Potus Schmotus

In the movie 'The Titanic', there was a scene that always stuck out in my mind.

For years, I've replayed it in my head, over and over again.

I've always loved it because it reminded me of the powerful beauty in remaining calm when you're staring directly into the eye of fear.

Up close and personal with adversity, looking it straight in the face with a sense unperturbed tranquility. 

It was the scene near the end, where everyone was running for their lives...the ship was now definitively sinking. 

Everyone knew they were probably dying momentarily. Yet the violin quartet kept playing beautiful music, in spite of it.

It was a powerfully beautiful moment because it's stoic. It's accepting your situation with grace, despite a guaranteed unfavorable outcome. Somewhat metaphoric of where we may currently be.

Or maybe it isn't. Who knows.

Maybe Trump being elected, is a blessing. A blessing because we suddenly feel compelled to personally make a difference somehow. 

A blessing because we'll take matters into our own hands to make sure they get done, and done correctly.

A blessing because we'll finally realize that no one person can save any of us, and it's up to each person exclusively, to do what they can do, to weather any unpredictable storm, and still play a beautiful song. 

We'll realize that our personal happiness, and/or deficits, never are, nor ever were contingent upon who is elected. 

Never in the history of Presidencies. 

We need to dial down the political noise, the SuperBowl'esque distractions, the drama and feelings of hopelessness, and replace it with something far more deeply substantive. 

That's a must.

However minuscule or grand, the world needs to be made into a better habitat. Not just for the people, for all living things, for we are all reliant on a healthy planet a thriving ecosystem to be a happy, healthy person.

Not just to...'Make America Great' -- but to make ourselves great, again-- and the rest will take care of itself. 

Not by creating more jobs, not by buying or making more shit we don't need on the shelves of Bed Bath and Beyond, but by doing a little more than we'd normally do for someone else in our everyday lives. By doing something as simple as making it a point to smile at a stranger, packing someone else's groceries for them, helping someone for nothing in return, just because everyone's struggling in some way, and because  it feels damn good to help. 

Maybe Trump being President, is a blessing. Maybe. Or maybe it's an excuse to headbutt a nail gun. Either way, it'll hopefully prompt some type of personal re-evaluation, possibly a mini, personal revolution, provide a more honest level of introspection, a far deeper look into ourselves, our psyches, our list of priorities, and see how we can help heal this world, that we wouldn't have discovered otherwise, had a less controversial person become President 

Maybe it'll create a rebirth a type of back into our truer selves, the selves who don't just want more, for the sake of having more, but desire to be more, to give more, and take less. Maybe it's the two-handed collar shake that we all somehow needed.

Some might call that a revolution in the making. But whatever it is, decide on the outcome of events with having the conviction be some type of positive personal change, because you're the one holding the outcome of your life in your hands. 

You were all along.

🎶🎶🎶 💚 🌏 🎶🎶🎶

Sorry For Waking You

We're dying. 

While you're crossfitting and latte'ing, there's many a 25 acre glacier sliding into the ocean.

Like the Who's in Whoville, our little voices crying for help seem to fall upon deaf ears. 

What will it take. And how did we get here.

I recently read a quote that said 'The food you're eating is either making you healthier, or it's not'. 

While it's super black and white, it's also super true.
I'll extend that thought and say, the choices we make for ourselves, go far beyond our ourselves. Far beyond. And why they're so important to make judiciously.

The current state of the world, the corruption, pollution, the deforestation, the floods, the fires, the dramatic climate change, insane consumerism, the gluttony, the toxins in our food, the stripping of our oceans, the oblivion of the majority of the human race...it's crushing my soul, and unfortunately everything that lives here too. 

I'm not sure I care if you think that's dramatic. It IS dramatic. 100% dramatic. Not because I decided to be dramatic.

It's dramatic because there's major drama in the world. Major.

The planet is dying, and it's rapidly happening.

