365

As of January 30, 2011 I have been in Rhode Island for a full year. It certainly doesn’t feel like it’s been that long. I certainly don’t think I’m a New Englander yet. I’ve had the chowder and the stuffies. I’ve watched a Patriots game on TV (still a Bears fan though!). I like the Red Sox more than the Yankees. Still, I keep expecting to wake up in my bed in California feeling the warm Santa Ana’s blowing the brown smog across the hazy sky. But alas, it is not to be.

We came out here with high hopes that things might be easier on Melissa and the kids while we try to figure out how to find some kind of cure for my M.S. Some things have been a little bit easier, but others have not really swung our way. It’s a much smaller community out here, and the schools have been wonderful. Back in Culver City we had more second graders than the entire student body of their entire school here. And while that’s great for educational purposes, it’s been harder for the kids to make friends.

We’re living in a picturesque neighborhood in a beautiful house that we would never have been able to get in L.A. But the state is much smaller with a miniscule job market translating to smaller salaries. So the struggle to pay bills is almost just as difficult as it used to be. Stress has unfortunately still been pretty high on that level.

As I write this looking out of my window at the beautiful layer of pristine frozen white covering the ground I wonder why I am complaining so much. Am I just ungrateful? Am I being a spoiled little brat? After all, the dog seems happy napping on the floor just outside the doorway and I’ve got the speakers blasting out some good tunes. What’s my real problem?

Rhode Island really is beautiful. The countryside is covered with more trees than I have ever seen in my life. The sky is a clear blue with no hint of the brown smog I grew up with. The air actually tastes good when I breathe. All the people that we’ve met so far have been really nice and genuinely friendly. Though they do all complain about living here, when we say we moved here from California they get a look on their face that says, “Are you fucking kidding me? What the hell did you come here for?” Occasionally they even say it out loud too. Actually, they say it pretty much every time.

I’m tired of being depressed all the time. I’m tired of being grumpy and pissed off at my limitations. I didn’t used to be like this. I’m not saying I was the happiest guy in the world. I was never one to put on a fake smile and run out into the world shouting, “Here I am!” But ever since my diagnoses there has been a weighted shadow over me that I can’t seem to lift out of my way.

I have brief moments of clarity when I can see through some of the bullshit in my head and I snap out of it. Then I fall down, or have to type with just my left hand for a couple of days and I crawl right back under the blanket. I can have a great morning and take the dog for a short walk, then come home and everything is so blurry it’s like I’m looking through melted and warped glasses. I have to sit down and close my eyes until they decide to focus again. Which sometimes can take until the next day.

Enough is enough already right? Is it too much to ask for some normal normalcy?

Unfortunately it seems that happiness is elusive. In almost all cultures it is close to impossible. We are taught from an early age that we need all of these things to be happy. We have to be popular. We have to be attractive. We have to be thin. We have to wear the right clothes. We have to listen to the right music. We have to be like the people on TV and in the movies. We have to have the Jennifer Anniston haircut or the Brad Pitt six-pack. We have to fit securely inside the mold whatever society we live in provides for us.

Even religion makes it tough. The Jews had to suffer to escape the Pharaoh and wander through the desert for thirty years in order to find their home and build some sort of happiness. Jesus had to withstand whippings, beatings and eventually be nailed to a cross until he died so that he could be reborn. Siddhartha went through decades of starvation and self-imposed physical torture until he would eventually become the Buddha. Apparently there is no path to happiness that doesn’t first travel through suffering.

By no means am I comparing myself to Moses, Jesus or the Buddha. But there better be some sort of enlightenment heading my way or man am I gonna be pissed off. Not a very “enlightened” attitude I know! It comes and it goes.

Let me get back to our first anniversary in Rhode Island though. It has been an adventure and a struggle. It has been beautiful and wonderful experience too. While there are times I miss all of my family and friends back on the west coast, there are also times when I really love it here. The winter weather has helped me feel somewhat better physically which helps the head a little too.

I don’t know what the next year holds in store, but I wouldn’t have known that back in L.A. either. Hopefully we’ll make some new friends and get a chance to visit with some old ones too. I’m going to keep working on my hands and play drums a little bit every day. I’ll play guitar too. I’ll throw the ball around with the kids as much as I can. I’m sure I’ll fall down and drop sticks and fumble catches. Glasses will break and I’ll type left handed. I’ll keep on.

Melissa and I were watching a show on TV the other night. This stubbornly closed minded man was in India visiting with a Guru of extremely high regard. The Baba took this man into the Ganges and dipped him in the water three times with a blessing each submersion. The Baba had a gorgeous high-pitched laugh filled with such plentiful joy. Nothing was held back. There was no reservation in expressing any of his happiness and glee.

By the end of their visit, the stubborn man had not opened up to any of the experience at all. He complained about the coldness of the water and would not allow himself to change or really hear what the Baba had been trying to teach him. It was sad actually. I was only watching this on television and got more out of it than the stubborn man who was actually there.

The thing that struck me the most was something the Baba said when the stubborn man was leaving. He walked him to the gate, they bowed to each other and the Baba said, “Please love yourself.” It wasn’t so much the words as the way he spoke them. He really meant it. What a powerful blessing. Please love yourself.

Maybe that’s the start. Please Love Yourself. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Yet it’s the easiest thing in the world. I think that’s going to be my new “Peace out” or “Later bro”. No more “Take it easy” and “Have a good one”. And while I say it too all of you and really mean it, I’m saying to myself too.

Please Love Yourself.

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