All men, the oldest as well as the youngest, will hold their stomach in when a pretty girl passes by and women wear padded bras and makeup from the moment they learn that it is what society tells boys to be attracted to. We are all liars, to some degree, as honesty doesn’t seem to reach down into our reptilian brains and afford us the notion that we can choose not to follow the herds. Dishonesty as an institution is deeply embedded into our psyche but, not so curiously, as the result of Mother Nature’s wants and needs versus our very own. Our job on this rock, according to her, is to make more of us…

…period.

So Nature has created us to be liars—from the very first cry out of the womb—with the better fib winning the better mate…and from then on society happily obliges to add additional categories for us to rationalize our inherent dishonesty. The aforementioned padded bras, artificially trim belly’s and makeup as well as expensive suits and cars, dyed hair and on and on and on because the only way that—us making more of us—is sustainable over long periods of time is if we constantly improve our species in order to meet the demands of the environment. The “now” environment, it is important to note, versus the one we collectively grew up in over the last 100,000 years or so.

So we wear our suits and color our hair and paint our faces and inhale sharply when a pretty girls passes by…and all the other seemingly inconsequential lies we tell others (and ourselves) every single day…even as we profess that honesty is an ideal and object of desire and inherent characteristic of the human equation.

Lies about lies.

All the while the simple fact that naked and standing alone we are what we are…without pretense, obfuscation or deceit…and that we are made that way, every single one of us, made equal and amazing and important and deserving and beautiful and loving and…human. But we have been inoculated and institutionalized by countless generations of ignorance and religious proselytization into believing that it just isn’t enough and in fact that that it is wrong. That who we are, naked and innocent, is immoral and against society.

That we are born wrong.

So we spend the rest of our lives lying to one another… just trying to be right according to society…and then lying about lying in an endless circle of self-loathing and deceit.

I know this; you—all of us on this planet—were not born wrong. Understand and know that…not easy and not immediate…and start living the life you should, one without lies, without pretense, without guilt and sorrow.

Life the life you should have from the beginning.

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

This is I know…we all want to achieve something…success, acclaim, cash money, whatever and the only way to attain that success, that acclaim, that wonderful end-state of perfect awareness is to set a goal, a very clear and concise goal, for what we want to change in our lives. Small goals or huge goals, they are all the same…think of them as a spot on the horizon that we’re continually sailing our ships toward. Always toward that spot, never varying our course. It’s the only way. And knowing that, understand that the spot, even the horizon itself, will never get closer to us than it was the moment we made our choices about our goals.

And that’s the point.

The horizon isn’t actually there, it’s an idea, a way of describing a concept so that people can talk about it in a meaningful way. It’s the line where the sky meets the earth…and you will never reach it because it moves with you, always a constant distance away. The point is that by driving yourself to that impossible place, that line that doesn’t exist, you will never notice how close your goals are coming toward you…until suddenly…

…they are achieved.

A very rich man was asked “what is the secret for earning 10 million dollars”, his answer was “try to earn 100 million.” A revered martial artist was asked what the secret to breaking a board with his fist, he said “aim to hit a spot 3 inches behind the board.” The secret for achieving your goals is to overreach, to plan past the goal because you will never know what you are capable of when all you ever do is plan for what you already know…

…and never give yourself a chance to discover something new, something you couldn’t imagine yourself capable of.

Understand that perfection is impossible—just like the horizon is impossible—but that everything inside you, everything you choose to do, is not only possible but inevitable once you make the decision.

Yep…

…it’s that simple.

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

Victim blaming.

The naked celebrity brouhaha and what Kate, Jennifer, Selena et al should or shouldn’t have done. Rape victims and how our patriarchal society assumes a certain level of responsibility that the woman should be accountable for…and on and on and on…

I think we’re missing the point.

It’s not victim blaming when I tell you that you made it easy for your car being stolen off the city street because you left the keys in it. No, of course the car thief is totally to blame and is 100% accountable for the theft but can you affect, in any way, his choices? You bet your ass you can and that’s by not leaving the fucking car keys in the ignition. He looks at two cars…one with keys and one without…which one is he stealing?