If you don't believe me, open your eyes and look around. Children are born with cancer, young adults are suddenly developing brain tumors, and mental disorders are now the new common cold. Grown ups are living on bags of pharmaceuticals, and drunk every night because there's a pervasive emptiness we're all seemingly part of. There's barely any fish left in the ocean, (I'll post links and references to global statistics if you think I'm drunk.) Yet every day, people are still posting pictures of their 90 piece sushi dinners. 

Wtf is going on here with our disconnect.

It's 2016, and the general population still has zero idea about how grave the consequences of our collective actions actually are. 

They think it's a vast exaggeration. It's just an idea. Not a reality. They think the severity of our lives lie strictly within the outcome of a presidential election, 'Trump or Hillary'. The world has far more than just 2 ill-equipped casualties of common sense you need to worry about. Hundreds of millions, to be more specific.

If everyone really knew the dire situation we are in right now, I'd have to believe they'd reconsider so much about their lifestyles; their diets, jobs, enlightening their kids, priorities. Pretty much everything, to help mitigate the crisis at hand. But as long as people can still watch the next episode of Dexter, they somehow think everything's okay. 

I drive around my town and see people knocking down smaller, efficient houses, and putting up wasteful (ugly), soulless McMansions with 3 or 4 car garages, and all the trees are mowed down. :(

I too, of course, am just as guilty as living excessively. No denying that. I don't live off the land, I don't live in a wigwam, I don't wear banana leaves for shoes, I always leave lights on when I shouldn't, and have an ancient oil burning heating system that's super inefficient and I'm sure wasteful. And quite honestly, I hate myself for this. Cannot imagine the level of personal degradation my body has accrued over the decades, and the level of ecological damage this planet has shit out just because of my one stupid body breathing and occupying space here.

So in a desperate and feeble attempt to make amends with the planet, and my own guilt, about a year or so ago, after learning the amount of rainforest destruction and carbon emissions that animal agriculture was singlehandedly responsible for, I decided to take on a vegan, plant-based lifestyle.

( Not to annoy the shit out of you, believe it or not. And if it does, sorry, but that's on you. I too love cheese, but fuck my tongue's opinion).
Simply put, the victim angle of exclusively blaming corporations, was no longer working for me.  

My choices, my purchases and my daily habits are what either keeps those businesses IN business, or out of business (my, meaning all of us...) Eating poison, buying poison, having what I thought was 'a great career' (...because I could buy a bigger, cooler house, and feel worthy?... I'm sure), and never really knowing or even thinking about what the fuck was going on behind closed doors, never questioning the fallout of whom and what I was actually promoting, if I traced it back to its roots, or followed it up to it's summit.

Sadly, we're at the crossroads of what feels like an almost irreversible problem. That is, when you think of the problem in terms of needing to physically move billions of people, or hundreds of millions of people in the same direction. Presumably, why global change feels insurmountable to most, and most people shrug just their shoulders and say, 'Eh...It is what it is. ' And odd, because people definitively believe their ONE presidential vote has power. They understand the concept of voting when it comes to a person, but ignorantly believe it's a worthless drop in the bucket practice when it comes to picking and choosing everything else.

However in actuality, a huge positive global change is relatively simple. 

It's not easy, but it's simple.

It's a matter of every 1, individual person, SIMPLY agreeing upon a few very basic, simple universal goals. 

Wanting to be awake and aware, (that alone has a severely positive cascading effect), wanting true health, happiness and freedom for all things, and a beautiful, thriving, healthier home, called planet Earth. It's imbibed in every one choice we make. 

Dr. Whothefuck?

Contrary to popular belief, cancer centers at times are chock full o'comedy.

From the 4' high candy cart filled with Twizzlers, Twix Bars, and Gummy Bears pushed around in the chemotherapy infusion rooms, to the tri-hourly inquiries about your poop's texture, tone and viscosity, in spite of it being a cancer center, you do find many instances to occasionally blast your drink through your nose in a fit of laughter. 

Take for example one of the Pediatric oncologists I recently met at Sloan Kettering. So help me God, her name was...ready?... 
Dr. Cancio. 

