It took losing her, and the journey losing her has placed me on, to teach me to love openly. After I learned this, I stopped being sparing with affection.

I would no longer deliberate before showing someone love. I wouldn’t give thought before messaging classmate who’s having a hard time at their clinical site offering my support, reaching out to an old friend to see if they’d like to get together, sharing a post of a school friend and I for their birthday.

This was an important lesson for me.

To live from the heart.

But the lesson that’s followed is to be sparing with my energy.

All things are an exchange of energy. Thinking about someone, communication, affection, its all an eternal exchange that will far transcend life.

In the process, I thought that if I do live from the heart, I’ll meet other people also living from the heart. And that I’ll bring out the best of each person, the same lovingness, and we’d have a loving connection (in any context).

But what I came to see, and I say this without cynicism, is that often I’d give so much of my heart but it’d go unreciprocated.

Reaching out to school friends over the summer who don’t reach out to me first. Checking in on acquaintances who I knew were struggling. Sharing with others who seemed down how I feel about them, the love I have for them.

Sometimes I knew how one-sided it was. “That’s not what this is about,” i’d tell myself.

“Being loving isn’t about the social context.”

Seeing messages left on “READ” or “SEEN” stung.

I’d offer to take classmates out sailing under the Golden Gate who I knew wouldn’t be able to go because they have partners, and it’s just… weird.

I feel embarrassed even writing some of this.

Eventually I felt like I was giving away so much of myself, the purest parts of myself, and what I was giving was unwanted.

I’ve come to learn that everything is an exchange of energy, and although I do know how important it is to live from the heart, I also think being thoughtful about who you share your love with ensures that your love, and your heart in which it comes from, is valued. There’s something disrespectful to the self about offering your purest parts unwantedly, again and again. It changes the love you have for yourself.

I have friends who’ll slump down against the wall and cry with me, and those are the ones worthy of my heart. The ones who offer theirs. This is where my own love is valued and respectful. Which, in term, strengthens the quality of the love.

It’s not about closing the heart again, especially since I had to lose so much and suffer greatly for my heart to open. It’s not about cynicism, pessimism, or hurt feelings.

It’s about being intentional with our purest parts. Our purest self.

Since learning this, my love has turned inward and it glows brighter.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned from blackjack is that you can do everything right and still lose.

I knew my old high school friend, Cody, was getting married this summer. I was surprised I hadn’t gotten my invitation yet.

“His girlfriend probably isn’t letting him invite any of his friends,” my mom said.

“You didn’t receive an invitation because his fiancé holds is balls for him,”- my friend Andrew.

I reasoned either he wasn’t inviting any of the old gang, or he’s invited all of us and is just late on the invitations.

I have been very lonely lately. Each day is spent in my university library finishing the second draft of my book. The room I write from, “The Atrium,” is a large glass room that shows the USF cathedral, scathing landscapes of campus, and beyond the campus, San Francisco. Nobody is in the library during summer except for staff. And they all stay out of my little glass sanctuary. Sometimes the loneliness reaches a point, where when I hear someone enter the library (its that quiet), I get excited. I hope I then hear foot steps nearing the Atrium. To just “be” around someone else. But I don’t. On numerous occasions, it gets so lonely that I convince myself the silence is diving. Again and again and again. Like a black hole swallowing itself.

It would have been nice– more than nice to be able to be with the old group, even after how much time has passed, celebrating in Vegas. Hitting golf balls off the roof of a building in 101 F heat. A break from the silence that’s self-consuming.

They all still live in this same town. And even though our lives are a million miles a part, I liked thinking that if I was ever in dire need of company, they’d be there. That the past can act as a cushion. But it can’t. And they aren’t. A line in the sand has been drawn.

People have been dropping like flies lately, this is an extension of that.

And I am tired of guessing the endgame.

“The pain is stronger than ever. I’ve seen bits of lost Paradises and I know I’ll be hopelessly trying to return even if it hurts. The deeper I swing into the regions of nothingness the further I’m thrown back into myself, each time more and more frightening depths below me, until my very being becomes dizzy. There are brief glimpses of clear sky, like falling out of a tree, so I have some idea where I’m going, but there is still too much clarity and straight order of things, I am getting always the same number somehow. So I vomit out broken bits of words and syntaxes of the countries I’ve passed through, broken limbs, slaughtered houses, geographies. My heart is poisoned, my brain left in shreds of horror and sadness. I’ve never let you down, world, but you did lousy things to me.” – Jonas Mekas (“As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Glimpses of Beauty”)

― Jonas Mekas

Two years ago this time, the sudden and violent death of my best friend existed as a whole body wound. One that gushed blood nonstop. Two year ago this very evening, my beloved grandma would begin having chest pains and I’d race her to the emergency room as she had a heart attack. I sat there, clamming up in the unnaturally warm waiting room, with a face shield, N95 Mask, and gloves on given we were mid-COVID pandemic pre-vaccine. My best friend’s death still disillusioning, grandma possibly being the next on life’s chopping block, I sat in the clammy discomfort in utter astonishment of how cruel life can be. The night sky was red when on my drive home. She lived. But I won’t forget the fear, nor the inarticulable sense of cruelty and unfairness.

