Back when I was still a practicing Catholic, I was really into the Apostles. I had many questions about them. Who were these guys? Where did they come from? How were they chosen? Why were they chosen? Why did Jesus decide to give these particular men a rose on ‘A Very Special Episode of The Bachelor?’ Can you imagine being one of only twelve people hand-selected to hang out with God’s Son and spread his gospel to the unwashed, heathen masses? Does it get any more privileged than chilling with a deity’s only offspring? I don’t believe so.
Don’t get me wrong, the Apostles come across as bumbling, disbelieving, incompetent fools most of the time. Peter, who supposedly started the Christian church, was a bit of a hothead. Sort of like Sonny in The Godfather. One time he got so pissed, he cut off a guy’s ear. That’s not very Christian, is it? We all know about Judas’ betrayal. Thomas doubted everything, and Jesus trolled him for it. A strange lot they were, but I was very curious about them, and why Jesus chose these particular blue collar dudes–mostly fishermen and a tax collector–to be his disciples. As with most things, the Bible is light on the details.
The other thing I liked about the Apostles was the fact that they had a creed. A statement of belief for all of Jesus’ followers. The ‘Apostles’ Creed’, which I proclaimed with gusto many times in my former Catholic life. For accuracy’s sake, the Apostles didn’t write the Apostles’ Creed; the Romans did. They probably never recited it themselves either. It didn’t matter. I loved the Apostles’ Creed because it was powerful and clear, and it laid out in unequivocal terms what Christians believe. Fuck you if you disagreed. It’s right there on the page, motherfucker. Believe it and recite it, or get the fuck out of the club.
Certainty of belief is the entire point of a creed, and the Apostles’ Creed truly nails it. I also liked fact that it was short enough that I could memorize it and loudly proclaim it in church like a diehard on those rare occasions that I actually went to church.
‘Apostle’ has different meanings to different people, Catholics in particular. At its core, stripped of religious overtones, ‘apostle’ means a ‘messenger of an important belief system.’ Apostles are followers, believers, and messengers.
The word ‘creed’ can also have religious connotations, but it doesn’t have to. Indeed, in modern times, ‘Creed’ refers to a cheesy, yet beguilingly uplifting 90s rock band with a melodramatic lead singer, Scott Stapp, who oversings power ballads:
More traditionally, however, ‘creed’ refers to a system of beliefs that guide one’s actions. Not every creed is worthy of follow, of course. The fact that the Apostles’ Creed is meaningless to me now illustrates that creeds are not as sacrosanct or immune from criticism as their adherents would have us believe. Slapping the word ‘creed’ on something doesn’t make it true. You still gotta run some tests, hold the creed’s principles up against your experience and apply some logic and critical thinking before you either go all in on the creed, or decide that it’s just flowery, gold-plated, self-important horseshit. The worthiness of a creed is always in the eye of the beholder.
All this said, I think it’s important to live by a personal creed. A set of core principles, values, and beliefs that guide my decisions and behavior. And I do mean ‘guide,’ not ‘require’ or ‘mandate.’ While a creed shouldn’t be a straightjacket, it should be a strong indicator of what one believes and how one will proceed in most situations. When life’s hurricanes hit, my creed is a lighthouse in a storm, navigating me away from the rocks–people and situations that threaten to drown me–and returning me safely to shore. Many times, my creed has saved me from danger and helped me bandage a broken heart or lost ambition before I bled out on the floor.
My creed is my creed. My core principles are mine alone. One size does not fit all. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, and I don’t know everything, obviously. I’m still learning and growing, so my creed is a work in progress. But at the ripe age of 55, I do know a thing or two about a thing or two. I’ve acquired a bit of wisdom to go along with my salt and pepper beard and hairless pate. After an absolutely brutal year of emotional upheaval and transition in my personal life, I feel compelled to reduce my creed to writing to help me process my experience and salve my losses. I also want to leave it here for my daughter to read when I’m gone. I hope she’ll learn much faster what took me five decades to learn, with fewer battle scars.