Of course he’s taking yours.

And that’s the point. There are things that people can do to minimize, mitigate or eliminate the risks of phones being hacked, cars being stolen…bodies being raped…but to ignore those strategies because it is “victim blaming” is just plain stupid. These are things that you and I and every other person on this planet can do, now, ourselves, without having to wait for legislation or societal norms to catch up that will make other people change their behaviors. A shining example is that, of course, we need to teach our boys to respect girls and not rape them…

…that’s pretty damn clear…

…but to literally do nothing to protect oneself while you wait for that to happen—while you wait for a 3,000 year old misogynist, patriarchal society to completely transform itself—is the epitome of being a dumbfuck. When I say that an easy way to prevent naked pictures from being hacked off your phone is to not have naked pictures of yourself on your phone, I’m not blaming you for the theft, I’m simply telling you an easy way to prevent naked pictures from being hacked off your phone. Or like me telling you to take the car keys out of the ignition…

…you get to make the choice regardless what choices the other person makes.

If someone truly wants steal your car/photos/safety/whatever, they will usually find a way but also know that you have choices—that you can make—that will either make it more difficult for that to happen, or make it easier. Period. It is in no way victim blaming for me or anyone else to tell you various CHOICES YOU CAN MAKE for how to better protect yourself.

Choices *you* can make…

…go figure.

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

Song of the Stars

I am looking
for the stardust
that you are made of,
the essence
of the universe
in your eyes
I am longing
for the emptiness
and deep silence
of the long
slide through nothingness
of space
of time
between breaths
between stars
I am believing
and I am
seeing
what might be
your soul
in
the glittering void
…waiting
forever and
never
as everything
turns again
and again
from blistering light
to frozen
blackness…the
rhythm of life
again
and
again.

Old way of meeting girl on street (verbatim) around Union Square:

Me: Hey wow! Excuse me! I just had to tell you that you have one of the most gorgeous smiles I’ve seen.
Girl: Haaa haa, thanks!
Me: No problem, I just had to tell you that…or, and beside the Barnes & Noble on 15^th, is there another bookstore nearby?
Girl: Um ,there’s the Strand on 16^th…
Me: Oh yeah, I always forget about that, but that’s it?
Girl: Yeah, all I know, I’m not from around here…
Me: haaa ha, me neither, I’m just over in BK
Girl: I love Williamsburg but it’s getting so, I dunno, weird.
Me: Totally weird, definitely, but I live closer to Dumbo. So where do you live?
Girl: UWS near Riverside Park
Me: Very cool, I’ve run in that park a few times.
Girl: I loooove Riverside Park
Me: Haa haa, awesome, listen I’ll check out the Strand but can I get your number, maybe call or text you sometime?
Girl: Sure, my name is Gina…
Me: Haaa haaa, sorry, my name’s Trevor…here, where’s your phone…I’ll punch my number in…

The New World of Meeting Girls

Me: Hey wow! Excuse me! I just had to tell you that you have one of the most gorgeous smiles I’ve seen.
Girl: Excuse me?
Me: I was just saying how beautiful your ey…
Girl: That’s a little patriarchal and condescending, isn’t it?
Me: Um, I was just…
Girl: You were just subjugating me and assigning me to some mythical beauty standard I could never hope to attain, is what you were “just”
Me: But I was only complimenting you on your…
Girl: I KNOW what you were doing and I simply refuse to conform…how’d you like it if I aggressively attacked your appearance? I’m sure you’d feel quite uncomfortable.
Me: Attack? Aggressive? I was merely…
Girl: You were merely perpetuating the stereotype of the easy girl because she’s in a short skirt and tank top walking on the street, you were…
Me: Complementing you, I was merely…
Girl: Oppressing me.
Me: Um…I was…
Girl: OK, listen, I know what you wanted to do, what you want from me, what every man wants from every woman and I’m simply standing up for myself and the women I know. You think “complimenting” me is all fine and dandy but it’s akin to verbal rape in that I never asked you to say those things nor would I give you permission to if you had asked. Society has trained you…and me…to assume that I am a sexual vessel merely for you to use and then discard when done. I am not and will never be again. Until society teaches its young men that they are…
Me: I think I’ve just turned gay.
Girl: Fabulous, here’s my number lets go catch a show sometime!!

