How to handle people willingly leaving your life

(Stories of a Stoic)

Early in Fall of 2017, I met a nursing student from a private university one city south of mine. Natalie (pseudonym) and I instantly became close and shared daily conversation, constant banter, and that special connection rarely found. I was in a hiatus from a long-term partner Alice (pseudonym), and I did enjoy my new friend as a change from my girlfriend. Whereas Alice was impersonal, Natalie was nurturing. Whereas conversations with Alice was usually centered on her, Natalie constantly centered talk on me. Every dynamic of our relationship spoke to joy of a blooming romance. Except we really never graduated beyond that stage. After my two-year relationship ceased, I didn’t wish to find myself in another one. Natalie would try to advance things whereas I tried to tame them to best preserve what we had. Various social dynamics writers emphasize how when a woman is attracted to a man, and a man doesn’t accept those advancements, the woman grows bitter towards him. As this was the case.

Natalie’s passion for health care and healing speaks to her altruism and compassion. She wasn’t, and isn’t, a bad person. But I continued to regard our relationship as it were, while things seemed to grow sour from her end. Her advancements became more obvious, and my elusiveness became more emphatic. This culminated into a series of painful conversations that robbed us of whatever vitality we had together. Subsequent conversations were forced, interactions were strained, and our relationship was a far cry from what had been. But after finding myself without as many friends around, and out of a genuine care for Natalie, I reached out to her this past day. We began talking, but after a delay in her response, I fell into a trance of prophecy. I felt I was able to see her reply before she had sent it. I felt the words in my head, I saw the message being typed and considered what my immediate reaction would be. I received that message near verbatim.

I was washing my hands in the bathroom before dinner when I read this message. Immediately, I felt a sensation of surrealness surge through my body. My feet felt frozen, and my body felt heavy. Staring in the mirror, I felt the heft of my face weigh downward. But after a few seconds (that felt like minutes), I typed that response. It wasn’t a censored, edited, nor revised version of what I wanted to say. Those were the words that my mind immediately manifested, because they reflected what I know.

The Stoic response to these kinds of losses should be how one responses to natural circumstance. Human-beings may be easily influenced. And with a basic understanding of psychology, or an advanced understanding of social dynamics, one can influence another’s decision of this kind. But one never should. Because beyond the moral consideration, we as people are shrouded in originality. And our beliefs, ideas, experiences, idiosyncrasies are analogous to a beautiful harmony playing beneath our skin. This harmony doesn’t speak to all, but those who it does speak to are commanded by it. And as long as we are “good people,” and through respect, kindness, and a basic humanity ensure that we promote the happiness and healthiness of those we interact with (or at the very least, we aren’t a detriment to them), those who care for us won’t leave. It isn’t a matter of decision, it’s a matter of nature. So when other’s do leave our lives, as long as we’re generally good people, we can understand that this does not reflect our social attractiveness nor our worth. It reflects our how they valued us. We didn’t speak to them. The harmony playing within us didn’t interact with theirs. They didn’t “hear it.” Or they did, but it wasn’t “for them.” Because what attracts them is naturally different, and that’s okay. Romantic value doesn’t predicate on a hierarchy of worth. It predicates on a hierarchy of compatibility and relative attractiveness. A key’s value isn’t worthless because it doesn’t unlock all doors. Nor is man for not meeting the desires of all potential partners.

We should accept these losses with pride because our goal should be to live the healthiest, happiest, and most honest lives as possible. And there’s an inherent dishonesty in keeping people around as friends and partners who do not value you as others do, because a tacit principle of holding people close is that they too hold us close. They see us for what we are and they value what we are. So if another person discards our relationship, thus clarifying what they see and how they feel about what they see, this serves as a natural process to cleanse our circles of those who we aren’t meant for. And thus, those not meant for us. This process enriches our circles by ensuring those in our orbit are ones who are meant to be there. Because they hear the music we play and they like it.

What love is

Dear Readers, 

Happy Valentine’s Day!

And to those who are single, I’d like to say something.

