Only when we've lost everything are we free to do anything 

 

 Sometimes, the things we fight hardest to achieve end up costing us the most. 

But it doesn't mean the effort was a waste. 

Every experience can teach us something if we choose to receive the lesson. 

But what we learn may completely surprise us.

 

As long as the sun rises on your life, there will be new dragons to slay.

 

when the imagination is limitless, life's possibilities are endless

phlebotomy

 

Before the advent of surgery, many illnesses were treated with phlebotomy, also known as bloodletting. 

Bloodletting is the withdrawal of blood from a patient to prevent or cure illness and disease.

It was one of the most common medical practices performed by surgeons from ancient Greece until the late 19th century. 

The practice has largely been abandoned because we now know that in the overwhelming majority of cases, the use of bloodletting is harmful to patients.

 And yet, we did it as a standard medical practice for over 2,000 years. 

It wasn't a blip in the history of medicine. It was an era. 

For decades, many doctors were convinced that bloodletting was harming more than it helped. But just as many were convinced that it was the only cure. 

Doctors, like most human beings, are risk-averse. They prefer the safety of what they know over the thrill of new innovations. 

 change requires incontrovertible proof, which is not always easy to come by. 

It has been theorized that surgery itself is just an era that will pass. But that's a long way away.

 And in the meantime, there are eras within eras. 

We discover new science, we posit, prove new theories. And then we bang our heads against the wall trying to convince ourselves to actually change our practices in line with what we know.

 Because the end of an era is easier said than done.

still alive

 

 Being alive, it's everything. 

Time to celebrate.

 And yes, time for pain. 

Time to change. To grow. To love. 

And time to give.

The four Zen mottos

 

 “special transmission outside doctrine,” 

“not to establish language,” 

“direct point to the mind,”

 and 

“seeing into one's nature and attaining the Buddhahood,

The essence of Zen

 

 attempting to understand the meaning of life directly, 

without being misled by logical thought or language

Zen

 

enlightenment is achieved through the profound realization that one is already an enlightened being.

Zen

 

simplicity, 

present-moment awareness, 

nonduality, 

nonconceptual understanding, 

and zazen (“just sitting”) meditation

Zen philosophy

 

the denial of the ego, 

the focus on interconnectedness in the universe, 

the recognition of attachment as a source of suffering, 

and the realization that human perception is faulty

 

• Raindrops on roses
• Happy Disney animals
• This makes my parts hurt

 

• • Watching white moon face
  • The stars never feel anger
  • Blah, blah, blah, the end
• 
  

 

• • A tiger can smile
  • A snake will say it loves you
  • Lies make us evil
• • 
    

 

• • Flowers bloom and die
  • Wind brings butterflies or snow
  • A stone won't notice
• • 
    
• 
  

 

• • The blood, is it mine?
  • Yeah, I say. Some of it.
  • This is a wrong answer
• • 
    

 

• • • Without just one nest
    • A bird can call the world home
    • Life is your career
  • • 
      

 

• Worker bees can leave
• Even drones can fly away
• The queen is their slave 

 

you are not special, 

you are not a beautiful and unique snowflake

Slide

 

No distractions. 

The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide.

 needs to let things go. 

To allow yourself to not be bothered by everything.

 

“First, You've Gotta Know – Not Fear, Know – That Someday, You're Gonna Die.”

 

Sometimes, when you think the storm has passed, you realize you were just in the eye of it.

 

Experts say the more resilient we are, the better we can face life's challenges. 

And the single biggest factor for cultivating resilience? Positive relationships. 

So find your people and keep them close.

 Because when you're at your lowest, those people get you through.

 

when tidal waves hit, there are often people watching on shore. They see the disaster coming, see the horizon disappearing. They don't really see until it's too late.  while it's good to plan for the worst, you can't really know how you'll handle it until you're smack dab in the middle of it, under the wave, trying not to drown. Disaster has a tendency to melt away everything else in life.  So if you want to know who you'll be in a disaster, ask yourself, "Who am I now?"

 

Most people believe that who they are today is pretty much who they will still be in the future.

 Our minds trick us into thinking our entire history, every choice, every change and chance, has led to this specific moment, 

what we call now.

 

Your body contains approximately 35 trillion cells, and every one of them is constantly being pulled down to Earth by gravity. 