To deal with insecurity do this; find a quiet spot to sit and close your eyes with your hands folded in your lap. Imagine you’ve shrunk down the size of a mouse and you’re at the center of your body, like you’re in a huge hollow “you” shaped cavern. You’re looking at all the interior surfaces of your skin and can see the fact that you are completely air and water tight. Nothing gets in and nothing can get out. Now imagine slowly expanding yourself until you swell up larger and larger until you completely fill that big cavern.

Now you can feel completely you, self-contained, impregnable and strong. Regardless what is outside your skin, you know what is inside, everything that makes up what you are…solid matter as well as thought. Aside from food and water and shelter, there is nothing that is needed outside your skin for you to simply be alive on this planet.

Nothing.

Everything that is not “you” has to be outside of you…you’ve already seen your inside and there’s no room for anyone but yourself…so you have the choice to let what is “out there”, in or not. It makes no difference what it is…love and laughter, pain and torture…you get to decide whether to let it inside or not.

Period.

Insecurity is caused by the moral and value judgments of you by the people who mean something to you. You cannot be judged by someone who you don’t give a shit about. It’s simply not possible, and all of the judgments against you have to come from outside you…even when you judge yourself because someone taught you that, that teaching came from outside you.

The next time you start to feel insecure…remember yourself; self-contained, impregnable and strong…and look to where the judgments against you are coming from…and…then…simply…turn…them…off.

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

So I’ve held off writing about Robin Williams committing suicide because, well, I wanted the fire hose of fucked up shit to run its gravity-defying, spraying shit everywhere course…and…I see we’re down to a mere trickle so this is what I think.

Robin Williams made a choice that was only his to make…

…and it is not within the realm of my experience or influence to say that it was a wise choice or not.

I cannot know or understand what is inside another person’s mind, let alone Robin Williams, nor can I know or understand what is inside the minds of the people he loved and who in turn loved him. And I mean real people, not movie audience people…not People Magazine reading people…not TMZ website visiting people but the people who actually knew Mr. Williams in real life.

I’ve read that he was selfish, he was an asshole, a coward (name a pejorative, it’s likely been hurled him, dead as he is) but I’ve not read anyone say that Robin Williams was a human being with his own reasons and his own ideas of what life is and should be. And that when the one he was living—his life—stopped being that thing or idea that he thought it should be, then he had every right and prerogative to choose to stop living it. Regardless the rest of the planet, the other 7 billion similar humans, and what their thoughts about what life is…

…and should be.

We so often overlay our lives, our experience, the very idea of what WE think life should be on top of the lives of others and we then judge them on the obvious gaps, the shortcomings, the areas where they fail to meet OUR expectations. We look out from inside the only place we ever really know and understand…and we make guesses and suppositions and try to create theories and hypothesis to explain what can’t be explained…so we call those people who don’t measure up…

…selfish…cowards…assholes.

When the most correct thing to call them is…simply another human using the limited tools (we all have) to try to live in an increasingly confusing world were we try to simultaneously meet hundreds (maybe thousands) of conflicting expectations…some from external sources but the vast majority we created inside each of us. I know I have them. I know you have them.

We all have them.

Robin Williams was an outrageously funny man and brilliant comedian and actor…and that is what we can only and ever know about him; the things we saw, read and heard in his movies, his writings and his standup act. What we can’t know, nor will we ever know, is where he failed himself or where his brain chemistry failed him or where he constantly missed meeting his own expectations or his own standards. Regardless the underlying pathology, we can’t know the parts of himself he could never, ever hope to love…and we can never know the feeling of utter hopelessness that it could have caused.

Robin Williams made a choice that was only his to make…as a man…as a human.

And I respect him for that.

Believe . Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

The question is how does a positive attitude work. Which is to ask , does a positive attitude “create” or “attract” positive results?

