This I know…

Someone important to you, at some point in your life, told you something about yourself that wasn’t true. And they probably told you the same thing many, many times. They might’ve said that you’re not smart, that you’re going to fail, that you’re unlovable…or simply that you’re just not good enough and never will be.

And you entirely believe that to this day.

But I want to ask just a small favor, a teeny-tiny little thing that you can knock off in a second. It’s nothing really but, yeah, it’s kinda important to me. I want you to think about that thing they said, how many times they said it, look at it, expose it to the air, bring it out in the open and let the light of day shine on it. Look at it with today’s eye’s, hear it with today’s ears…understand it with today’s’ brain…and know—KNOW!–that it’s just not true…and…

…it never was.

When you realize this, when it truly makes sense at the center of yourself and soul…then every affect that this untruth has had on your life will simply disappear. Poof. Gone.

Our behavior is driven by the memories of dramatic, traumatic and meaningful events that have happened to us and by us over the years we’re alive…if you can successfully change those memories—and you can—then you can completely and automatically change the behavior that was derived from them.

Poof…

…gone.

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

What does “I don’t give a fuck” mean?

Well, I know it doesn’t mean that you hate the world, it doesn’t mean that you’re an asshole and wish violence on anybody…it doesn’t mean that you don’t care or that you ignore the suffering of others.

It doesn’t mean that you think that you’re perfect or better than any other person—far from it—it means that you recognize your flaws, your failures and disasters and you accept that you are human…the same as the other 7 billion or so on this planet…and are OK with others pointing this out because their opinion makes no difference to you living your life.

Because it is YOUR life.

What it does mean is that you are completely and entirely OK with who you are and that you unconditionally love yourself, that you don’t need external validation…that you don’t need someone other than yourself to tell you that you’re a good person, loving and deserving of love.

It means that you don’t fear judgment.

And it is far from easy to achieve because the entire universe is allied against you for owning your own life. The outside world, external to you, counts on the fact that you fear their judgment, you follow their opinions, you feel like shit because you don’t match the ideal, the magazine cover, the prom queen and king, the successful whatever.

When you say “I don’t give a fuck” you are taking full and complete ownership of your life…with all the heavy, “jaws-music-in-the-background” scary shit attached to that ownership. You are the captain of your ship, you direct it where to go and how fast.

You.

No one else.

Believe. Go. Do.
~TrevorZen

The lies you tell yourself
are the only ones
that have the power
to destroy your
soul
the lies you’re told
external to you, from without
to within
a line-of-sight trajectory
are easily deflected
if you know
feel
believe
they are lies…but
if they match what you
already tell yourself:
you’re not good enough
you’re stupid
you’re ugly
useless &
unlovable
they land and stick and
enough of them
will form into the walls
used to protect
hide…
fear
the outside world
when the only truth
any of us have
is that
they, those outside
of us
are the absolute
least qualified
to say who we are
the truth
the only
truth
is you.

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

everything is external
it comes from outside the thin walls of
our skin
it is everything that we are not
assaulting and invading
in the darkness of an empty bedroom
4:26 AM
wrestling sheets of too warm linen
where shadows whisper below hearing
no sound but static…blood in our ears
the crinkle of broken
pieces of our soul being walked upon
with hard soled shoes
down cavernous hallways, long wooden stairs
…listen to the voice ignored
the sound of ourselves
“you are here”
wash across our thinking, across
our bodies, listen
to ourselves
and know of 7 billion others…all
doing the same
all small, separate, solitary…
alone
regardless the company we keep
we are
all
the same
we are love
and it is us
and when we learn this
know this
…accept
this…
we become
impossibly huge, massively
present…large forces of motion
with mass, inertia and velocity
toward a future only we
create
only we envision
but that contains
everyone
else
that contains humanity and
keeps us
alive.