When you're lying down, gravitational forces are spread between the thorax, abdomen, and legs. Stand up too fast and blood rushes downward, away from the brain. It causes dizziness or even fainting. 

It's a minor miracle our cells get anything done at all. Because the human body has to perform even the simplest of tasks under unimaginable pressure. 

You would think weightlessness is a good thing, but it's not. Because people weren't meant to float. 

Without gravity, we lose blood volume, bone density, muscle. Without it, we're untethered.

 So when you feel yourself being pulled toward something, it's not necessarily a bad thing. It may keep you centered. 

It may keep you safe.

Life expectancy.

 

And what is a heartbeat if not a ticking clock?

A clock that's always counting down. 

The heart beats until it can't. Our limbs move until they don't. Our brains imagine futures we'll never see. 

We're struggling to overcome a simple, inescapable truth: everything ends.

 But for every clock that counts down, another restarts. 

Time goes on, and when one thing ends, something new always begins.

 

Some of the world's top trauma specialists have proven that our brains may forget the traumas we survive, but our bodies, especially our nervous systems, always keep score. 

Memories are stored in our shoulders, spines, stomach or hands, without us ever knowing. We assume a painful backache or shaky hand is something harmless, random, but it could be more. It might be our bodies reminding us of what we've endured and warning us not to let it happen again. 

Trauma doesn't tell time. It can't tell if we're eight or forty one, if our kids have the chicken pox or if we have the biggest challenges of our lives to perform. 

And when it sneaks up on us, it's easy to think we're right back at square one. 

But the truth is, even when our brain convinces us we're lost, if we try hard enough, our bodies always remind us there's a way back. 

And prepares us for whatever fight lies ahead.

 

. Some things will get better, others could get worse.

 Because when you let your guard down, you're a lot more likely to go down a dangerous path.

 

Here's a partial list of chemicals that our bodies produce when we're falling in love.

PEA is a natural form of amphetamine. It puts us on high alert.

 Pheromones produced from DHEA create an inexplicable sense of wellbeing and comfort.

 Oxytocin has been called the cuddle hormone and it stimulates the secretion of dopamine, oestrogen and LHRH. 

This cascade of feel-good hormones and neurotransmitters is also generally accompanied by poor judgment. 

No wonder they call it crazy in love. 

When we're in love, the prefrontal cortex, where we make most of our good, rational decisions, goes into sleep mode. And the amygdala, which activates our threat response defenses, calls in sick. 

Which leaves us pretty vulnerable to take more risks.

And left alone without our normal neurological protections, we might find ourselves in dangerous and unexpected places we normally wouldn't dream of going.

In sickness and in health.

 

 In sickness and in health. 

For better or worse. In sickness and in health, they say. 

It sounds so final, so binding. 

But it just means you have to be there. You have to really want to be there. For whatever is coming. 

And we don't know. It could all pan out the way we want, the way it's supposed to be

. Or it could be so much worse.

 

 If only life's variables were as cut and dried as the rules of mathematics. 

If only there were clear answers, certainty, clarity, right or wrong. 

But all you can do is eliminate as many unknowns as possible. 

Then pick an answer and hope. 

Hope that at the end of the day, it's an answer you can live with.

 

"Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should." 

 That's how records are broken, how moons are stepped on, diseases are cured, by people who are willing to try. 

We call these people innovators. Fearless. Genius. We call them reckless. Thoughtless. Dangerous.

 It's hard to know which one we are. 

It's hard to know if what we're doing is just crazy or if it's going to change everything.

Blood is thicker than water

 

 Blood is thicker than water. 

It means the family you're born into is important above all else, right?

 Wrong. 

The original proverb goes a little differently. It actually says,

 "The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb."

 Meaning the bloodshed on the proverbial battlefield bonds us more than simple genetics. 

DNA matters when it comes to medical history. 

 family is family. 

don't give a crap whose blood you have.

Time

 

Time is a strange thing. 

When you're waiting for something good to happen, it can feel like time is dragging on. 

But when you want it to slow down, it goes by in the blink of an eye. 

The odd part is time isn't real. It's a concept imagined by scientists based on the imperfect movement of the Earth around the Sun. 

So why do we put so much importance on something that's just a theory? 

Because it's all we have.

 There's never enough time. Work. Kids. Life. Death. Something always cuts our time short.

 So our best bet is to make the most of the time we have. Or make up for lost time. 

But sometimes, if we're really lucky, time stands still.

