Get your Shit Together Tom..
To ascend to the level of “Having your Shit together” we need to accomplish a few things.. & I think these are some of the most important goals to have in your life. As Confucius once said, “a man having their shit together can accomplish more in one year, than a random man if their shit’s on the walls & everywhere else..” paraphrasing.. (maybe it’s just me who said that?) Apparently it has a great deal to do with focus & organization. Not so much with cleaning your house, but that does have a psychological effect as well. But rather with how you deal with & organize your thoughts.
Meditative practice is completely focused on this idea. The idea of watching your thoughts as they naturally arise & then confronting them or simply letting them go if you understand why you’re having that thought. This is sometimes very difficult if you have a great amount of trauma or attachment to habits or relationships in your life. But I would like to suggest a simple analogy of the human being as a washing machine. Imagine your clothes are your thoughts. You probably see where I’m going already.. you wear your clothes everyday & eventually they start to smell rather sour.. so you have to confront this situation. If you decide not to, there are consequences.. Walking around & talking to other people smelling like BO & fox knuckles.. your friends & colleagues may cut you short, they may start to shun you. You may find yourself alone. You may find that you just “don’t like” to go out & socialize anymore. It has become a burden & you can’t seem to figure out why? So you blame a myriad of different faults with yourself.. “maybe I’m not funny enough??” ..”maybe I’m too over the top & loud??” ..”maybe I’m ugly??” These are natural thoughts which arise in us all the time, especially when we don’t confront obvious problems inside our own lives. In this case it’s simply that our clothes reek & we need to wash them.
*(It’s really a thing that naturally just happens & we have to deal with it. Like many things in our lives that we can’t really control we must stop & take action. In this case our animal bodies grow bacteria in certain places. Those bacteria have mini battles on your skin & many die.. It’s a really weird situation. But, those dead bacteria start to smell after a while. Now every two or three days we take showers. This is an example of direct action over a situation in our life in which we can’t control. We can control the aftermath, yes. But, like the obviously direct example of an old fashioned outhouse.. shit builds up & eventually.. we have to deal with that shit.. & get it together.. All of this shit, washing, cleaning, clothes, etc. etc. This is all real & very important.. But. This is only one half of the equation.)*
What we must realize is that our thoughts are one of these things which we can not control.. Our thoughts build up & we must confront them. Because if we don’t, then we start lashing out at other people ill-rationally & belligerently.. Aaand WE look like an asshole. Aaand that’s when people start to scold you with the dreaded.. “man, you better get your shit together.. I didn’t even do anything to you.. you got some shit man.. & I don’t want to hear about it.. just get that shit together bro. Fuck.” We’ve all been on both sides of that conversation.
What I find most fascinating about how we talk about the mind is that many times we think we ARE our mind. But we are definitely not. We can think & take action all day long, I don’t mind. Then later thoughts start to simmer up to the surface. We watch them appear out of seemingly nowhere!! If we can not CONTROL our minds, then we are NOT our minds.
Knee jerk reactions. Our hearts beating. Our food being digested. These are things that happen automatically without our control. Yet we FEEL as if they are very much a separate part of our brain. We said, oh that’s part of my primitive “reptile” brain that exists in all living animals. We act superior to the reptile or “animals” as if we have high functioning brains. But do we? The way our minds run nonstop all the time sometimes it feels more advantageous to simply be a squirrel & forget all this unnecessary baggage of language, concepts, tech, & drama.
Do we have control over our minds at all then? This brings up many questions about whether the concept of FREEWILL exists. Are we all inside of some kind of elaborate roller coaster that has a predetermined track it follows? Or is the mind separate again? We can watch the thoughts arise & then we have multiple choices to how we want to confront those thoughts.. so maybe it’s two-fold right? There is a sort of loose track, but then we can roller coaster tycoon it from there.. Customize, choose your own adventure.. with the boundaries being that you can’t go back to make another choice & you have a time limit to make choices between birth & death.
All philosophic ideas are old & seemingly useless.. but somehow we are confronted with them everyday. I tend to confront them in my writing frequently because it seems as if everyday I wake up having to refresh my commitment to practices & rituals which will steer my life in directions I’m striving for in the long term. These types of practices always take a long time to achieve & therefore I always need a lot of reminding about where I am on this path..
Another pitfall is that I get too close to something & I forget to step back to see things from a distance.. from a long objective view point.. When you forget that your are NOT in fact, you’re own mind. That’s when things get dicey & we’re back at the infamous “Get your Shit together”.. lol.
Everyday.. if we can organize our attachments to people & goals.. If we can be aware of & confront traumas.. if we can learn to be vulnerable.. If we can get down off our high horse & work more with a community.. if we can learn to collaborate.. if we can confront thoughts of misogyny, racism & classism, being honest with ourselves.. maybe we need to write things down more to reflect upon.. maybe we need to talk to somebody for their reflective skills.. maybe therapy.. When was the last time you read a book? Where are your friendships at? How are you handling the feelings inside your relationships? When was the last time you let yourself cry? When was the last time you went off the deep-end & accused others around you of “Being the crazy ones!!!” ya know, real shit. Introspection. Maybe pick just one to work on today. Because these are all of the biggest monsters inside our lives which we must confront, little by little, inside of a daily ritual practice. Emotional intelligence seems like a never ending work in progress. Of course. Enlightenment may never be possible. Of course. But, after hard work & honesty over the course of time, you can see you’re own momentum shift towards a better understanding of your SELF.. a comfort of knowing a little bit more of who you are & what you are truly capable of.
Ultimately we scope out our landscape, place our bets & watch the fireworks.. Aaand we might even get our shit together..
