"You immediately give up on your love and your light and your beauty, and you become a dark black hole in the universe, sucking up bad energy and not walking around putting a smile on someones face or helping someone out or teaching someone something that's going to hep his or her life. You're not creating the ripple of love; you're creating the vacuum of shit."
-Anthony Kiedis
The past 10 months I've been floating. I've been living in a life I'd already given up on. I spent the entire time trying to fill voids that can't be filled, trying to replace the things I've felt I had lost. Now I'm beginning to realize that nothing will fill a void. No pet, no drug, no confidant, nothing. Voids are holes in your soul you must learn to live with. Like a scraped knee: you might heal, you might forget about it after a while, but there will always be some reminder. A scar. That scar will never ever change, because its not the wound it once was. It's remnants, it's the stuff that never leaves and never changes, the past.
I think the first step to a renaissance is acceptance. Accepting your situation, what you have or haven't been doing, being okay with that, and then deciding what the hell you're going to do about it. That last part is where I've been struggling. My problem has been my general disposition in life. I've become bitter and angry and resentful about everything. My life has been crowded and cluttered with so much bad energy that I'm just drowning in my own despair. I feel like I used to leave a trail of inspiration, creativity, love. Now I feel like everything I touch ends up in the shit vacuum because I have all this moral baggage hanging on me. Guilt for the things I haven't done, the people I've let down.
But how do you come out of that? How do you decide to start waking up on the right side of the bed again?
You have to accept your shit vacuum. You have to know what you've been doing wrong and not beat yourself up about it. I've known the past 10 months that I've been in a slump, but instead of changing that I've been too busy throwing myself a pity party. I've been too caught up drowning in my self loathing, and now the time has come to get over it. I've accepted I may have slacked off, I may have lost my lust for life and there's not a damn thing that's going to change that.
The next step is learning to calm down. Bad energy surrounds you and fills you with depression and anxiety, everything that hinders a persons growth in life. As opposed to popping a pill or taking a shot to remedy this, you have to surround yourself with good energy. Reading a book, stretching for hours, cooking, anything that you WANT to do. Things that are productive: creation, love, happiness. These things will encourage you whereas drugs and alcohol will just make everything ten times worse when you come down. It's a snowball effect. Once you begin creating things and creating the ripple of love, you become inspired.
Once you've started feeling better, once you've begun your expulsion of bad energy and bad joojoos you can start building yourself personally. Having goals is extremely important in life. Never loiter, be progressive. If you're working towards something, then you have something to work for. A little initiative never hurt nobody. The big mistake here is thinking you have to do something amazing, life altering. Nuh-uh. Not true. A goal could be as simple as learning to cook something, or making a tiny garden, making sure you talk to 3 people a day, anything that will give you a sense of accomplishment.
Learning is one of the most fulfilling things in life. If you have an appetite for knowledge, you will never be hungry. There is always something to learn. Surround yourself with people you want to learn from, people you look up to. This too will be inspiring and help you find your own path in life. Always read, always explore, always take something from everything you do. My friend Jake is an excellent example of this. Constantly he's asking questions, coming up with schemes of things he wants to do things he wants to learn things he wants to experience. And in almost everything he experiences (good or bad) he finds a life lesson to be learned. Constantly progressive, always trying to better himself.
But what to do with all this knowledge! You gotta "give it away, give it away, give it away, give it away now!" Helping another person learn something about themselves, giving someone else a hunger for life, is one of the most rewarding feelings a person can have. Seeing others gain something from you instills in you a feeling of self worth you won't get anywhere else. When you see that you've made a positive impact on someone's life, you want to go find three more people to help.
Me, personally, I've not been doing that. I've not been spreading love, and I've not been inspiring anyone. I'm tired of living in a shit vacuum, and I'm ready to create the ripple of love again. I want to wake up inspired every morning, I want to learn something everyday, I want to teach something everyday. I want to be living my life again. I want to be reborn.