Here they are in list form, followed by a brief extrapolation on each:
- Know your value.
- Learn to be alone. Embrace being alone.
- Be authentic in all things.
- Strive to be the green reed, not the mighty oak.
- Control your vices. Don’t let them control you.
- Take risks and don’t be afraid to fail. Failure is the greatest teacher.
- End relationships when necessary.
- Expose yourself to people who are different from you.
- Humor and music will keep you off the ledge.
- Think critically, always question, and look beyond yourself.
- Time is the most valuable commodity. Don’t waste it.
Eleven is a good number for now. They’re written in the second person because that’s how I think of them when I’m repeating these principles to myself, or when I imagine saying them to my daughter. Yes, some are clichés but fuck it, they’re my truths. My extrapolation is where originality lies.
Know your value.
The most important one. The First Commandment. Know your value. Know your worth. Know who you are, where you come from, what you want out of your life, and what you bring to the table in your relationships. Valuing yourself, understanding who you are, what you believe, and what you will tolerate from other people and what you won’t, brings clarity, purpose, and critically necessary boundaries to your relationships. Knowing your worth will prevent you from being gaslit into oblivion by a self-absorbed narcissist or someone with a similar personality defect. Only you can determine your own value. Most of our self-esteem is inculcated by our parents, teachers, and friends in childhood. In adulthood, others can help us instill it, or remind us of our true value. Talk to people who love you and want what’s best for you. Talk to old friends who know you best. Meditate on yourself, how far you’ve come, what you’ve survived in life, and how great a person you are, even if, like me, it’s not in your nature to pat yourself on the back. Build yourself up.
Here’s a little secret about why this principle is so important and why I put it first. Eventually every single person in your life is going to disappoint you. Literally every person. People are inherently selfish and out for themselves. It’s human nature. All relationships are conditional, and every single person is on the hunt to satisfy their Modern Human Needs. Too many people are emotional parasites. Wittingly or unwittingly, they take what they need from you and suck the marrow from your bones like a starving vampire, with one eye open for the next MHN source. When these bloodsuckers leave–and leave they will, because they’re emotionally insatiable–rather than lament their departure, knowing your worth and value will help you understand that it’s actually a blessing, because you deserve better. More. It will bring you back to center, which is where we all need to be to make the best decisions for ourselves. Not having a sense of your value and worth–or forgetting them, because this can happen to even the most confident and strong-minded person when they subject themselves to the wrong person for too long–can lead to bad decisions and a lot of wasted years. Knowing your value will help you spot and avoid the vampires, find better relationships, and mitigate your emotional pain and the ego blow that hits you when a relationship ends, as most do.
Learn to be alone. Embrace being alone.
We enter the world alone, and we leave it alone. In the first scenario, your mother carries you for nine months (sometimes less) and then, at a time not of your choosing, you’re jettisoned from the dark, tropical comfort of her womb into shockingly cold air. Within seconds, some motherfucker in a white coat is slapping your ass and making you cry. Your first encounter with a human being who’s not your mother involves an assault and battery. ‘Welcome to the world, asshole!’ Then the umbilical cord is cut, and you’re officially on your own. Separation. Individuality. The start of the hero’s journey. From two to one.
Query: how many of the world’s problems are caused by PTSD from the fucked up process that is human birth?
We die the same way. No one joins us on that journey either. I saw it with my own eyes when my father died. For four days, he lay unconscious on a hospice bed. Eyes closed, amped with morphine, his labored breathing his only voice. Alive but not alive. Here, but nearly gone. My sisters, mother, and I surrounded his bed, playing the music he loved, telling stories about him from our childhood, getting drunk, eating pizza, rubbing his forehead to comfort him. Telling him thank you and we love you, and it’s okay to go. My mother, who had a difficult marriage with him, showed him more genuine love and affection in those four days than I’d seen in forty years. Those four days were one of the purest experiences of love that I’ve had, or ever will have, in my entire life.
