Daily Prompt – 1926

What gives you direction in life?

Honestly, I don’t know.

I stumbled on a word long ago: coddiwomple

My direction was -est, not east or west. I wanted to be the best, smartest, coolest, richest, hottest whatever-est. anything but the piece of shit I am and feel like. Everything meant something, everything was a goal, a mission, a way to scream at people, look how awesome I am, tell me how awesome I am! But, the veneer cracked, and now I’m generally embarrassed about everything, lost, hopeless and in despair if I let myself think too much. Or I can breathe, and look around. I’m here, I’m alive, and if a butterfly can cause a monsoon, I don’t know what leads where. Even if I think I do. I do not know where I’m going or what I’m doing, and I just gotta accept that and do the shit I feel pushed to do and see where I get.

I coddiwomple. I don’t have any specific direction. There’s a lot of things I’d like to do, places I’d like to go, or whatever, of course. But one thing I have always struggled with is simply being present. Being here now as Ram Dass always said. Taking everything as it comes. Doing shit purely for the purpose of doing it, no shade from the tree planted, no fruit of the karma, just doing it bc something said to or I felt like it or whatever. Sipping the wine of life lived, not thought. It feels like I have spent so much of my life meticulously planning a surprise party whilst demanding to be surprised. How the hell can anybody surprise anyone if you’re always expecting and demanding? Like, the voice kind of was firm to really shut up and do shit without thinking about why or even how. Stay out of my head and in my freaking life, the end.

…Have you seen Christmas Vacation?

So in this clip, Ellen tells Clark how “he sets expectations so high, no family can live up to it.” I was watching this movie for probably the 111th time, and it kinda felt like a cuntpunch wake up call in the weirdest way possible. Ironically, an epiphany I had on the epiphany, years ago, so I thought that too meant something, because “I’m special” and I’ll leave the interpretation open ended there.

My apostrophe was: I do this shit constantly. It’s like when good imagination goes bad – I just build up scenarios of how shit will be and when shit is inevitably nothing like whatever I imagined, I mourn or grieve something that resided completely in my brain. I lose the flavor of reality, jonesing for whatever idyllic scenario I imagined. It doesn’t apply to big things like Christmas, I’m talking even simple shit like people raving about whatever I cooked, going somewhere, hell, literally anything and everything I write. it can be cool, because I can push myself to be better, but in general, it’s just a way I have learned to lose happiness. Hell is stealing your own joy while watching yourself do it, helpless to stop… hell is thinking.

Not for nothing, but my biggest confusion regarding delusions of grandeur is the implication they stop and start for people. Not I. Everything and anything is ripe for delusions of grandeur, except I struggle to see them as delusions. And it gets confusing with so many, if you imagine it, you can do it, law of attraction, manifestation, etc. all over. So are they delusions, imagination, what? Is it a delusion of grandeur to believe if I can make hell for myself, I gotta be able to do the opposite too? I again have to think if there is mental illness, there is mental wellness, which means a delusion of grandeur could have imagination of greatness right? It’s a spectrum of how much these things help or harm, right!

I don’t know, but the net results in the past tends to leave me disappointed. I used to say all the time that anything I set my mind to, I can do, but I’m kind of tired of being soooo freaking proficient at self sabotage and destruction. But, the problems always are: am I thinking about it, or am I imagining? The two aren’t the same, and I think one is way more powerful than the other, but I think we’re all so addicted to thinking, we think we’re imagining now, or we think thinking will do something, etc.

And it all comes back to this thought that “I am in control, I know what I’m doing, I this and I that.” Yet, we don’t even know how we breathe. We are all a wind up doll that has no idea when the keys will stop turning. I think I set goals, direction, whatever, but I know that is the very delusion. I heard, very clearly, this week during auditory hallucination meditation “We’ve done it your way so long, when will you just trust us?”

And of course I started asking a lot of questions, but all I kept getting back, really was if I cannot trust myself, cannot trust my own mind, cannot even believe myself that if I say I will do x, it’ll get done… everything in your life is chance, and it always will be because you change your mind too frequently. Your direction changes with the wind, with urges, with emotion.

The people that get where they want to be go there. They don’t listen to anything but their internal GPS, etc. They talk of intuition, imagination, etc. This insight alone came beyond thought once I finally came into imagination.

“No direction, but to never fight her flow, no direction but a faith in her decision.” Puscifer, Green Valley

So what the hell is my point? This entire post is a coddiwomple, really. But it is what I’m turning over to. I find that all of my expectations, goals, whatever generally lead me to the same place. It doesn’t matter your direction, the shit you have goes with you. But, I know beyond all the noise, distractions, and delusions, that it is impossible to go or be anywhere but exactly as intended. It is a constant remembering of this truth and letting go to thinking and get into imagining.

It’s like, if a kid imagines their cardboard box as a rocket ship, they don’t get pissed because it’s a cardboard box. When you’re imagining, possibilities are infinite. When you’re thinking, they’re limited. Thinking is clinging, imagining is letting go. Happiness is whatever you make it out to be, and to me, that’s always been a synonym for heaven. Jesus said something about being like a kid to know heaven… and if my kids show me anything, it’s how much they fucking suck at following directions…

I suck at following directions too, can’t follow recipes to save my life. And I think that’s why I keep “accidentally” re-routing myself to Hell, until I really fucking stop.

There is no direction because there is nowhere to go. If anything, it’s far more about clearing the roads then traveling them. You are the very home, you are everything, everywhere, all at once (suuuuch a good movie omg). You are the thing you’re seeking, you’re just it. If there is any direction, it’s just you going back to you til you find yourself.