When you think about how to live your life…

…You should get advice from people who are smarter than you—much smarter—not celebrities, politicians, movie stars, rich people, athletes or silly platitudes in a graphic.
…You should want that advice to be as free from bullshit as possible but should also know that this is not a bullshit free universe…people have different reason for giving you advice…it’s your job to make the distinction.
…You should want advice that is uncomfortable to hear…until with enough research and education, you get comfortable knowing it’s not bullshit or is based on a hidden agenda.
…You should want to be challenged and have your worldview questioned…constantly….whether politically, environmentally, emotionally, whatever.
…Finally, you should never ever take anything at face value…not even this…because it’s your life; you’re responsible, accountable and in charge.

You fuck up and it’s all you.

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

When you learn to finally love and accept yourself—not because you think you’re perfect or better than others, but because you know for sure you’re neither, and importantly that it’s OK—so many wonderful things happen…here are just 10 of them:

1. All the weird, judgmental things people say to you (or about you to others) stops having any meaning.

2. Because you have no reaction to these comments, people stop saying them.

3. The anxiousness and anxiety that you’ve always felt about yourself disappears.

4. You cease comparing yourself to others, positively or negatively, because you own validation is all you need.

5. You start experiencing strangers positively right away because they sense you don’t need their approval.

6. These strangers smile at you and engage in conversation easily because of your positivity and confidence.

7. Your friends want you to hang out with them more and spontaneously invite you to events in their lives.

8. They make an effort to communicate and stay in touch regardless the circumstance.

9. You realize that happiness is a state of being, not a destination that you need to seek

10. And, finally, you recognize that while you were learning to love yourself, happiness snuck up on you…and you just are.

She watched the world evolve

without her, watched

it pass by and she didn’t wave goodbye

didn’t know how

forgot to see it with her eyes

saw it through her fear, her

entirety…she let it go…but not

because she wanted to,

she let it define and forget her

put her in a box

in the closet, away from prying eyes.

she remembered feelings

too late

couldn’t explain why

why

why

why

she saw emotions like shadows

a comic book

no superman, no heroes

in a graphic novel…only

sadness that she couldn’t contain

couldn’t hold back

had to give away

to

everyone

as it grew and grew…a never

ending gift

that ended friendships

relationships

she never saw it falling short

her depth

her blankness

a certain level, a sad wineglass

full of dark emptiness

she tried to drink it away

smoke it away, she

saw no reason for it

no meaning to it

no end to it

a definition of who she was, created

by someone else

she saw choices as

what other people had

like food she’s never eaten

but imagined

from pictures

words told to others

and

and

and

she does find

a certain kind of grey happiness

after acceptance, after a

forced separation—initiated within
unobservable without—from the external

definition she’s had

forever
after feeling love
without condition from another,
a child,

so
she lives her days

again and again…yes

she

does.

So lately I started seeing posts and meme’s about offensive material on FB and other social media sites and about how you should realign your sensibilities to not be offended or that you’re too thin skinned and need to shape the fuck up. People saying that they don’t care if you’re offended (by their posts) and that you need to change yadda, yadda, yadda.

Yeah, bullshit.

Listen to this very carefully; roll it around inside you mind for a bit. Savor it’s relativistic goodness…enjoy the honesty as it sinks into the small crevices of your understanding.

Change is not polite.

Nothing that has gone through real change—people, politics, neighborhoods, whatever—has done so cleanly and without a mess. None. Change is an uprooting, a clearing of the decks…a “destructive to be constructive” process. Change is what happens when everything polite and well-mannered hasn’t worked. Change hurts. It has to otherwise it doesn’t work. There has to be pain and mess and destruction and…all that…or us humans won’t see it as real, won’t see it as necessary…

…sometimes we just won’t see it at all.

The point is that if you want change then you MUST offend people, you must make them uncomfortable, you must make it messy, you must make them see the thing to be changed.

Or fuck it; be polite, watch the kitty videos, see who “broke the internet” this particular hour…do nothing as another unarmed American is gunned down in the street by the occupying army known as the police…feel warm and safe while another 14 or 30 or 5,000 Americans are killed by radicalized Islamic extremist US citizens…

…unfriend them when they post something that offends you…and it’s like it never happened.