 Some biologists believe that it's human nature to help. 

Scientists believe we're biologically programmed to empathize.

 it's one of the reasons our species has lasted this long. We have an innate instinct to support each other.

 You can only take care of yourself for so long.

Because, let's face it, some problems are way too big to carry on our own.

 

the truth is gonna come out sometime. 

And the one thing you can't do with the truth is hide from it. 

Because the truth is gonna come looking until it finds you.

 

In the early days of medicine, surgical students would perfect their sewing techniques on tree branches. 

Because when looking at an exposed bone in an amputation, human instinct is to recoil, not cut.

 get out of the habit of listening to instinct.

 

 So what about those times when there is no road map? Should we go with our gut then? If instinct is all we have, it's not always a bad thing. It can bring us wonderful places, joyful places.

 And it can also serve an important service, 'cause our gut is usually what warns us when trouble lies ahead.

 

Just like we need food and water, humans need each other. 

A brain study revealed that when placed in an MRI, a patient's reward center lit up when another person sat in the room.

 Neurons fire when we talk to someone, think about someone, and they go haywire when we hold someone's hand. Our brains and bodies are actually programmed to seek each other out and connect.

 So then why do so many people prefer being alone? Why do we often run for the hills when we feel the slightest connection? Why do we feel compelled to fight what we're hardwired to do?

 Maybe it's because when we find someone or something to hold onto, that feeling becomes like air. And we're terrified we're going to lose it. And trust me, you can get pretty good at the alone thing. 

But most things are better when they're shared with someone else.

 

There is a portion of the cerebral cortex of your brain folded deep within an area between the temporal and frontal lobes. 

It's called the insula and it's where desire starts. 

The insula is only about the size of a pea, but what it triggers in our bodies, and by extension in our lives, can be epic. 

We'd like to imagine that we're in control, but more often than not, the chemicals in our brain control us. The insula lights up and we're compelled to change our lives. 

Compelled by longing. 

Compelled by yearning. 

Compelled by desire for more.

 

 In Japan, when a piece of pottery breaks, some potters fill the cracks with gold. 

The potters, they see the repair as something beautiful. They know that the unexpected happens. Change happens. They know that nobody gets through this world in one piece.

 That doesn’t have to diminish us. The cracks are part of our history. They will always be with us. They made us better. They made us stronger. 

They made us something new.

 

Fixing your mental health isn't like surgery. 

You can't just run the blood work and check the vitals.

With mental health, progress is way harder to measure and if something's wrong, we have to take action. There's a lot of uncertainty. There's a lot of fear.

 And what might be easy for one person, for someone else might take inner strength you can't even imagine. 

But we have to try. We have to stand up to our demons. We have to face reality whenever possible and ask for help when we can't. 

And when we do that, healing is possible.

 

Life doesn't owe us a thing. 

It just is. 

Like a river, it goes where it goes. 

You can try to fight against the current. Or you can learn to ride it. 

 All day, every day, we fight against the current.

 Sometimes we lose, sometimes we win. 

Sometimes, the current carries us exactly where we need to go

. And sometimes, it slams us right into the rocks.

 

24 hours. 

1,440 minutes.

 86,400 seconds. 

 One day can bring you back from the brink, change your entire life in one heartbeat, one single breath.

 That's all it takes to save your life. To change your life. 

One single day can pull us from the depths of despair.

 And one single day can fill us with more possibilities than we could imagine.

 

On average, a healthy heart beats 115,000 times per day. 

When excited, the heart rate can double. 

The heart pumps 2,000 gallons of blood through your entire body 24 hours a day. 

It never rests.

 The heart is the hardest-working muscle in your body. 

But when it’s damaged, it’s just like skin. It scars, and scar tissue can be very dangerous in a heart. It weakens it. And eventually, a heart full of scars stops working.

 Scarred hearts don’t heal, but over time, the scars can change. 

They can become smoother, softer. 

And some scars can even fade away.

 

Unlike the laws of science, the rules of life aren't always clear. 

Some rules are unwritten. Some rules are open to interpretation. 

And just when we think we have a handle on the rules, something comes along that totally changes the game.

 

When you hold on to anything for too long, your muscles conform to the position you're holding.

 That applies to the heart and the mind, as well as the hand. 

The pain you know is coming is what makes it easier to just keep holding on.

 

We've all heard the quote: "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." 