We had no idea if he could hear us. He was there but not there, floating alone in whatever mystical space exists between this life and the next. Then, finally, mercifully, he died, leaving behind an empty husk that only seconds before had encapsulated the man we loved. In that moment, another umbilical cord was cut. The experience of watching him slowly pass from this life and into the next is forever etched in my mind, cut with a laser. It was a seminal moment in my life, and it’s had a massive impact on the way I carry myself, and how I make decisions ever since.
Despite the solitary way we enter and leave this world, we’re surrounded by desperately needy people who can’t stand being alone for more than 10 minutes. This is barely an exaggeration. The reasons for this are subjective to each person, and to be fair, we all suffer from it from time to time. But if left unresolved, a chronic fear of being alone can have major life consequences, like pursuing a new relationship or experience without forethought and intention, pinging from person to person like a mindless human pinball, letting one’s needs and desires make the decisions. Or extending a deteriorating, counterproductive, or abusive relationship that should have died a long time ago.
Fear of being alone can make us turn a blind eye to character flaws in a partner, relative, or friend. It can make us delude ourselves into believing that their self-absorption, indifference, or frigidity are normal and will eventually disappear. This delusion is dangerous because it can steal years from your life. It’s hard to let a relationship go, even a mediocre or abusive one. There’s a lot of denial and procrastination involved because even when a relationship is deeply flawed or unsatisfying, no one likes the feeling of leaving the womb, of separation, of a return to the one. No matter how shitty the relationship, leaving it always feels like you’re that cold baby getting spanked on the ass again. It hurts so much.
This is a psychological burden that we all carry, but I believe we need to overcome it in order to be happy (or happier). It’s one thing to choose a friend, partner, or lover from a place of confidence, desire, and self-reliance, knowing that it’s a healthy choice because, while you’re just fine being alone, this person is adding something wonderful to your life: shared experience, companionship, support, and intimacy, all of which enrich one’s life and deepen our human and spiritual experience. It’s quite another to feel like you need to be with someone because you’re lonely, sad, or afraid of being by yourself for very long, and you need someone–anyone–to fill that empty hole that you should be filling yourself.
Another problem is that needing someone else to make you feel whole and alive forces you to rely on someone else for your happiness. This is a fraught approach to life. Since everyone ultimately is selfish, parasitic, and disappointing to some degree, and those MHNs are bottomless and ever-evolving, you’re pretty fucked if you rely on someone else to be happy. The second that person decides they don’t want you any more, and moves on to the next shiny object, you will be left completely bereft, in a much deeper emotional hole than you would have been in if you had learned to be comfortable being alone first and then chose that person for the right reasons.
So even if it’s not your preference–and who really prefers perpetual solitude to companionship?–embrace being alone and learn to be alone. It will help you get to know yourself and make better choices in people from a stronger emotional place.
Be authentic in all things.
I watched a TikTok the other night where this scientist was discussing an experiment where they put people into this vacuum chamber that prevented any outside inputs from coming in (I’m botching the syntax here, but work with me) to see if they could quantify the ‘Law of Attraction.’ For the uninitiated, loosely defined, the Law of Attraction states that thoughts are a form of energy, and positive energy attracts success in life. More specifically, positive thoughts lead to positive actions, and positive actions lead to positive outcomes. By contrast, negative thoughts lead to negative actions and negative outcomes. One can attract or repel positive outcomes simply by the way we think and the energy and vibrations that we give off to other people.
Initially, this TikTok scientist didn’t believe in the Law of Attraction because he didn’t think it could be measured or verified. Then he learned about this experiment, where other scientists quantified energy fields being emitted by the human subjects under different character trait scenarios. After explaining the experiment, the TikTok scientist asked his audience: ‘Which character traits do you think gave off the most powerful and positive energy fields in the people who were tested?’ One person answered ‘honesty.’ Nope. Another said ‘confidence.’ Close, but nope. Another person answered ‘sex’. The scientist responded ‘Sex is an act, not a character trait, but I like the way you think.’
