Ocean Yoga & Wellness

Years ago, I was sitting in the car getting ready to speak to about a hundred people at a yoga festival.

My daughter was around eight.

She looked over at me making notes and said,

“Daddy, don’t tell me you’re just getting ready for this now.”

I said, “Kinda.”

She said, “My God. I would be so nervous and scared. Aren’t you scared?”

Of course I was.

I told her:

“Baby, fearlessness is not the absence of fear. It’s feeling the fear and doing it anyway.”

I still think about that.

We spend so much time trying to get rid of anxiety that we rarely ask what it might actually be telling us.

Sometimes anxiety doesn’t mean stop.

Sometimes it means:

"This matters to me."

I wrote about that in my latest piece, 'Maybe Anxiety Means You Care.'

Read it on Substack (link in my bio) or in the comments.

Since when did ordinary become not good enough?

When did we decide that life had to be extraordinary before it was worth paying attention to?

Because the difference between ordinary and extraordinary is mostly perception.

It has very little to do with what is happening outside of us.

And since when did slow become so taboo?

Everybody is looking for a cheat code.

A faster way.

A shortcut.

Some way to get there quicker.

Wherever there is.

A faster way to get nowhere.

Meanwhile, everything we are actually looking for is right here.

Right now.

This moment.

This breath.

This life.

Everything outside of that is but a dream.

The mind travelling into the future.

The mind travelling into the past.

Making up things that haven’t happened.

Replaying things that already have.

And causing us pain in places that don’t even exist anymore.

We rush through the morning to get to the afternoon.

Rush through the week to get to the weekend.

Rush through one year waiting for the next one to be better.

Always going somewhere.

Always trying to become something.

Always thinking the next thing is the thing.

And I wonder how much of my life I have missed that way.

Not because it wasn’t good.

Because I wasn’t there.

I was somewhere else in my head.

True joy and contentment aren’t out there.

They’re not waiting for us when we finally get enough money, lose enough weight, heal enough, achieve enough, or become some better version of ourselves.

They’re here.

But we have to be quiet enough to notice.

We have to stop long enough to actually be where we are.

We have to let the heart open to the life that is already happening.

And then nothing changes.

But somehow everything does.

The same room.

The same street.

The same people.

The same life.

Only now we are actually in it.

And the ordinary becomes extraordinary.

I stood here today
doing nothing heroic,

just standing here
with the whole damn world
pouring itself into me.

Light on the trees.
Air moving through the afternoon.
Some ordinary corner of this earth
suddenly too beautiful to bear.

And I thought:

Jesus.

I spent my whole life running.

Running from silence.
Running from my own skin.
Running toward the next thing,
the next person,
the next high,
believing the next version of myself
would know how to live.

And all this time

life was here.

Quiet as dirt.

Waiting.

And now I can stop.

That’s the miracle.

I just stopped.

And there it was.

This ridiculous, precious life.

This body.
This breath.
This afternoon.
This sky that will never happen
exactly like this again.

I know now
that I am going to die.

Not someday in the abstract.

I mean I will actually die.

This heart will stop.
These eyes will close.
The world will keep turning
without asking my permission.

And strangely,
that doesn’t make life smaller.

It makes everything enormous.

A cup of coffee.
A hug from my daughter.
The cat purring against my heart.
Sun through a window.
Paint on my fingers.
Somebody laughing in another room.

All the small things
I rushed past
because I thought life
was somewhere else.

All of it temporary.
All of it leaving.
All of it holy
because it leaves.

Maybe that’s what the Buddha
was trying to tell us:

Don’t look away from death.

Look straight at it.

Let it burn the sleep out of you.

Because if you pretend
you have forever,
you can waste your whole life
waiting to begin.

Waiting to be healed.
To be ready.
To have enough money,
enough love,
enough certainty,
enough proof
that you are finally allowed
to be here.

But if you know the truth,

that this is finite,
that nobody gets to keep any of it,

then maybe you finally come home.

Maybe you stop trying
to outrun yourself.

Maybe you stand there
in the middle of an ordinary afternoon

with nothing to prove
and nowhere else to be

and realize

this was it.

This was the thing.

This was the life
you kept running past.

And all you can do
is stand there,
overwhelmed by it,
and whisper

thank you

thank you

thank you

for this one impossible life.

I don’t think men need another script for how to be men.

We’ve had enough of those.

Provider. Protector. Alpha. Nice guy. Good husband. Good father. Conscious man. Safe man. Strong man.

What if the goal isn’t to become a good man?

What if the goal is to become a whole one?

A man who can hold anger without becoming cruel.

Who can own desire without becoming entitled.

Who can be kind without abandoning himself.

Who can ask for help without believing it makes him weak.

Who can disappoint someone and still know he is a decent human being.

Not good.

Not bad.

Whole.

The anger. The tenderness. The fear. The loneliness. The desire. The grief. The contradictions.

All of it.

Because maybe men don’t need to keep performing better versions of masculinity.

Maybe we need places where we can stop performing long enough to find out what’s actually there.

My latest Substack:

The Problem With Being a Good Man

Read in bio / comments.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the point of all this healing.

There was a time when I thought wellness meant endlessly understanding myself.

Processing.

Healing.

Improving.

Working on myself.

Then working on the part of myself that was tired from working on myself.

At some point you have to ask:

When do I get to live?

Because surely we don’t heal just to become better healers of ourselves.

We heal so we can participate.

So music can hit us again.

So food tastes incredible.

So our bodies become places we inhabit rather than problems we manage.

So we can fall in love.

So we can have s*x.

So we can make art.

So we can touch and be touched.

So we can feel desire without shame.

So we can experience pleasure without immediately asking whether we deserve it.

So we can want our lives.

That’s what my new Substack is about.

Eroticism — not just as s*x, but as aliveness, creativity, presence, pleasure, hunger, desire, and the body remembering how to want.

The Body Wants More Than Calm.

You can check it out at the link in my bio or here:
https://tinyurl.com/564sxzs9

I’ve been thinking a lot about the point of all this healing.

There was a time when I thought wellness meant endlessly understanding myself.

Processing.

Healing.

Improving.

Working on myself.

Then working on the part of myself that was tired from working on myself.

At some point you have to ask:

When do I get to live?

Because surely we don’t heal just to become better healers of ourselves.

We heal so we can participate.

So music can hit us again.

So food tastes incredible.

So our bodies become places we inhabit rather than problems we manage.

So we can fall in love.

So we can have s*x.

So we can make art.

So we can touch and be touched.

So we can feel desire without shame.

So we can experience pleasure without immediately asking whether we deserve it.

So we can want our lives.

That’s what my new Substack is about.

Eroticism — not just as s*x, but as aliveness, creativity, presence, pleasure, hunger, desire, and the body remembering how to want.

The Body Wants More Than Calm.

You can check it out at the link in my bio or here: https://tinyurl.com/564sxzs9



https://tinyurl.com/564sxzs9