Earlier this year, when I began writing again, the first thing I wrote was a piece entitled, The Day I Became a Croc. It’s a triumphant and true story about a man who implements miraculous life changes following a marijuna-induced, out-of-body vision during a Hot Yoga class; it’s a fun piece and I’ll share it one day. Yet as I reflect, my novice as a writer and storyteller are clear. I was guilty of committing the classic hero-story-fallacy, in which the author bestows the hero with an unrealistic set of powers; powers that become paramount to his successful mission. By making the story quixotic, I rendered the moral irrelevant, and detracted from the reader’s experience. For robbing you, the reader, of an opportunity to learn, I hope to make amends by writing this prequel.
Spoiler! The crazed man who smoked weed, went to Hot Yoga and envisioned himself as a crocodile is me. Having had time to look back, it is clear where I went wrong—I wanted to be a hero. My fervency to create a tale caused me to neglect the fact that this is real life and in real life, people don’t interpret visions—they interpret living.
In the piece, I claim that we are the intersection of our thoughts and actions. More concisely stated, we are our habits. The story that I failed to tell initially is about adaptability. I challenged the reader to flip a mental switch; one that would have magically given them the willpower to do anything—instantaneously. This, like the story itself, isn’t advice—it’s fantasy. Over-eager to turn myself into a spirit animal, I downplay the extreme difficulty required for change and brush over the precursor needed for such adaptation—a priming event.
Primingis necessary for change, given 45 percent of our days, and thus, 45 percent of our lives—are automated. Our brains create an autopilot system for basic tasks in an effort to maximize energy and efficiency. They do so by perpetually gathering feedback from our real-time experiences and creating mental shortcuts so that we don’t have to work as hard the next time we encounter similar scenarios.
To illustrate, consider the experience and relationship we have with driving a car. When we’re sixteen, even making a right-on-red is an emotional and all-consuming operation. Ten years later and we’re figuring out the best way to draft an email while asking Siri for relationship advice and unwrapping a breakfast sandwich—all while maintaining 65mph on the freeway. Driving did not get any easier, our brains just got tired of wasting energy on the mundanity of operating something that virtually operates itself. This mastery allows us to designate driving to the autopilot feature, while we attempt to maximize efficiency elsewhere.
This is how character develops as well. Growing up is tough; just ask a pubescent boy. He will probably tell you that learning to navigate girls is a lot like making a right-on-red. This early feedback—when we are learning to drive—is the information we will subsequently use as we traverse through life. If all goes well, the boy will transition into a young man and just as with making a right-on-red, hopefully he has enough practice to no longer shit his pants while conversing with the opposite sex—I’m still a work in progress. The things we perceive when we are developing will determine whether we grow up to be someone who instinctively says “Bless you” when a stranger sneezes, or someone who actively abstains like that weird lady on the subway. Hopefully, these examples show that our brains’ feedback and autopilot system is a double edged sword: allowing us to add complexity to our daily drive but making the disruption of our habits and character nearly impossible.
Just as with distracted driving, an “accident” is often required for an individual to become aware that they have been going through the motions. Such an event is typically the only thing that gives us enough time to discover the possibility that our autopilot has us destined for an undesired location. Sadly, many people will disregard their accident and continue their drive, still partaking in the distracting tasks that led to the crash in the first place. Despite an individual’s best attempts to ignore reality, all accidents leave a scar. Accidents and scars, if ignored long enough, have a tendency to manifest in more noxious ways.
My accident occurred as a junior in college, when I was suspended for violating the school’s alcohol policy. When you read my post about becoming a croc, you will discover that I spent a great majority of my life following, not leading. When people started drinking in high school, I wanted to be the drunkest girl at the party. When friends prodded me for a laugh, I found the nearest person I could insult. I was a yes-man; going above and beyond to please others because of how I was programmed. Paradoxically, these are the traits that led to my suspension, and if not for my suspension, I would still be that person.
In hindsight, the story is quite funny. I will save the details for another time, but the abridged version is that I tried to outmaneuver campus police while intoxicated with a BAC of .27. I obviously lost that battle and was not permitted to return to campus the spring semester of that year; the most difficult of my life.
Up until that point, I had absolutely no awareness of the person I was. My autopilot system had developed a character who acted impulsively, said the first thing that came to mind and disregarded whomever was offended—a character my friends loved. But it wasn’t my friends rotting at home doing data entry at age twenty—it was just me. It wasn’t my friends waking up at 7am to work 8-4 Monday through Friday, they were all having the times of their lives abroad in Europe or back at school. As someone who was insecure, I searched for answers to my misery in every place but where it truly resided—myself.
How could this have happened to me?
If only I had gone home with my friends that night or if the dean wasn’t such a dick, I would be there in the middle of it all!
My FOMO was causing me to try to change the past—an action with an insanity-inducing potential.
As it turns out, what was happening the semester I was suspended—my accident—was a malfunctioning of my autopilot system. The system tried to fix itself, but the accident had left a scar—I had been primed.
My return to school as a senior that fall was rife with internal conflict. My autopilot was working to reestablish the character that my friends loved, but it was impossible to disregard the drastic left turn my life had just taken. The issue was simply that I was no longer the same person. I had experienced something traumatic that I was now wearing around like a scarlet letter. As my autopilot sputtered my conscious mind worked to grab a foothold.