One school of thought is that by having a positive attitude, a person actually creates the positive environment that surrounds them and thus creates the opportunities that they have and ultimately take. The idea that it is regardless the outside world and choices other people make as much as it is about how you think and how your thinking “creates” positive results.

Your attitude reveals the positivity of the world around you which you then take advantage of.

The other school of thought is that your positive attitude attracts other people to gather around you…people who have similar positive attitudes…who then supply the positive opportunities that you turn into positive results. Another way of stating it is that without a positive attitude to set you apart, those positive thinking people would not be attracted to you and thus you are never given the chance to know the many positive opportunities that they bring to you.

Your attitude networks you to people who are then the gateway to positive results.

In either case it is all predicated on you for having the positive attitude in the first place…it is dependent upon you to understand that looking at the world from a positive perspective will always, always be better than looking at it from a dark and negative one. Everything is brighter, more reasonable and likely to be successful when looked at with a positive view because, well, just because. The question about whether you create or attract positive results because of that attitude might be similar to asking if it is better to be given a million dollars by check or in cash…

…it’s a million bucks either way.

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

Think of the worst thing you believe about yourself, the absolute deepest darkest of your secrets and then look at that belief and think of how bad it makes you feel; the remorse, the guilt, the abject misery of that thought enveloping you completely, submerging you in darkness…and wait a minute while you think…then look down at yourself…

…are you dead? Dismembered? Destroyed?

I’m guessing not because, regardless the weight you believe it to have, regardless how much control you believe that it has over your life and well-being, it is simply a thought, diaphanous and immaterial. Merely a collection of tiny electro-chemical signals between synapses collectively communicating across different parts of your brain. It exists only because you make it exist and for no other reason. It exists because at some point in your past you made the choice for it to exist as a pattern that you would use again and again the rest of your life. It may be hard to believe but life is a series of choices that you make in reaction to the stimuli you experience from your senses. Fire is hot so you don’t touch the flame, broken glass is sharp so you don’t run your finger across the razor-like edge. In many cases you’ve made those choices years in the past so you don’t “feel” like you’re making those choices now. They seem automatic but…

…they are still choices you make..

So…how do you deal with a life-crippling thought, one that seems automatic and wholly outside of your control? A thought that is so heinous that you hide it away and bury it deep, deep within your psyche and never drag it out into the light of day? Well, realize that it is not real, it is just something you have chosen to believe about yourself. Likely you have never independently verified that it is true. Once held up to the light of day and compared against stark reality, it will most likely simply evaporate away…

…yes, it will do that.

And you will feel a huge weight removed from your shoulders, you will breathe freer and will have a new understanding of the world because once the big bad one falls, the rest—the multitude of other self-damaging thoughts we all have—will all go like dominos one at a time. Not immediately and probably not in the order you’d like but eventually, once you realize that you always have the choice…

…they will all fall.

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

I’ve noticed lately that whenever someone with even a modicum of education responds to some idiot or event, they are hailed as some kind of rare, conquering hero. Like they are doing something that is above and beyond a normal human’s ability to confront ignorance, intolerance or hate…um…

…I think it’s called “knowing what the fuck you’re talking about.”

With the rapid rise (and truly incredible compensation) of the celebrity idiot as icon…as idol, as standard, as reference…we’ve basically conceded our humanity and given into intellectual entropy. We’ve emptied the loony bins and handed the keys to the kingdom to the inmates. And we did it happily, with abandon and not only do we sing their praises on social networks and the worst and the most pitiful thing of all…

…WE PAY THEM for being fucking idiots.

We pay them huge, almost inconceivable amounts of money and seeing that we’re a materialistic, cash driven society we’re basically telling them, in the only way that makes any difference to them (and everyone else who aspires to be an enormously well paid dumbfuck), that they are humongously important to us. We prize them above everyone else.

That is just so goddamn sad.

And the only idea I have how to help change it is by refusing to watch the Kardashians, any Housewives of <insert city name here> show—really any reality show—Fox news or MSNBC (any purely political mouthpiece “news” show). I haven’t watched American network TV in years and the second I make a mistake and land on a show with a laugh track…I immediately wash my brain out with some good literature or book on neuro-psychology…

…you should too.

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen