The art of not caring

the dissatisfaction loop, & ego performing humility

My mind has been on my mind.

In my life I go through seasons of spiritual afflictions. For years I battled with a deep and unsettling sense of restlessness. It propelled me to live a very chaotic life for most of my young adult years. I was a nomad constantly cycling through partners, jobs, housing, just as frequently as I got tattoos and trimmed my bangs. I know this is against the rules, but on most shooting stars, dandelions, and birthday candles, I’d wish for one thing — peace. Peace and satisfaction. To not feel a gnawing at my soul, an aching for more out of life, a hunger for everything everywhere all at once. It devoured me.

On the phone with Annie the other day, she tells me I am someone who lives life capital G Good. She’s inspired by how I always appear to be doing exactly what I want to be doing all the time; following my whims, actualizing my desires. I laughed. All this I find true, but I tell her what she didn’t know: that it was all fueled by an insatiable dissatisfaction. The lustful carefree lifestyle people see on the surface was the manifestation of a deeper existential dilemma. Satisfaction passed through me like a train that came and went; it wasn’t long until the pangs would come back to haunt me. I was always an empty station waiting for the next ride.

How did I become this chaotic? Just how anyone ever becomes anything: their family. When you grow up with chaos being the norm, you can’t help but unconsciously mimic this environment by creating it into your life. I felt at home in rapid change, fleeting experiences, heartbreak and newfound love, milestone after milestone. This was my idea of having control over my life.

All this I speak about with a reflective passivity, because this spiritual affliction just doesn’t occupy me anymore as it once did. What’s my secret? One day I realized I had stopped thinking about my dissatisfaction. It just evaporated! Where had it gone? Where was my hunger? Did I just get tired of chasing an eternal sunset? It was an itch I had just apparently forgotten about and healed itself in the absence of my obsession. It’s amazing what our minds can do when we don’t entertain them. Satisfaction is my new default. I’m still allowed moments of dissatisfaction but will always return to a neutral contentment, rather than the other way around. What’s stopping us from seeing each moment as enough? Ourselves of course. A practice I’ve adopted into my life recently is convincing myself that each moment is Perfect, by stopping and thinking about the elements of beauty that are surrounding me right now. And if I’m surrounded by piles of dog shit and flies, I think about the way that eternity Perfectly unfolded in a purge of elements and explosions that came together to create this miracle of earthly existence, even if its full of dog shit and flies. There is something in each moment you can find that is enough, I promise.

I learned something recently, around the time I must have stopped fixating on my affliction. It’s how to slow down. My whole life currently feels like the inside of a snow globe that has been shaking for decades and the snowy glitter is settling back into places I didn’t even know existed in the storm. I take my time. I walk slowly through the grocery store, I linger on moments, I fix my gaze, I rest. The forest opens itself to my stillness and comes alive with animals retiring from their hiding. It becomes whole again. The minutia of my day becomes meditations.

Now that I’m at the old and wisened age of 25 I’ve been climbing out of the ruins of a life of pleasure and madness, and daydream about careers and soulmates and stability. I’m not off the hook yet though. A new affliction has stolen the show — my eternal battle with the ego. Buckle up for round 2 in the existential fighting rink.

I’m not talking Narcissus. I’m talking about the anchor, the mutilator, the perceiver, the collector, the identity. Our greatest artistic endeavor: ourselves. You see, me and my ego have been in cahoots ever since I recently decided to go more public with my creative projects. Its yearning for humility was inflamed at so vain an idea as sharing my thoughts and feelings. I take great strides to not be and appear absorbed in myself while simultaneously journaling regularly, constantly thinking about how to be a better version of myself, feigning aloofness on social media (it’s not working), battling insecurities. One might say I make vain attempts at humility.

Writing is a very selfish act to begin with! We are constantly creating ourselves through word. Sharing my writing was like an admittance of guilt: I’m hyper focused on my mind, my experience, my story. All I think about is my mythology. Sue me! Making art feels so self absorbed, let alone parading said art on the internet for people to consume. I feel sheepish even sharing this long winded article about my spiritual battles. Why the heck should you care? That’s the thing! You don’t have to! The world will keep spinning! The real question is why should I care?

Through constantly battling with my ego I just made it bigger! By trying to not be an egomaniac, I became one! Just how focusing on dissatisfaction made me dissatisfied; it placed me in a matrix of dissatisfaction. I had a dream where I was looking in the mirror and my reflection said to me: there is a difference between self-appreciation and self-absorption. Being absorbed in trying not to be self-absorbed, in my insecurities, in my attempts at humility, blocked me from the organic flow of self-appreciation. It placed me in a battle of good vs. bad, when I could be thriving in a place of acceptance. When we create art, we are channeling from something bigger than ourselves, beyond good and bad. Our ego just happens to be the portal of expression. Let it have that power of the miracle! The ego is a child that throws a fit when it doesn’t get what it wants. Just let it do its job and it’ll quit whining, you won’t even remember its there. By trying to deflate it you’ll only make it stronger. There is a lot we could say about meditation right now but maybe we’ll save that for another day eh?

In an act of total rebellion against my “humble vanity” ego trip, I posted 4 selfies in a row on my IG story. Sound backwards? Maybe it is. But to me it was a huge release, a relinquishing of control. My concern with being perceived ironically resulted in me commodifying myself, by treating my face and body, as well as my art, as something that must be regulated and its appearance in the digital sphere must be justified.

Well I’m throwing in the towel. This whole Substack thing is an experiment in relinquishment. I am practicing the art of not caring. Perceive me!