The correct answer was ‘authenticity.’ Authenticity gave off the most powerful energy field from the subjects in the study and apparently, it’s the most attractive trait that a human being can possess. I don’t know how they measured this, but when I think about it, it makes total sense. When I meet certain people for the first time, I take to them instantly. Invariably, it’s because they’re coming across as sincere, honest, genuine, vulnerable, and real. Even though this may be my first time meeting them, they’re not putting on airs or wearing a silly mask while interacting with me. Instead, they’re self-deprecating and usually funny. Their authenticity shines through our interaction, even if it’s a brief one.
Bottom line: authentic people are the most attractive people on the planet. Authenticity builds trust and intimacy faster than anything else. It builds real connection. Conversely, fake or closed off people radiate bullshit and negative energy. Those phonies talk to you like they’re perpetually trying to sell you something. Many are self-absorbed self-promoters who have no interest in you as a person, only themselves. They ask no questions about you, but are perfectly happy to go on and on about themselves for hours. These people are black holes, sucking the light out of every conversation and interaction.
Playing devil’s advocate, a potential flaw in this Law of Attraction theory is that some of these black holes seem to do quite well in life. I mean fuck, one of them became President of the United States for four years! But this isn’t just about money, power, and materialism, even though ‘The Law of Attraction’ promoted in books and movies sells it that way. No, to me at least, the Law of Attraction is about attracting a positive, joyful life surrounded by uplifting people and circumstances. When you drill down a bit, a lot of those powerful and rich people are miserable as fuck. Donald Trump is one of the most unhappy people I’ve ever seen. He oozes insecurity and self-loathing. When you read about his shitty childhood and cold and unloving parents, you can understand why. He’ll be 78 in a year, and he’s a whisker hair away from spending the rest of his life jail. How does this happen to a guy who was born into significant wealth? Who the fuck knows? Similarly, despite his billions and being one of the richest people on the planet, Elon Musk comes off as depressed, insecure, and completely incompetent at human relationships.
Neither of these guys are authentic people. They’re snake oil salesmen. Total frauds, and it shows. All that money, all that wealth and power, and they’re less happy than a falafel vendor in New York City.
Be authentic. Be real. Anyone who requires you to be anything less does not belong in your life. And avoid inauthentic people like the plague, whether they start out that way or become that way.
Strive to be the green reed, not the mighty oak.
‘The green reed that bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak that breaks in a storm.’
My favorite Confucius quote. A small sentence with a big message. How many times in my life have I tried to fight my circumstances, avoid something because I knew it would bring me pain, instead of letting the winds of change take me in their inevitable direction? Oh, I’ve been the mighty oak many times. Many times. The decades of my life are littered with my broken branches. It just happened again in fact, though I suppose I could have been split in half from this latest disappointment instead of losing my favorite branch.
Change is the only certainty in life. I believe how we handle change is the key to our evolution as spiritual beings, or whatever you believe we really are. Change can arrive as a cool breeze, a rainy afternoon, or a fucking tornado. Change is the most powerful force that exists in the world, and it often comes at you sideways. As Mr. Lennon once sang, ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.’ You’d think I’d have learned by now, but I’m not a passive person, so it’s not in my nature to always go with the flow and see what happens when the storm comes. There are situations that call for proactivity, not passivity, and I believe in acting, not sitting around waiting for shit to happen. But being the green reed and being proactive are not mutually exclusive once you recognize what the ‘storm’ really is in a given situation. There are people and circumstances in life that cannot be fought. No matter how strong your roots are, or how tall or strong you think you are, they will break you in half if you let them. The faster you learn to recognize an oncoming storm, the faster you can become the green reed, adapt to it, and bend with the wind.