Two years later and I lay in more excruciating pain. I’ve lost three loves ones since then and the love of my life left me.

The misery rolls on.

The goal of Buddhism is to create Buddhas, not Buddhists, as the goal of Christianity is to create Christs, not Christians.”

My friend asked my opinion about Instagram models who have tens of thousands of men drooling over them, in the comments of the photos they post. So I added five models and began following their posts and fan interactions to let an opinion fester over time.

I was reminded of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. In Lolita, a middle-aged professor named Humbert Humbert falls in love with a twelve year old girl, Lolita, who he later step-fathers. And after becoming sexually involved with Lolita, there’s a sense of desperate dissatisfaction within Humbert. He has Lolita’s body, but he discovers he’s after he heart, which he’s not acheiving.

I’m merely speculating when I say this, but I think the inverse may be true for these models. The most primitive desire amongst humans is acceptance and the greatest fear is rejection. And the purest form of acceptance is love, which manifests as sacrifice, honesty, and selflessness. I think there are a lot of people who think they have love, but are restless within their experience of it because it isn’t true love they’ve achieved/received. Congruently, I think a lot of these women yearn for a greater acceptance, but misunderstand lust as the love they seek. The attention they garner is primitive and impulsive (and borderline creepy) compared to the genuity of love. And they’re not satisfied because what they receive is conditional, given that it predicates upon aesthetics (which age), competitive (amongst other models), and these women are receiving the manifestations of an impulse rather than the warmth of man’s greatest gift. They achieve something adjacent to what they really want, and the further from the mark they are, the most the desire increases, which manifests in increase of content, which continues to further them from what they really want.

Stories of a Stoic

The day after Valentine’s Day, I went on a date with a girl named Natalya who i’d met on Bumble. We met at Fort Mason in San Francisco and walked five miles through Fisherman’s Wharf, had lunch, then walked back. On the walk she clarified that she was only interested in long-term relationships. I didn’t tell her, but I wasn’t. My life revolves around finishing my book, and i’m not willing to compromise that for anything, as lovely as she was. So I thanked her for the date, planning to go my separate way, but as the weeks went on she would message me every couple of days. We would spend the day talking, as we did this past Thursday night before she asked me out again. I finally confessed my current desire for short-term relationships, but told her how much I enjoyed her company and asked if we could be friends. I felt like she was fumbling when she quickly told me she didn’t like me romantically nor had she all along and only asked me out as a friend. I was bothered by this. She bellowed in laughter at every joke i’d made on our date, she suggested plans for the future, she asked me lots of questions about past romances, and she sent me a lot of messages during the month between that date and now. As a writer my objective is to collect observations, and as a psychologist it’s to culimate them idea into a conclusion. So whenever anybody wrongfully suggests I misperceived something, I get frustrated.

I was angry at her. I bitched to friends about how difficult women can be as I fought the impulse to be dismissive while she tried to nail down a date for us to hang out again (“as friends.”) I became more frustrated as the night went on, so I put my phone away and decided i’d speak to her the next morning. I didn’t like how my opinion of her as this esteemed and respected and enthusiastic person had slightly wilted when I considered how she’d most likely lied to me. But then I had a moment of clarity. Maybe after hurting somebody’s feelings, I can’t expect them to be at her most honest.

Then I began to think about Natalie, another former quasi-romance who’d earned her own Stories of a Stoic entry this past year. Towards the end of our relationship she began playing a lot of games. She would tell me about other guy’s she’d like to be with, experiences she’d like to have, and she would shoot down attempts to hang out with her but then invite me over half an hour later when i’ve already made plans. She left behind a sour taste that entirely consumed my opinion of her. Thursday night after I realized what I did about Natalya, I began thinking about Natalie whom I felt like i’d had similar experiences with, of her telling me something about the reality of us contrary to my perceptions. Then soundbites from her games began flooding back and I started to ponder why she acted that way. Soon a specific sound bite came back from when it seemed like she was going to abandon our limbo for a real relationship with somebody else.

“Why do you care? You’ve made it clear you would never date me.”

“I never said that to her!” I thought. But I did think it. I had a moment of clarity. I did think it. That was my entire mindset towards her. I did want to date somebody more attractive, equally as athletic as me, and somebody more conveniently located to me. And although i’d never say anything like that to a girl, i’m sure it manifested in my behaviors towards her. I took this deep breath, where I realized the responsibility I held in causing harm to another. My inner-monologue began:

“Maybe talking to somebody for two years and rejecting their commitment, their affection, their being, is hurtful. And maybe that hurt was felt as a kind of frustration that manifested through the games a person plays towards another who wants their conversation, but not their romance. Saying yes to her, but also no.”