That's right... 'Dr. Cancio'. Pronounced like cancer grew up in Italy. 
Pretty sure I would've laughed less if she introduced herself as Dr. Frankenstein. 

The first time she walked in and told me her name, I think my face slid off my skull. 
Every time thereafter, Justin and I, in classic 3 yr old fashion, would dart our eyes at each other, hoping one of us would give the other the strength to not laugh, over her unfortunate name. Wishful thinking by us, because this never happened.

So one day, in an attempt to call attention to the obvious elephant in the room (the elephant with a giant, cancerous tumor hanging off the end of it's trunk),I felt like maybe calling attention to it, might be a better way of diffusing the bomb.  

A few days later, the Dr. came in, and I said to her: 'That's so funny, that you're in oncology and your name is Cancio'.
At which point they all just stared at me, dead-faced and expressionless, like they were in a photograph from the 1920's. 

Me: '*throat clear....You know what I mean?'

They somberly furrowed their brows, and in unison, slowly shook their heads in the 'noooooooo' direction. 

Really??? In all the years she had this name, in all the years she worked alongside people in a cancer center, no one has ever made that connection but me and my 18 year old son? Are people's brains honestly this vastly different? Or does she possibly have brain cancio. 

I'm now starting to think if her name were actually 'Dr. Cancer', they still wouldn't have seen the connection. 

They'd be like, 'What? Cancer is just a name, and the other cancer is an illness... I don't get it.'

Tell me again, how smart Dr's really are, when this oncologist, with 12 years of schooling, in the most accredited academic institution in the world, could not make a blatantly obvious (and laugh-worthy) connection. I'm an idiot, and I saw it. I don't even really mind the lack of sense of humor around it as much as I do the inability to see the irony and similarity in the words. THAT to me, is concerning. (She should see a doctor.) 
Sense of humor is the lesser of the two. Not too sure how badly I'd really want a comedian for a doctor if I had a telescoping tumor protruding out from my anus. Nor is it necessarily a time for yo momma jokes when you're in cardiac arrest. But i do expect a Dr, to be sharp. If they can't make connections between the obvious, and say, Dr. Ahbvius, how can they possibly be capable of making more abstract connections related to your health. 
I think it may be time for more creative people to start venturing into the field of medicine. Maybe less people would die as a result of, you know, thinking and laughing.

Anyway, I should probably go now. Dr Stemcellio is on his way in. 

Stay healthy, my friends. 
Love to you all.

Can't Complain

                                                       https://youtu.be/KR0q57z0v1c

Your life's not shitty. Your attitude towards it, might be though.
No matter how catastrophic you think your day to day is, no matter how broke or unfortunate you think your circumstances are, you more than likely live in a place you can call home. Personal bubbles where we have the luxury of feeling vulnerable and yet still safe. 

We have food everywhere we turn, in cabinets, in big metal boxes that astonishingly sustain their cold temps so we can eat cheese without dying, there's food in bookstores, gas stations, hanging off of trees, there's warmth emanating from our walls when we push a button, we wear clothes that protect us, that someone else made for us, hung neatly in little rooms created just for them to hang in so they don't get wrinkled, clean hospitals tending to our every ailment, cafes and restaurants with people serving you, making you food and bringing it to you, forests to walk through and wax poetically about, transportation of any type, to fly or bus or whisk us away to anywhere our curiosity wants to childishly explore, we have computers that fit in our little hands that provide us with an infinite stream of global information, inspiration and entertainment, we visit friends, just because we have free time, we go to parties, simply because we want to indulge in more happiness, we casually walk through parks because there's no land mines, trail-run with our dogs to get exercise because we have jobs where we don't have to build structures for our own survival, or live in areas where we're running out of fear for our lives, we have loving friends and generosity everywhere we look- just because we were born in the right place, with so much just magically aligning for us as a result of that happenstance. The disparity between one life and the next is tragically unfair and pretty random. Most of us, in spite of our daily mini, or even macro dramas, are gifted beyond measure. 
We have a lot.
Pay it forward whenever you can.