It’s the surprises that blindside you. It’s not easy trying to be a green reed when you’re caught in a tornado, stunned by what’s happening to you. In those situations, it’s all you can do to just keep breathing and get out of bed each day. I’d like to think that my turnaround time between denial, anger, and acceptance of change has shortened as I’ve gotten older. But change isn’t easy and the pain of a major transition can linger for a long time. Personally, I hate gray areas, transitions, and unknowns. The more something or someone means to me, the longer the pain can last. But more often than not now, as opposed to when I was younger, I’m bending, not breaking in the storm, and I’m finding that there’s less kindling left behind me.
Control your vices. Don’t let them control you.
The philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who was quite the pessimist, once said that without government, life would be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’ (Honestly, it’s kind of that way WITH government, amirite?) Life is hard and often unforgiving. So we need our vices, those easily-accessible self-soothing mechanisms that we use to take the edge off when times get tough. They take many forms. They can be as simple as hypnotized-all-night-zombie-video-game-playing or robotic social media scrolling, or as potentially life-destroying as excessive drinking, chain smoking, drug use, sex addiction, porn, uncontrolled shopping therapy, or reckless gambling to the point of bankruptcy. There’s a difference between dabbling in these activities to let off steam when life goes sideways and feeling such a need to engage in them that they become an addiction. Self-soothing is a slippery slope, and few people understand when they’re wearing the wrong footwear.
So I keep a watchful eye on my vice engagement. I recognize that if I cross a certain line, either in frequency or amount, whatever I’m doing (and no, I’m not going to tell you what those are) is unhealthy, and probably means I’m depressed, or there’s something else going on in my head. And there are some vice lines I won’t cross at all, like hard drugs. I have an addictive personality when I get into something (or someone), and I’ve seen too many lives get destroyed, or nearly destroyed, with drugs. So we all need to monitor our vices, be self-aware about the reasons we’re engaging in them, and get help if we take things too far.
Take risks and don’t be afraid to fail. Failure is the greatest teacher.
I had good parents, but they were really bad at teaching me this principle. Both my mother and father were risk averse, afraid to fail types. They passed this lovely legacy on to me, so I sometimes struggle with this. I don’t like unknowns and gray areas. I much prefer certainty and the status quo. I’m aware of this now and have learned to take more chances than I used to. I took a calculated risk posting one of these entries to 300+ of my Facebook friends almost four years ago, and it led to three-year relationship, which was one of the more significant relationships that I’ve had in my life, or may ever have. Many years ago, I took a risk asking an attractive stranger on an Italian train what time the train was getting into Milan. It led to lunch together in Milan that same afternoon and her visiting me in New York a year later. Other risks, like flying to San Francisco to meet a relative stranger over Thanksgiving in the late 90s, before we had dating apps and easy transfer of JPEGs, blew up in my face. There are several others. But we live, we learn, right?
Relatedly, the failure of my marriage and its aftermath–emotional pain I wouldn’t wish on anyone–taught me more about myself and relationships than any other experience I will ever have. So did struggling to get into law school back in the early 90s. So did not making shareholder/partner at my firm and watching others, some of whom who started off as paralegals and contract attorneys, grab that brass ring before I did. So did every breakup and lost friendship. These painful failures have been grindstones for my spiritual and emotional evolution. They’ve helped me develop emotional intelligence and crystallize my values, while taming my ego, pride, and illusory ambitions.
I’m sure there will be more to come. It truly sucks when its happening–no one wants to fail or feel the pain of failure–but the lessons taught by failure are invaluable.
End relationships when necessary.
This is a hard one because it’s not an exact science, is it? We’re born into family relationships, so we’ve known some of these people our entire lives. Indeed, some of the most dysfunctional relationships derive from our own family. Then there are people we willingly choose to bring into our lives: lovers, significant others, spouses, partners, and friends. Every non-familial relationship starts off positively and brings joy to our lives, sometimes for years. Decades. But this principle holds that regardless of how long a relationship has existed, or how deeply it has been felt, not every relationship deserves to, or should, continue.