I thought I had Natalie figured out after our last conversation. I thought Natalie was a bitch. Whether such an opinion should be revoked is something else i’ll also decide in time. But what I can decide is that I thought I understood everything at play when this happened, but I didn’t. It took two years of experiences I needed and reflection of the things I had before i’d learned what I needed to. And by evaluating honestly and thinking deeply, i’ve been handed another piece of the puzzle of what it means to be human.

Wagers of a Warrior

The brutal reality is that many boxers have been killed by non heavy-handed punchers. Meanwhile Deontay Wilder is arguably the hardest hitting boxer ever. It’s unlikely, but very possible, that his opponent of tonight’s long awaited rematch, Tyson Fury, is living his last day on Earth.

Regardless of me pulling for Wilder, I hope Fury doesn’t succumb to a fatality. That’s one of the two reasons tonight’s fight will be so hard for me to watch.

The second reason is because given that this sports means something to me, as it does all of its fans, these boxers are parts of my world. Boxing interacts with my concepts of fate, consequence, redemption, self-actualization, risk, and glory.

So when one of my boxers lose, given they’re parts of my world, my world tweaks. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. As does my relation to, and understanding of it. Andy Ruiz Jr. beat Anthony Joshua on June 1st, 2019 to become the IBF, WBO, and IBO Heavyweight Champion of the world. His upset victory coronated my last five weeks of training before fighting Phil Lo Greco. My muscles were huge, my stamina had never been better, and I was one of the hardest punchers of any gym I entered. Months after my fight, as Ruiz bought mansions and Rolls Royces and helicopters, I dated lots of girls, and raced my car around California, and spent my days writing my book in beautiful places. When Ruiz Jr. lost the Championships to Joshua on December 7th, my life consisted of treatments for all my boxing injuries, spending countless lonely hours of my life in dark rooms writing, and reflecting into the drab grey sky moodily. So when I penned in my journal: “I liked this world more when Ruiz Jr. championed it,” I meant it.

Sometimes my favorite boxer’s victories initiate phases in their lives congruent to mine, and their victory in my life isn’t causal but rather merely parallel. Sometimes the effects of a win or loss are causal. During Summer 2018 I was obligated to be in 300 hours of classes because a counselor made a mistake advising me of drop-dates. I became fatigued from the intensity of the courses during what was supposed to be my first break after being enrolled in classes year-round for two years. My honor’s streak was traded to fighting for high Fs. The sight of the same campus each day, five days a week, became grating on my eyes. I became anxious and depressed. And the counselor never vied for me to her superiors, nor was willing to admit her mistakes beyond the room. So when Golden Boy promotions robbed Gennadiy Golovkin of his victory against Canelo Alvarez in their awaited rematch that September, thus ending Golovkin’s career-undefeated streak and robbing him of his four championships, indelible shades of unfairness and corruption marked my sense of the world. That’s the effect these matches can have on fans.

The literal do-or-die consequences of tonight’s fight will change the courses of both men and radiate into the worlds of the millions who watch. I respect both men, but I sure as hell don’t envy them.

Stories of a Stoic

I was shocked to wake up and find out that Kobe Bryant had passed away. I was also shocked, then soon bothered, by the comments I found from goateed, sunburnt, Trumpists.

“One less rapist on the streets!”

“Not a real loss, he was a rapist!”

And other demeaning remarks. I haven’t followed basketball, nor did I know the man. I have no idea what he did or didn’t do. But that’s the point, it’s irrelevant to the mourning of him. There’s a concept from dialectics (echoed in Christianity) of duality. It’s the idea that two seemingly contradicting truths can operate simultaneously. Meaning a selfish person can do a charitable act, an honest man can lie, a person can love you and be toxic. It’s an important idea because it fractures the dichotomies of good and bad, right and wrong, etc that don’t accurately capture people. I’m not implying he’s a good person who did a bad thing, i’m saying a bad thing doesn’t render a “good” person a fraud. He’s a fraud if those moral truths are contradictory. But they’re not, and that’s where the people making those comments are lost.

The implication of those making derogatory comments is that if Bryant sexually assaulted that woman, he’s not worthy of being mourned. But a person being worthy of grief upon his or her death doesn’t predicate on moral evaluation anyhow, it predicates on whether the world’s natural reaction is grief. And here, it overwhelmingly is.

Those people also imply that if he were to have assaulted that woman, his death isn’t a tragedy. But that isn’t true either. A sport losing a hero, a wife losing a husband and daughter, four daughters losing a father AND sister, is tragic. A man dying at 41, alongside his 13 year old daughter is tragic. And nothing curbs that.

A stain on a man doesn’t constitute the man.

Again, I have no idea what he did or didn’t do. But it doesn’t matter. The idea that there’s reason to inhibit compassion is a brittle, mindless idea that actively hurts the world. And it’s a function of weakness and not strength.

As a boxer, I laud any athlete that’s championed their sport.

Rest in Peace Champion, Kobe and Gianna Bryant