Society has misconstrued romantic love and has certainly misunderstood love in general. What we believe to be romantic love is actually attachment, lust, and fear (of loss). Society preaches passion as a function of romantic love, and passion CAN be a function of love, but it functions where one demonstrates heroism, selflessness and sacrifice to benefit the life of another. It has nothing to do with touch nor sexual desire.

Love is everything. Life teeters on the spectrum of love and fear. Love is multidimensional, beyond the experience of mere emotion. Love is a hand extended to the shoulder of a distressed stranger, the smile of a child, it’s the gratitude towards something beyond ourselves when circumstance benefits us.

Anybody who has told you that you need another being to supplement your experience of love has misguided you. To live meaningfully is to celebrate love everyday.

(Stories of a Stoic)

Last week, I felt like a destroyer in the boxing gym. Tonight, I felt destined to be destroyed.

Nights like tonight capture life.

Tonight my new sofa felt warm and the gym felt cold.

The cute soccer moms were replaced by hard breathing, sweaty Latino guys.

The clumsy Russian with outlandish power seemed daring to hold mitts for last week, but nightmarish this one.

The host of awed kids who asked me how I kick so hard last week, had their airpods in tonight.

But I did tonight what I did last week anyway. I blasted the bag. Then the mitts. Then my sparring partner. Because boxing is analogous to life. Misfortune doesn’t wait until you’re ready.

It’s a matter of character, and not convenience, that you navigate the good times with the same grace as the bad.

This is the duty of a Stoic.

(Stories of a Stoic)

You will have days that are unkind to you. I had one yesterday for instance. And as it dragged on, I thought about Epicurus.

Epicurus was the first philosopher that I studied deeply. His philosophy predicates on pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain. So when he found himself on his death bed, while various systems of his body took turns failing, he sought peace in the memories of his friends.

I feel that we too should live our lives in a manner as to which we have catologed memories of our adventures, heroics, laughter, and moments of deep love that we can retreat to when life circumstances rough us up.

There isn’t any matter too dark for us to kindle light in.

Dear readers,

Some years deliver great reward at little sacrifice. Problems are impersonal, pleasure is constant, and peace is persistent. For me, 2018 not one of those years.

That being said, a musician friend recently emphasized to me “the music between the notes.” The silence that can be just as loud as a guitar’s chord and just as meaningful as a piano’s melody. And I thought about how analogous this is to life. There are special moments between what we believe to be the important ones. A sympathetic hand extended to the shoulder of a distressed stranger. Moments of philanthropy. Acts of altruism. Receiving another’s compassion. These moments aren’t as glamorous as freshly kindled romances, financial advancements, new possessions, etc. But these are the true glories.

And I may have endured many rigors this year, but I enjoyed many of those glories too. And I hope that you can say the same.

Sidney Sheldon said;

“A blank page is God’s way of telling us how hard it is to be God.”

Well, a blank year carries the same responsibility and delivers the same promise. It’s an empty canvas, and you can fill with it what you wish. I only ask that you consider glory and legacy when go about doing so.

Reach for the heavens

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.” Samuel Beckett

This quote has remained with me for years. I was reconsidering it’s implications yesterday in relation to romantic relationships. By describing anything as a failure, Beckett asserts a reality where reward/achievement predicates on a dichotomy. Win, loss. Good, bad. Victory, defeat. These dichotomies have their place (writes the Moralist), but they get applied too frequently (and thus inaccurately) throughout day to day life.

The dichotomy makes sense for learning new skills, conditioning abilities, and attempting new experiences. It’s easily (and accurately) applied to sporting events, but not completely nor as wholly as one would expect. In a boxing contest where an underdog displays unbelievably grit, adaptability, resilience, and strategy but ultimately shies of the win, is he a failure? If this contender secured a future in the sport at a championship level through a 36 minute opportunity before the world, but was bested on points did he truly lose? On paper he did. But he had also won so much; respect, adulation, confidence, and experience. He GAINED things, he LOST nothing. So if failure cannot exist dichotomously for a naturally dichotomous medium, where else does it fail?