Easy for Thomas Edison to say. He had all the good ideas. 

Inspiration is not some mystical, unattainable thing. Inspiration is a seed. That seed turns into vision. That vision turns into a goal. 

And hopefully, that goal turns into victory.

 I said, hopefully.

Job

 

In the course of one day, Job received four messages, each with separate news that his livestock, servants, and ten children had all died. 

He continued to be a faithful servant. He still prays to God. He persevered. 

Job's faith was tested and he passed the test. And for his faith, God rewarded Job with twice what he had before. 

“Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” That's what Jesus said on the cross before he died.

 "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" 

Job asked the question, too. But he kept the faith. And what did he get for it? Replacement children. PTSD. 

Was it worth it to have been a faithful servant?

 Or would it have been better to just curse God's name from the beginning? Where was God throughout all of Job's suffering and pain? He was winning a bet with Satan. 

Makes you wonder where He is through all of the unfairness and inequity and cruelty in the world. 

Where is He now?

 

We are forced to acknowledge the mysteries of life. 

We're forced to acknowledge that certain kinds of magic exist. 

And that history, and memory, and the ghosts of our past, are sometimes just as tangible as anything we can hold in our hands.

 

When we come to depend on a cycle, the thought of breaking it is scary. 

Even if the cycle causes harm. 

But sometimes, when we break the cycle, we find something better, something unexpected. Something we never dared to dream was possible. 

We find freedom. 

We find peace.

 

 when the brain is faulty, it's a big re-wiring job and there's no margin for error. 

When you're going into surgery, you worry you won't wake up

 But with brain surgery, you worry you will wake up but you won't be there when you do. 

Something for the Pain by Bon Jovi

 

Happiness, it's been no friend to me
But forever after ain't what it's all cracked up to be
Yeah, I had a taste, you were my fantasy
But I almost lost my faith when I hit reality
I don't need no Guru to tell me what to do
When your feeling like a headline on yesterday's news

Loneliness has found a home in me

My suitcase and guitar are my only family
I've tried to need someone, like they needed me
I opened up my heart, but all I did was bleed
I don't need no lover, just to get screwed, 
They don't make no band-aide that's gonna to cover my bruise

Pull me under (Help I'm falling)
Run through my veins (Night is calling)
To a place (Feels like I'm flying)
Where I feel no pain (Christ I'm dying)
Be the pillow under my head
Cover me when I'm in your bed
Take me higher than I've ever been
Take me down and back again
Come to me, be my disguise
Open your coat, let me crawl inside

Come on, come on, come on
Give me something for the pain
Give me something for the blues
Give me something for the pain
When I feel I've been danglin' from a hang-man's noose
Give me shelter from the rain
Give me something I can use
To get me through the night
Make me feel all right
Something like you, come on, come on, come on

 

"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional." 

maybe they didn't mean physical pain. 

Maybe they meant the other kind, the worse kind. 

Maybe they meant the kind of searing, seething, boiling pain that tells you you're a failure and a fraud.

 Suffering is optional. 

That person didn't know what the fuck they were talking about.

 

When we can't avoid pain, we try to understand it with pithy little quotes that we can wrap our heads around, like 

"suffering is optional", 

or 

"time heals all wounds". 

And my personal favorite, "Every pain has a purpose." 

God, I hope that one's true.

 

When life forces us to do something impossible an explosion happens inside the body. 

A rush of hormones blasts through us, making us stronger, making us faster. Biology overrides fear and that makes the impossible possible. 

Nobody wakes up thinking: "My world will explode today. My world will change." Nobody thinks that. 

But, sometimes, it happens. 

Sometimes, we wake up, we face our fears. We take them by the hand

. And we stand there waiting, hoping, ready for anything.

 

Our skulls cushion our brains. 

Our rib cage guards our hearts. 

The body is built to protect our most vulnerable parts. 

At least that's how it's supposed to work. 

The body adapts. It protects itself.

 But it can't close off completely, or we're not really living, right? 

So we leave the door open just a little, hoping like hell it's worth the risk.

 

Turbulence. 

It means anything from a few little bumps to a catastrophic weather system that could knock your flying tin can right out of the air. 

We've hit a snag, a bump in the road. 

Turbulence. So, you know, you better buckle up.

 One of the most unpredictable things about encountering turbulence is its aftermath.

 Everything's been shaken up. Undone. Turned on its head. 

