Role Models and Adversaries

I’ve been down all weekend. Despite some fun outings with friends, an itch in my throat slowly spread until it erupted Sunday into an all-out cold. My plans to do a big weekend social media push for my Kickstarter instead ended up with me napping on the couch.

Now that the school week has begun, it’s time for me to turn my attention back toward willpower in my mindfulness class. Today’s multifaceted prompt begins by asking us to think about our willpower role models. Who inspires us most to meet our goal?

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The Many Lives of Me

In another universe I am not the one writing this. In another universe I am still who I am, but wholly different–the personification of another facet of myself. In another universe I am the same man but different, a secondary, tertiary–an nth degree version of myself wholly unknown yet wholly undifferentiated.

That’s a good way of saying it.

Where all these universes meet–a place in time or space, removed from either or both–there is an integral self that exists beyond all possibilities.

The act of reality forming from thought differentiates these forms, causing universal constants to slip behind subliminal ideals, each variable taking upon itself a new manifestation based upon those factors that surround it.

Today I feel undifferentiated. It’s an integral part of my identity.

Snakes on a Plane (or Something Like It)

I’m starting to think I won’t be having any more thankful Thursdays this semester. For some reason beyond me, all my teachers like to have all my homework due Friday morning, so naturally, Thursdays have become crunch time for me: A fatal rush to the finish, pushing past the boundaries of bedtime into the realm of “when he said he wants us to lose sleep over this, he meant it.” But that’s alright: We grow and we adapt. We change our ways to meet the new days.

I was thinking a lot about that today, about adaptability and change. After a while, I found I’m rather thankful for it, but what does that have to do with snakes? Or more importantly, what does it have to do with planes?

Shattered

It was this day two years ago that my life changed forever. After living a double-life for longer than anyone should be forced to, I came to a terrifying realisation that I wasn’t just gay and Jewish, I was a gay Jew. The feeling that coursed through me brings to mind the stories of the shattered vessel of Kabbalistic fame, wherein God’s breadth was too great to be contained that it shattered what had tried so carefully to hold it in. I became that shattered vessel: I had longed to hold God within me, but his breadth was too great, and I shattered.