Putting aside catastrophic occurrences, the ‘Holy fuck, you really did that to me?’ situations, which have been rare in my life but happened a couple of times this year, it’s not always easy to know when to end a relationship. For me, it’s a feel thing. An intuitive feeling I get that persists and won’t go away. The feeling that something isn’t going where I want it to. Or something that happens or is said that’s simply a bridge too far for me. I trust my intuition like nothing else. It’s not always accurate but it usually is. My intuition tells me when it’s time to go, even if my heart has other ideas.
Sidenote: When your head and your heart don’t agree on a course of action and start attacking each other, it’s quite unpleasant.
A corollary to this principle is to never fixate on one person when a relationship ends. Don’t get stalk-y. Travis Bickle-y. The world is full of people who can make us happy. Many people. This Hollywood creation of ‘soul mates’ and the idea that there’s ‘one special person’ out there for everyone is a crime against humanity. It’s just not true. If and when a romantic relationship ends, lick your wounds as long as you need to, but rest assured that there are any number of people out there who could make you just as happy, if not more so, than the person you just left. But this will never happen if you fixate on that last person, live in the past, and sabotage yourself from pursuing someone new. In fact, you may fuck up a good new thing.
Now a word or two about ‘friends.’ I have some great friends. Ride or die types. People I have known for most of my life who, whenever we see each other, even after a long separation, pick up exactly where we left off. These are rich, layered relationships that transcend decades. These people care about me and genuinely want good things for me, and vice-versa. They’re happy for me when good things happen, and they’re rocks for me when bad things happen. They knew me in grade school or high school or college and have seen me at different stages of my life, so they know who I am and what I’m about. This brings authenticity, honesty, and vulnerability to our interactions and relationships. There are no masks between us because we’re not capable of it. In fact, if one of us tried to put up a wall or a mask, the other would see right through that shit and mockery would ensue.
I value these people so much, even if I rarely see them or talk to them. I know I will eventually see them again, and when I do, it’ll be like putting on my favorite winter coat. These friends and our long, shared history together, are irreplaceable.
Then there’s the other type of so-called ‘friend’. Inauthentic, passive-aggressive fakes. Selfish pretenders. The word ‘friend’ is a misnomer for these frauds. The word hasn’t been invented for people who start off as a friend, who may have experienced some major life events with you over long periods of time, but who eventually prove themselves to be disingenuous liars. It’s important to weed those fuckers out of your life as soon as they tell on themselves, because they always do. I despise fake people and fake friends are the worst fucking version. Don’t be afraid to cut them out of your life when necessary. It’s part of knowing your value.
Expose yourself to people who are different from you.
This one’s pretty straightforward. We’re born and raised in a bubble. Get out of your bubble. Get to know people who are different from you. People from other walks of life, races, and other countries. It has never been easier to do this. Even if we don’t encounter this in our personal lives, social media allows us to access different people like never before. I don’t know many African-Americans personally, which is on me, but I’ve gotten to know and understand an African-American perspective on race relations, police, voting, and social issues by following and interacting with them on Twitter, most of whom are Raiders fans like me. It’s been eye-opening to say the least. Also, travel. Get out of the United States, visit a foreign country, and talk to the people there about the United States and everything else. The education and richness it will add to your life are immeasurable. One of the greatest gifts my mother ever gave me was taking me to Europe at a young age and having me get to know my Italian uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandmother in a real way. It’s had a huge impact on me and the person I am.
Think critically, always question, and look beyond yourself.
Lazy thinking is a disease. Jumping to conclusions, not recognizing one’s biases, blindly accepting an opinion without chewing, being demagogued into voting a certain way or hating a particular group of people are some of the symptoms of this mental disorder. People who think this way are not fully evolved. They’re ignorant and often bigoted. This sounds arrogant, but IDGAF. We should all strive to think critically, ask questions, and look beyond ourselves and our immediate lives and contemplate the greater whole. This requires getting out of our social, racial, and ideological bubbles, meeting people different from us, and testing our opinions by listening to another point of view and keeping an open mind before we reach a conclusion on something. I also think it’s important to care about people beyond our immediate family and friends. I’m always stunned when I encounter people who do not give a fuck about anyone outside their personal circle. There seem to be a lot of those people in the ‘Me First’ United States, which is one reason I eventually want to get the fuck out of here and live somewhere else.