So, if you have the choice to avoid the plane crash, do you take it? Do you play it safe? 

Or do you get on board and take your chances?

Entropy

 

Stuff comes apart. 

An eggshell's never gonna come back together. A window will never unbreak. 

It's called the second law of thermodynamics. 

It's also called life.

 Stuff rarely comes together, but it will always come apart. 

Everything comes apart at some point. We all will. It's the law. It's what we're designed to do.

 We have to face it and accept it, and try to hold it together, for as long as we can.

 

Freezing. Choking. Getting tongue-tied. 

It's what we call it when your mind goes from brilliant to blank.

 You can prepare all you want, but the feeling can still hit you, out of nowhere. 

So when it hits you, when your mind shuts down, when you open your mouth and no words come out, the good news is, it happens to all of us. Freezing. Choking. Getting tongue-tied.

 There's a reason it happens. We lose our words because the stakes are so high and we have so much to lose. 

We're petrified of saying too much or saying it wrong, when the truth is the only wrong thing you could say is nothing at all.

 

There's an old story of a father who had two sons. 

When he knew a civil war was about to break out, he sent one son to fight for the North, and one to the South. He figured if he had sons on both sides, there'd be a better chance one would survive. 

when you fight a war at home, the casualties are your neighbors, your friends, your family, leaving you all alone. 

War isn't civil. You pick sides and defend them. You attack. You hurt people. You get hurt. You fight, and you fight, and you fight. To what end? What are we fighting against? What are we fighting for? 

When is it time to just quit all of this nonsense and simply surrender?

Reunions

 

I don't do reunions. 

I don't need to make superficial conversation with a bunch of people I barely remember. 

If I wanna keep someone in my life, I keep them in my life. 

Or, maybe it's just that I don't know how to get rid of them.

 I don't do reunions, but I can see why people do. 

They can make you feel like you haven't felt in a long time. It's comfy. It's familiar. It's kind of like coming home. You see how people turned out, if they realized their hopes and dreams, or if they have lost their hopes and dreams. 

Or maybe you see that they have found what we all should find: brand new hopes and dreams.

Murphy's Law

 

In 1949, Edward Murphy conducted a rocket sled experiment to see how much pressure a human being could withstand. 

Murphy's experiment failed spectacularly, over and over. 

Needless to say, he didn't start off on the right foot. 

That's why it's called Murphy's law. 

Because if anything can go wrong, it will. 

Once things start going wrong, it's hard to break the cycle. Murphy's law is not physics. It's just a thing a guy said to try and make sense of a crappy day. 

Just because things go wrong, it doesn't mean they're out of our control. It's on us to fix things. It's on us to take everything that can go wrong, and make it go right.

 It's on us to try, anyway.

 

Everybody wants privacy for themselves. 

For other people, not so much. 

We have to keep something to ourselves, or else anyone can get to us. They'll see the stuff we don't show anyone. 

So we build the walls high and wide, and we lock the gates.

 

We all have heroes. 

People we look up to. People we aspire to be, who teach us how to be greater than we are because they are greater than we are. 

They're great if we don't look too closely. 'Cause if we get too close, we realize heroes are just regular people. And regular people can fail us. 

Our heroes aren't special. They're just people. They're like us. They're just trying to survive. They're trying to be happy. Trying to do better. Be better. Feel better

 Heroes aren't more special, more courageous than the rest of us. After all, they're only human. They hurt. They break. They bleed.

 But sometimes, every once in a while, when it matters, they get it right. And that changes everything. 

A hero is only human, but that's the point. If they can do it, so can you. 

So, you keep going. You don't give up. You stand tall. You fight. 

You always show up to save the day.

 

There's this family in Italy, who never slept. 

They suffered from a genetic disease that kept them awake, for months. Until their bodies just shut down. 

Even after all these years, scientists still don't really know why we sleep. We just know we have to sleep, because without it, we make poor decisions, we say things we shouldn't, and sometimes, we see things that aren't there. 

We've all hit that point of exhaustion. The point where nothing makes sense anymore. Your body hurts, your brain becomes foggy, and you feel like you're trapped in a tunnel. When all you want is your bed. 

So, how do you keep going? How do you not just sit down and give up?

 Sometimes it's easy. Sometimes you play games in your head. You make up someone. Someone good. 

Whatever you need. 

To keep you going.