stardust

Remember that attitude adjustment I mentioned the other day? I started thinking about other times in my life when I felt lonely and pathetic. There have been a few. And I tried to remember the ways I've managed those feelings in the past.

Back when I lived in Columbus, I had a stretch that was very similar to this one. I was single then, very alone, and I wasn't particularly happy with my prospects. I had a good job, but I was lonely. I spent too much time on the internet and I had unhealthy drinking habits. I didn't really drink that much, but I drank in order to get my hopes up about certain things (certain women, usually) and when those things (women) didn't pan out, I always felt pretty crushed.

You may laugh, but one thing that helped turn me around was reading the book Conversations With God. If you've read it, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, I won't even try to explain. At the time, that book struck me in just the right way. Suddenly, the whole world made sense like never before. I was filled with hope, joy, excitement, awe. I started meditating every day, more than once. I ate better. I had incredible, deep, meaningful dreams. It was the most healthy, happy time of my life.

What changed? Who knows. A series of things moved me further down the river and before I knew it I'd moved back to North Carolina and was living with an old flame from college and I wasn't meditating anymore or doing any of the things I'd been doing before and I was suddenly very, very depressed.

Well that sucked. And things suck now, so I decided to dig out that old copy of Conversations With God and see if any of the magic still remained. I know, I know. Just last month I made the bold proclamation that I don't believe in god anymore. True enough, whatever I meant by it at the time. But I do still believe in SOMETHING, and rereading Conversations With God is helping remind of those things I believe in.

I believe, for example, in the Big Bang. I believe that, once upon a time, all of everything existed in the form of a singularity, a tiny, dense hunk of all there ever is, was or would be. I believe that dense hunk exploded and the universe expanded from it, and continues to expand even now, but as much as it expands and as far and wide as it ever seems to grow, I believe the most important part of the whole thing is that everything that ever is, was or would be was once united in one little chunk.

That means that every tiny little subatomic particle in my body was right there in the beginning, right next to all the tiny little subatomic particles in your body, right next to the particles that make up the sun and the grand canyon and my bicycle and all the dogs, cats and horses and everything else on this planet and every other planet in the whole universe.

We all come from exactly the same hunk, and we're all made of exactly the same junk. For some reason, knowing that makes me feel a whole lot better about being alive. And it makes me feel a lot less alone.