Humor and music will keep you off the ledge.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that humor and comedy lie at the very core of my soul. No, I don’t walk around giggling at everything in the world like a crazy person. Nor do I find everything or everyone funny. But I do look for the humor in everything, even the bad shit that happens. Because everything that occurs in life has a funny side to it. You just need to find it. Even death. When my father was lying in his hospice bed, there were a few times we thought he’d passed away because he stopped breathing. The first time it happened my mother went up to him and put an ear to his mouth to listen for his breathing. After ten seconds she said she thought he’d died and we should call the nurse. Then all of a sudden he let out this DEEEEEEP LOUUUDDD snore right into her face, which was inches from his. The kind of bullhorn snore you’d hear on a sleep apnea commercial. It scared the living shit out of my mother and made her jump off the bed. My sisters and I were in fucking tears laughing about this for days afterwards. It brought sorely needed levity to one of the worst experiences in my life. It still cracks me up when I think about it.
Humor can be found in the most difficult of moments. It’s helped me survive some very dark days, and it’s most important to laugh when we’re feeling our lowest. Now a sense of humor–the right sense of humor–is central to what I look for in another person. It’s a conflict lubricant in any relationship. Most of my good friends are funny as fuck. And E. helped me realize that I can have it in a romantic relationship too, and it’s pretty awesome when it’s there. Next level. I need someone who likes to laugh and can laugh at herself. But not everyone is funny or thinks I’m funny. A great sense of humor is hard to find in a person. But I look for it now in a way that I never did before.
Music. I listen to music all day long, just ask Spotify. Music is a miracle drug that can cure the most sour mood. The right playlist lets me wallow in my sadness when I feel like it, while another can lift my spirits when I most need it to. I can meditate on a lyric for an entire day, letting it seep into my consciousness and germinate there. The right song can take me back to a specific time in my life–Italian 70’s and 80’s pop, for example–or conjure up a long-buried feeling that I thought was gone forever. My father’s favorite singers, Johnny Horton, the Beach Boys, Roy Orbison, Frank Sinatra, can make me tear up on the spot. Music is emotional ambrosia for the soul, and it’s free.
I’m proud to say that I’ve passed my love of music on to my daughter. I’ve been singing to her and playing music for her since she was an infant. When my marriage was cratering, I’d hold her in my arms and sing ‘Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head’, holding back my tears. Now she misappropriates my Spotify with regularity because music does for her what it does for me. I hear her playing her favorite artists–Olivia Rodrigo, Sia, Miley Cyrus, AJR, and Noah Kahan–in her room and singing along with them while she does other things. I’ve introduced her to Yacht Rock Radio, Toto, AC/DC, Night Ranger, and Journey (among 1000 other bands), and she’s introduced me to artists she loves, like the aforementioned. Music is a blessing for both of us, and it’s gifted us another spirit connection that she’ll carry with her long after I’m gone.
Time is the most valuable commodity. Don’t waste it.
You can make money. You can buy silver, gold, diamonds, and the rarest of gems. You can grow food from the ground. What you can’t make or buy or grow is more time. Time is the most valuable and rarest commodity in the world, the only one we can’t measure or quantify because we don’t know how much of it we have left. Not even Jeff Bezos can buy more of it. An irreplaceable slice of time disappears every second of our lives, so it’s critical that we spend our time wisely. As much as possible, we need to seek out people and situations that bring us the most joy and happiness, and enrich our lives the most in the limited time we have allotted. This is the ultimate goal of my creed, and why I wanted to share it with you.