I began reconsidering this quote yesterday in relation to the phrase “failed relationships” (romantic endeavors). People generally regard any relationship that sees a break-up or separation as a failed relationship. So if a failed relationship is one that meets its end, antithetically a successful relationship is one that does not end. We can dicotomize/quantify success and failure as being polar opposites because the only time we generally use the phrase of a failed relationship is when it ends. We don’t use the term to address abusive relations, unhappy partners nor mismatched people. This removes a grey area so we can posture the terms as wholly opposing one another.

We need to either deconstruct failure as a binary concept or narrow it entirely to the most basic of goal-based tasks (more narrowed that sporting competitions even) because failure postures all experiences as goal-based excluding any outcome as being positive other than the one we desire. This is a problem because it implies two false sentiments. Firstly, it implies that we know what’s best for us. Our desires are seldom examined, and even when one does examine them its hard to conclude that any one thing would wholly benefit your life. The best career position one is being considered for comes at the cost of added stress, more responsibilities, and more hours at the office. The supermodel-esque girl at the gym eyeing the lonely young adult causes that young adult to believe that consummating a relationship with her would positively benefit his life, unaware of the insecurities she would inspire, her immature tenancies she’ll navigate the relationship with, and her loose values. Similarly, I soldiered through two junior colleges on a warpath to earn admission to UC Berkeley, one of the most prestigious (and most conveniently located) universities in the world. In my pursuit, I disregarded the school’s staunch political stance, arrogant students, protests, riots, and the prevalence of violence and sexual assault. What could have been SO great about the school’s experience that it bestrides political intolerance, egoism, fiery rebellion, assault and rape? What exists within those halls to trump five facets of the experience all conducive to a poor academic experience? I couldn’t tell you, and that community-college student working fastidiously while claiming “It’s Berkeley or nothing” certainly couldn’t answer this question either.

Sociology has a concept called “symbolic interactionism,” which is the view of social behavior that emphasizes linguistic or gestural communication and its subjective understanding, especially the role of language in the formation of the child as a social being. The biggest mistake the social and behavioral sciences make is not applying this concept outside of sociology too. We as people evaluate others based off symbols. “What do you do?” begs an occupation that acts as a symbol correlating to an income, presitigousness, and required education that we relate with it. Asking a person about their occupation gives them symbols to understand them with. Luxury watches and car brands predicates on symbolic interactionism too. A mere symbol can communicate to others their income, and thus societal standing.

The executive who’s promotion continues to teeter on uncertainty desires a symbol (the prestigiousness of a higher position.) The lonely adult eyeing the attractive gym-goer desires a symbol (attractiveness via proxy). I wanted a symbol through admission to UC Berkeley (a symbol of intellect and academic excellence). We as a society interact with SYMBOLS. We do this firstly because we aren’t trained to understand people, things, or places abstractly and even those who find themselves able to do this will also find the task laborious if not insulated by congruent philosophies. Our relationship to symbols becomes most apparent through our desires. These symbols are seldom questioned and again, if we truly explore them we would conclude that we cannot claim any one thing would completely benefit our lives. Thus we do not know what’s best for us. My studies in theology, philosophy, and own religious convictions lead me to belief that we are on this planet to love, learn, and grow. The experiences we need to best do this drastically depart from what we think we need for us. What we actually need interacts with our psyche and our soul. What we desire (largely) satiates our ego.

The second implication of failure is that we need the entire experience of something to benefit from it. This is where we can retire Samuel Beckett’s rendition of failure completely. Maybe the executive who ultimately gets denied the prestigious promotion needed the experience of admitting to himself and the world that he desires this position. He feels he deserves it. But he also admits to those close to him his insecurities about how he will perform with the new skills, qualms over how qualified he actually is, and his anxiety that they will chose someone else. The experience of being a candidate alone requited/caused/catalyzed emotional honesty with himself, his loved ones, and the world around him. Others spent lifetimes unable to achieve this. Maybe THAT was the experience he needed.