Entering the real world was no easier. Opposed to working for a big financial institution, as I was destined for before my suspension, I was resigned to a job as a recruiter for a sales company in Midtown Manhattan. My days were filled with angst as the omnipresent questions of “why” and “what if” grew loud enough to where I could not continue what I was doing for another day. After almost two years and without a real plan, I quit to pursue a career in acting—naturally, of course.
As any good Jewish mother does, my mom was propping me up by urging me to get into modelling as a segue. I met with a handful of agencies and only one was willing to give me a shot, but first I needed to “lose ten pounds”—naturally, of course. After losing twenty, I began the uphill pursuit in the entertainment field while retaining a personal training license as a side hustle. During the year I spent actively trying to act, I made the most unsettling discovery an aspiring actor can make: I wasn’t good at pretending to be other people. With this realization came the return of the existential questions:
Who are you, Guy?
Why did your path change so drastically?
What are you destined for?
These questions, and a need for answers, signified the ongoing and welcomed demise of my autopilot system. With a greater ability to communicate with myself, I abandoned the acting endeavor and began focusing on a part of me I had always loved—health.
Fast forward to present-day; six years removed from my accident in college—the first time my autopilot suffered interference—and three years removed from becoming a crocodile on my yoga mat. What I jokingly attributed to an isolated, high vision, actually dates back to the wake-up call I suffered while depressively sitting at the desk of my internship while suspended. I am reminded of a quote from Ethan Nichtern who writes:
One of the greatest lessons that comes from meditation is that a relaxed curiosity about life and sleepwalking through it are two radically different choices. If your mind is a runaway train, your life will be a runaway life.
Accordingly, accidents are as necessary as they are inevitable. They give us the ability to understand the cliche but useful notion that everything happens for a reason. Without this comprehension, how does an individual rationalize all the bad shit they will undoubtedly encounter on their journey? An inability to see in this manner comprises the “runaway” mind: collecting and ignoring scars until one day—it crashes for good.
I feel now is an appropriate time to introduce what led me to revisit this topic in the first place.
A couple months ago, I went on a hike with one of my best friends. Upon us discussing our plans for the future, he turned to me and asked a jarring question: But, are you having enough fun? The question struck me as odd, considering the clearly joyous time we just spent entrenched in the beauty of upstate New York. Even stranger, it was proposed in response to me telling him about how productive I had been recently, and how excited I was about all that was going on in my life.
Upon dropping him off, the question consumed me:
But am I having enough fun?
“I am better than I have ever been,” I thought. “What am I missing here?”
It took some time, but I finally realized what was so unsettling about the remark. I was frustrated that my best friend could not conceive that our subjective experiences as humans could possibly elicit subjective conceptions of “fun.” That he could think, and deep-down, hope, that there was still a piece of me that longed to get drunk and be an ass, did not sit right with me.
Yet I could not entirely blame him for the way he directed his question. It was, after-all, the yes-man he initially befriended and longed for the return of. Yet, my frustration with him stemmed from the fact that he seemed reluctant to accept that people change—even your best friends.
Accidents are an inevitable part of life. How we deal with and rationalize them is what makes us unique. While I love my best friend, the laws of nature render him incapable of understanding the unravelling and reassembly of my character that has taken place these past six years, and how different my path is because of it. It is for this reason that we must never judge, only seek to understand.
So, am I having enough “fun?” The answer is yes—but only because I have spent the past six years trying to understand what “fun” truly is. This is what I’ve come up with:
“Fun” is awareness. It’s not a specific activity or time that an individual derives enjoyment from—it’s enjoying the whole damn thing. “Fun” is noticing where your mind goes when you smell a flower or taste your favorite food. It’s making decisions because you are actively aware that you want to, and not because something you developed when you were thirteen is urging you to do so. “Fun” is listening, then acting. “Fun” is the evisceration of your autopilot until you are experiencing life from a fresh perspective every single day.
People change. My accident in college was the best thing that ever happened to me. It helped me to understand my life as a true journey: ups and downs with an eventual happy ending. It allowed me to dissolve a debilitating system that mandated who I was and dictated my every action. It eroded a previous designation I had for myself as a yes-man, and allowed me the fortitude to become an I-do-it-because-I want-to-man.
What became fun for me was no longer blacking out and succumbing to peer pressure. What became fun was having defined goals, and having every action and thought be in accordance with their attainment. What became fun was being the strongest, sharpest, most disciplined individual I could be, and eliminating anything that got in the way.
We are an immeasurably complex set of atoms, molecules, tissues and systems that rely on a 24/7 monitoring system to interpret what we see. The drastic contrast by which each human sees the world and the accumulation of that feedback, will, over time, create immensely different humans. As such, my experience on this planet and my views of the world are going to be so precise, they will differ from even those closest to me in ways that are truly inconceivable. It is our duty to understand this fact and to lead a life of compassion. It is impossible to know how many accidents a person has been in and how those accidents have affected their character. We don’t know if a person is in control or if they are letting life control them. It is for these reasons that we must keep an open mind and focus our attention on building a better relationship with the most important individual we have in our lives—ourselves.
