scribed with Latin across my collar bone reading Penitus Lux Lucis. To this day I’m admittedly unsure of the translation, but Latin to English is not a perfect art so it serves.

My translation stems from a philosophy that gained some traction at a time when the Church was incredibly corrupt. The phrase means ‘inner light’ and it refers to this idea that no church or holy person can tell you what is divine. You must search for that divinity, that inner light, within yourself and then share it with the world. This, in the end, is more holy than anything that the Church as an organization can do. I find myself amazed that at a time where I was smoking as much weed as I could get my hands on, and drinking Rubinoff Vodka out of a plastic handle every weekend, that I was able to pick something like that to go on my skin. It’s as true for me today as it was back then.

Some things don’t really change.

My college years in Boston are a blur of blacked out weekends and caffeinated study crams. I had difficulty finding myself and latching onto a new identity after believing that the one that had served me in my youth failed in a much bigger world. Those years were fun, but they were also tough. I found myself feeling off from time to time and really unsure of what I was actually doing.

One thing I remember helping was something that I called a peace walk. The first thing I would do is make a little mixie. Vodka and Gatorade was the regular. I’d then pack a backpack with this and that. Maybe a book and a journal. I’d put my headphones in and proceed to walk down Mass Ave towards the Charles River. I’d follow the path of the park along it’s shores, sometimes stopping at my favorite tree and bench to zone out (or in) for a bit, and make my way towards Beacon Hill and the Boston Commons. From there I might continue on towards the Harbor or start the whole process again heading back on Boylston or Comm Ave.

The point of this practice was to feel connected.

It was to disappear into a beautiful city and simply be part of the experience. And the experience was always changing. Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall I’d step out into my city and feel the seasons as she did.

One of the things I’d like to record on my peace walks was my ability to simply do good as the opportunities arose. Smiling at someone I passed. Picking up a toy that a child had dropped. Holding a door open when I could. All of these simple little acts were noteworthy to me. On one of my last nights in Boston, I grabbed my good friend Danny and we hopped on our longboards to cruise all of these old paths. The sun went down and the city lit up in it’s summer best. The Prudential building, which had been my guiding light home since drunken freshman nights in Dorchester, shone a little brighter that night for me. And I dropped down to my knees to say thank you.

(Danny snapped a picture of the occasion.)

For the past couple of years, I haven’t tried to do too much for my birthday in the typical sense of a party. I’ve escaped to places like Catalina Island or Mount Baldy with a close friend and attempted to disappear into my surroundings. I’ve defended the idea in years past as a way to ensure that I’m not spending my day answering phone calls and responding to messages or nursing the hangover from hell. Just seems like a poor way to start the next cycle. But in this weird year of everything closing down, we’ve been forced to dive inward. And in that journey I’ve been able to find myself. In finding myself, I’ve found my people. I’ve found my tribe.

Eight of my friends and I escaped Los Angeles to spend a long weekend in a cabin on Big Bear Lake. Whether they went for the lake, the mountains, the fresh air or me is irrelevant. Because no matter their reasons, I feel seen by them and I feel loved. It’s always easy to write about my despair, my depression, my hopelessness, but it’s this weird struggle to address that feeling of being loved. You know it when you feel it and there’s really no reason to put it to words. All of the words you could write seem to fall short of the actual feeling. The opening stanza of The Tao Te Ching puts it best: 

‘The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao

The name that can be named is not the eternal name

The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth

The named is the mother of ten thousand things

Ever desireless, one can see the mystery

Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations

These two spring from the same source but differ in name

This appears as darkness

Darkness within darkness

The gate to all mystery.’

The second you try to put words to the feeling, you’re out of the experience and into a cheap replica of what it actually was. And I think of this as a writer – how I could never really capture the heartfelt message on Country Cam’s birthday card, the invincibility of Aussie Cam or the sound of Morgan’s laugh. I couldn’t accurately express how proud I am of Anna and how happy I am to see her and Mikey balance each other so well. There’s no words for what Jani and D have meant to me over this past year of quarantine and growth. And a poem could never do justice for the serendipity in which Leah entered my life.

I wake up before the sun on the morning of my thirtieth birthday and stroll down to the docks. I sit cross legged and look out over the stillness of the lake as the sky starts to fade into the dark blue of early morning while light rises in the east. I sit very still as my mind scrambles to put all the feelings and emotions of the past year into words that somehow might make sense to all of you.

Then a curious thing happens.

I’m struck once more by my failure to become the world changing figure I’d imagined in my youth. Instead I am the tourist to this planet, the witness to my friends and the writer who can’t find the words. The sun comes up on this morning just as it would on any other. And I just sit back trying to feel the world spin.

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