I met a model-esque volley-ball player my freshman year of high-school and became infatuated with her immediately. I chased her throughout high-school as I endured the highs and lows of us becoming friends, her getting a boyfriend, me meeting other girls, circumstance forcing the boyfriend and I together for academic purposes, etc. I met excitement, failure, loss, and despair throughout those four years. At the road, we ended up at my house for prom photos and as my date proved to be a bad one, she wanted to step in. In front of all my friends and family, the girl I had desired for years wanted to be my offical date. We had our photos taken together in my backyard by the bay, she befriended my sister, and we spent most of the evening together. That day I actualized a theological virtue that I spent my first 18 years of life living without. Hope. That day, I learned hope. I never got to culminate a relationship with her, and truth be told I wouldn’t have wanted to. The closer we got, the emptier I realized her to be. She’s a sweet girl but deep thinking is not her forte.

I DIDN’T NEED THE ENTIRE EXPERIENCE TO LEARN WHAT I NEEDED TO.

I needed part of the experience. And the person the experience was predicated on was irrelevant. Absolutely no disrespect intended to her, but any pretty face could have substituted the role. The girl didn’t matter. The lesson did. And that lesson instilled a virtue in me that evolved me as a theologian, theist, and human-being. A light switched on that day, and I interact more richly with myself, my world, and God because of it. Where was the failure in that?

Why call anything failure? Why not be grateful that you could do so much? We should realize that the experience predicates on the destination and not the journey, because even with the intellectual investigation of a philosopher or psychologist, we will still never fully understand the motivation for any one desire or goal. Nor can we conclude what’s best for us. But we can solider towards the desires we deem most noble, honest, and meaningful through strategy, patience, and discipline. The journey will investigate man and his limits. The destination will deliver lessons from nature and the divine.

“In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness. And God said,

“Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done.”

And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close to mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked.

“What is the purpose of all this?” he asked politely.

“Everything must have a purpose?” asked God.

“Certainly,” said man.

“Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God.

And He went away.”

“The red-headed man with the cement fists smashed you to shit, Junior.”

It was a juvenile message to send him, and a deviation from character, but I took pleasure in Chris Eubank Jr.’s loss after having his blithe arrogance shoved in fan’s faces for years. Last February he mockingly sank to his knees, tensed his shoulders, and scrunched his face like a gargoyle, stalking the aborigine Australian Renold Quinlan around the ring in an ominous precursor to his inevitable victory. The title they were fighting for, the IBO Super-Middleweight Championship, is not recognized as a legitimized title by any official boxing commission. But Quinlan needed it. As a champion, he had mandatory challengers. And with challengers for his belt, Quinlan was never short of opponents and thus fights. With constant opponents comes constant income. Quinlan used this income to fund care for his ailing parents in their impoverished aborigines’ province of Australia. Throughout the fight, Eubank toyed with Quinlan to suggest that the opposition he offered was comical. He toyed with him to suggest— no—- make clear that he would be compromising his career by breaking off a chunk of his legacy to mend it to his own. And he did, except he broke off more than a chunk. A battered Quinlan toiled into irrelevance and thus poverty shortly after the Eubank fight.

Then he fought the prideful legend, Arthur Abraham. Abraham has weathered battles with the best of his division, and at the end of his career wanted to cement his legacy with a win over a rising champion. Eubank found Abraham’s meek wraith just as laughable as Quinlan’s. He brutalized him too, finding time in-between relentless combinations to make faces, posture childish motions, and actually laugh at the German-Armenian legend as to make clear that his best days were behind him.

Aside the antics in these matches (and countless others), Eubank’s misdoings extend beyond the ring. He and his father try to leverage further agency over contests by emphatically voicing that “Junior’s opponents need to be protected,” urging early-stoppages from the referee (to save lives). This is a tasteless reference to his fight with Nick Blackwell, whom Eubank beat into a coma years backs (and who remains there). And outside of his boxing career, grainy videos can be found of an adolescent Eubank beating men in parking garages from a decade ago.

Chris Eubank Jr. is not a good man.

So when he had dispatched of his first two opponents in the Super-Middleweight Super-Six Tournament for the Mohammad Ali trophy, fans were conflicted. This conflict stems from negotiating his distasteful character with the truth that he thrashes his opponents from pillar to post until knockout, stoppage, or a unanimous decision-victory. People were forced to face the reality that he was the most probable victor, but sought comfort that his opponent in the semi-finals was George Groves.

