Hi Reader,

So last week I said I felt weird about sharing with you how what I want and what I'm afraid of are the same thing.

I planned to elaborate on that this week. Why did I feel weird?

Well.... honestly, I don't remember.

Maybe that's a testament to how feelings change. Maybe it's evidence of sleep deprivation due to the kids not sleeping well the last few weeks (it's seriously the worst it's ever been right now). Maybe I should have taken better notes. Maybe it's the universe telling me some things are supposed to remain a secret.

I'm going to make a guess, though.

I think it's that I'm not yet clear on this connection between suffering and identity. Like, a few emails back I made this melodramatic statement about burning down the house. Why is it that I think I have to give up everything that makes me me in order to be free of suffering?

I don't know. Like I said, I'm not clear. And that feels weird because what am I doing writing about this stuff to you when I so thoroughly don't get it? I'm afraid it's all nonsense and I'm just making noise and not actually fulfilling an intention toward something.

Oh, well. I'll just surrender to the possibility that I am deeply ridiculous and let's freaking go.

I get the sense this is a deep inquiry and I'm not sure I'll be able to do it justice in the time I have here, but the first thing that comes to mind is this: the issue with me being me is that I want stuff. But that's not quite right. It's not that I want stuff; it's that I'm attached to getting the stuff I want. Like, if I want something and make a bid to get it but I don't get it, that is not. okay. As a consequence, I am not. okay.

So it seems like there is some level on which I believe—deeply, unconsciously, unquestioningly believe—that the world should be such that I get what I want. So that when I don't get it, something is wrong, dammit!

And of course the thing that's wrong must be the world! Surely I can't be mistaken that I deserve to have the things I want. Right!? Right???

So my suffering comes from the fact that I'm in an argument with reality. That something other than what happened should have been what happened. I'm not accepting that I am subordinate to what is.

What I don't see yet is why I can't continue to be a me and just do a better job accepting. Like, is there some fundamental problem with identity (or with my identity in particular) that it can't subordinate itself to an external authority or higher power or larger reality or wholler truth or whatever?

Am I just scrambling to retain some sense of selfhood here? Like, "oh yeah, I can totally give up desire without giving up my sense of self. No biggie."

Is that self-deception?

Or is the deception instead in the idea that I—or at least the fuzzy notion I refer to as I—am actually separate from all of life?

Do I really even exist?

Oh, ok. This is where the weird feeling comes back. Because what I just said seems very woo-woo. It doesn't really feel like the purpose of this newsletter to examine claims like "I don't exist" or "identity is an illusion." Those are too weird, and it feels like in order to examine them I'd have to get more philosophical than I want.

The point is coming home; that deep feeling of peace and security that seems available only in this moment and only by paying very close Attention to my own experience of being.

And the funny thing is, on those rare occasions when I've been home, it kind of doesn't matter to me who "I" is. Maybe that's the trick: that "I" literally only exists in the world of language, and the the world of language is not "the" world.

Which, as a nice bonus, brings me to a quote I read and loved this week. Usually attributed to Paul Éluard:

I love the world of language. It's beautiful, powerful, useful. It occurs to me that my writing is in large part a homage to my love for it. But it is not real in the same way as the things it points to. So in the context of this email, and to riff on my new buddy Paul:

Hmph. Not quite as pithy. Who ever heard of Paul Éluard, anyway.