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

Humans.

We make words to describe things…and the things we experience…and these things and experiences themselves fundamentally change once we have words to describe them. It is a merry-go-round feedback loop that has driven us forward for the last 50,000 years on this planet. We obsessively name things because we have to. We simply cannot abide the nameless and undescribed.

Everything gets a name.

The word love for instance. At one point that word did not exist and by its absence there were no sonnets, no flowery, heart rending poems of commitment and sacrifice. Humans could no more profess that depth of longing to another human being than they could discuss the polemic sensibilities of Mr. Ugg and Miss Moog down by the creek apparently wrestling naked.

Pneumatically…but that had not been named either.

The problem is that this primeval urge to name also works diligently to separate, to define and divide the universe into chunks manageable by our brains; tribe and village…gender and religion…race and continent. We divide and divide until we get to the indivisible and then call ourselves done…until we find a new name, a new division and we jump right in further reducing that manageable chunk until it’s so specialized and specific that the sheer mental weight of all of the things named sits like an iron block atop our consciousness.

Drives us all a little insane I think.

The more stridently vitriolic—you’ve heard of fascism, correct?—among us have learned over the last 50,000 years that our inherent inability to just leave things the fuck alone* also gives those who will have bad intent the ability to oppress, to murder and eradicate whole sections and subsections of those people named by our incessant obsession. They single out and denigrate and eventually push them toward genocide, if they can, and exclusion and ostracization, if they can’t.

And round and round and round.

Imagine, though, for an instance, if we could suspend our inherent and apparently evolutionary need to identify people into specific groups and categories. Imagine if we were just…people.

No characteristics define us.

No religion divides us.

No countries split us.

No skin color separates us.

No politicians pit us against each other.

No class system fragments us.

Without the words we’ve invented to define and separate us humans, there is no difference between people. None. It is not imagining, it is reality. Without the words used by politicians and religious leaders and presidents and kings and despots and dictators and the oppressors of the planet…

…we are the same.

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

*technical description

More dead people. Kinda says it all. The hue and cry has gone up once again about gun violence and the need to control who is able to have the things. I see lots and lots of progressives shouting about writing laws and regulations to restrict this and reduce that and they all seem very concerned for my safety and the choices I’m “allowed” to make.

The problem is that the right to gun ownership is enshrined in the constitution regardless how you may interpret it. The big number 2, the second amendment says “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” All kinds of folks are squirming with the words “well regulated militia” and “security of a free state” thinking it means something entirely different than Billy Bob Joe two fisting a pair of Glock 9 mil’s

The Supremes have even backed up Billy Bob Joe. A whole bunch of times.

So what’s a good, dues paying progressive supposed to do? How are they going to be able to make all the “tough” decisions, “for their own good” for all the Big Mac chomping, Jesus loving, great unwashed masses if the constitution is in the way? How, how, how??

It’s called the STFUADS plan. Basically, Shut The Fuck Up And Do Something.

There’s this thing in the constitution, called article V, that actually tells how to amend (change) the Constitution itself: proposal and ratification. If people were really serious about it, an amendment to change the 2^nd Amendment can be proposed by two-thirds of both houses of Congress or…by two-thirds of state legislatures requesting Congress to call a national convention to propose amendments. Then the amendment has to be ratified by three-fourths of all state legislatures or by such a vote in specially called ratifying conventions called in three-fourths of the states.

So why don’t progressives and gun control advocates just STFUADS?

Bwaaaa Haaa haa, haa haaaa haaa…sorry, lost it a little there. Not only do two thirds—66%—of both houses of congress have to merely “propose” the amendment, three fourths—75%—of ALL state legislatures have to agree to ratify it. Those fuckers in congress can’t agree on lunch let alone a proposal to amend the constitution…and don’t get me started on the impossibility of herding 38 states toward one decision.

Smart people call it legislative impasse…I call it a cluster fuck.

But yeah, STFUADS if you want change…otherwise, just STFU.