Groves weathered two wars with legendary Carl Froch, beating him on many dimensions before they ever fought. The ambitious youth permeated the veteran’s psyche by predicting pieces of the match with absolute confidence. He would solve Rubik’s cubes as a nervy Froch would ramble nonsense during the press-conference, communicating his superior intellect. He would explain how Froch would be defeated, emphasizing how it would catalyze his own career’s rise and Froch’s demise. He compromised Froch mentally, shrinking the larger, more experienced man so the opponent he would face against would not be the truest and most formidable version. And it largely worked. Groves manifested his predictions verbatim.

“The match will start off as a battle of jabs and I will win.” Groves did.

“I am going to give him a taste of my straight-right, just a taste, early in the first round so he respects my power.” He did that too.

He also predicted “I will finish Groves with my left-hook” and he knocked him down with it twice.

Groves fell victim to a criminally premature stoppage loss, but displayed a body of work so impressive, and withstood punishment so unbearable, that his future in the sport was assured to be bright. He endured career highs and lows, battering Froch in a rematch until Froch (shockingly) knocked him out cold, facing a grueling Badou Jack on Mayweather’s undercard where he fought a sound fight, but shied of doing enough to cinch the win. But on a career high, last May on Kell Brook’s undercard he fought a technical match to win the WBA Super-Middleweight Championship. He has navigated his career, the good and bad, courtesy of an incredible boxing intellect, a powerful jab, and two concrete fists. He fights strategically, patiently waiting for his opponent to allow him the freedom to manifest his game-plan. And win-lose-or-draw, he always does. His few losses were not courtesy of a more-skilled opponent, but by deviating from his discipline.

Groves skills are not only reliable, but antithetical to Eubank Jr’s form of uncalculated flurries, ambitious power-shots, and lack of any real strategy. So as many fans sought comfort in the pedigree of Groves, other boxers voiced that if he even deviates from strategy slightly, he’s done. And to heighten odds, despite the wide body of boxers, promoters, and judges who voiced Groves as a favorite, bookies had it heavily tipped to Eubank. Eubank had been ascending for years while Grove’s career was far from linear. The Eubanks’ and their team convinced the world THIS was the height of Junior’s ascension. Their indoctrination techniques seemed to plague masses, as even Groves offered a Freudian slip in a interview where he accidentally billed Eubank the winner. Doubt was nursed as a budding seed in the mind of Groves supporters, warding anyone from confidently asserting Groves as the winner. But when it seemed this doubt plagued Groves too, the world was afraid he was entering a dangerous match compromised to the same vain and degree that Froch was against him.

“Ginger is getting slumped”, some fan wrote in an ominous forum post.

Ginger didn’t get slumped. Not in the slightest. The red-headed man with the concrete fists smashed Junior to shit. Groves fought a match so strategically sound that it paralleled the ingenious of history’s most adulated military commanders. The naturally larger, stronger Groves, maintained distance from Eubank whose style is to rush into his opponents guard and bombard with attack. Each time Eubank attempted this, Groves met him with a sharp, punishing left jab.

Groves nullified each attempt at a combination by killing the momentum immediately, courtesy of either evasion or attack. As Groves began to pick up steam he would meet Eubank with a strong jab, then a straight-right. Eubank would shudder in pain. We shuddered in perverse joy. In the early rounds, Eubank tried to permeate his guard and received a shot that tore his left eye-lid in two. Blood seeped over each of their bodies in clinches, Groves shoving him out of intimate contact and continuing a barrage of attack. This affair increased in violence as the cut grew, because as the cut grew Eubank became more desperate and even less calculated. Instead of coming forward and addressing Jr. as the assailant, thus playing into Eubank’s hand, Groves always allowed Eubank to make the first move. Eubank continued to make the wrong move. And in this gory chess-match, with each wrong move he further felt the brunt of his downfall. A campaign of fear and bullying, a house built on a foundation of arrogance, collapsed on Eubank before the world.

I have been offering assistance to a close friend who recently fulfilled his military contract and has begun a city-college with the intention of transferring to a university. Immediately upon hearing about his plans, I urged him to set his sights as high as possible, UC Berkeley. I couldn’t help myself. My journey to obtain admission to their university was less than idea, frankly because I failed to. But the journey itself was shrouded in strategic consideration; understanding which classes I need to take, what grade I need to obtain in each course to maintain the GPA necessary, and what guidance counselors and advisers I should most trust to help facilitate such plans. I deviated from strategy upon the final steps of applying, impulsively changing majors to something I felt would statistically increase chances of acceptance. This costed me direly, and while some may argue this postures me to be the WORST adviser to my friend, I believe it deems me as the most fitting. By inheriting my strategy and critiquing it, obeying by a discipline I ultimately betrayed, he could achieve something I was unable to. And I write this with the utmost sincerity, I have never wanted somebody to achieve something so badly that I was unable to.

I have recently hear him voice deeply concerning things.

“I don’t think i’m STUPID smart, but I am smart.”

“I mean, I will try. I won’t get my hopes up and i’m definitely going to have a back up plan, but I will try.”

These statements do not concern me because they note uncertainty in character (although that does bother me too), but because he attributes success to inherent ability. Upon my revisions of strategy, my life and other, I have deemed three qualities necessary to achieve anything in this world. Strategy, discipline, and patience. Obtainment of these three abilities, working harmoniously together, can deliver man anything he wants.

I wrote this to the same friend after I formed this theor—- realized these truths about life.

“I was going to type this in a letter to you but I couldn’t find the words or time. But I think this is very important.

I think that man does himself a terrible disservice by believing that he is so much less powerful than he is. People fail themselves. We think we are so limited in what we can manifest in our own personal lives and this world. We’re not. You and I could be professional fighters in a year’s time. We could be studying to be astronauts. We can literally leave this planet. We could be humanitarians traveling the world or we could open a brothel in Brazil and have an endless supply of women or race sports cars around Miami or become professional chefs. Or you could become an astronaut and me a humanitarian or vice versa.

People, not some people, almost ALL people approach their lives as if they’re helpless and at the mercy of life and circumstances. “I’ll go where the waves take me.” Well you, I, Felipe, Andrew, we can control the waves.

There is a finite amount of criteria to get into UC Berkeley. It isn’t some aimless pursuit where one is just throwing meat at a wall hoping it sticks. There is objective criteria that would deliver you into one of the most prestigious universities on the planet, thus changing your life forever and you are capable of achieving that. Patience, discipline, and strategy will deliver you whatever you want.

DO you remember Fedrich? Fredrich is overweight and grimy because he chooses to be. Every day he chooses behavior that supports that lifestyle. Tomorrow he could choose behavior that supports hygiene and health, but he won’t because he doesn’t think he can. Felipe was fat because he supported bad dietary habits until one day he didn’t. He decided not to eat junk (strategy), didn’t eat junk (discipline), and exercised patience because he wasn’t going to be gifted an improved body overnight.”

The failure to achieve anything comes at the cost of two things; compromise and doubt. Both Groves and I were both burdened with countless places to falter. Groves could have retreated into pity upon hearing half of the United Kingdom predicting the bloody conclusion to his career (doubt). He could have abandoned strategy mid-fight to pursue a knockout or stoppage of Eubank and thus devolve the bout from a chess-match to a fight, Eubank’s domain of expertise (compromise). But Groves did not falter with compromise, and I did. And the results speak to the potency of those two beguilements.

We saw with George Groves what we will see with my friend. Groves operated outside of the pageantry of the event, by disregarding what it means and instead focusing on what he needed to do (strategy), waiting until circumstance afforded him the opportunity necessary (patience), and ultimately executed just as he needed to (discipline). And as he was announced as the victor and launched in the air, he rested not on the shoulders of his trainers but the body of incredible work.

We create our own realities and you have just as much power to create yours too.

(The quip about a brothel was purely for levity, fyi)