Taking a b-rake

Posted on by
1

Happy Monday!

Hey folks. So, I have come to another point in my blogging trials that I want to take a break from my weekly updates to a) regain perspective and b) allow more time to pursue myself. I followed a similar path in August of 2012 where I took about a month off from writing, from day-job working, and from my daily routine to do a little soul-searching for some I’m so lost, what should I do now answers. It was a great retreat and really helped put some things into perspective. Actually, it prefaced such a great directional shift in my life and I am so grateful that I gave myself the opportunity to break away from what I knew (uncertainty) so I could have a less involved mindset to figure out what I did not know (how to achieve certainty).

I don’t know when I plan on being back behind these keys to type my perspectives away, but I do know that I want to devote my thought-energy to myself for however long until I am internally inspired to write again.

This website sees anywhere from 50 to 150 visitors on a daily basis from countries all over the world (provided by wordpress’ stat tracker). It’s super humbling to see those numbers and by which route they made it to reading my words. I cannot thank you all enough for taking the time out of your day to read the ever-evolving word vomit that comes from my thoughts. So, in the meantime, I want to know what your thoughts are, what you’d like to hear from me, what you wouldn’t like to hear from me, or why you read this blog. I invite you to write/comment anonymously on this wordpress-based thread, use the ask option on Tumblr, or e-mail me with your perspectives.

Happy trails,

jdperryhealth.com
jdperryhealth.tumblr.com
jdperryhealth@gmail.com

Set fire to your old self

Posted on by
1

Happy Monday!

Your personality is not set in stone. […] You can change what you want about yourself at any time. You see yourself as someone who can’t write or play an instrument, who gives in to temptation or makes bad decisions, but that’s really not you. It’s not ingrained. It’s not your personality. Your personality is something else, something deeper.

If it is useful to do so, you must abandon your identity and start again. Sometimes it’s the only way.

Set fire to your old self. It’s not needed here. It’s too busy shopping, gossiping about others, watching days go by, and asking why you haven’t gotten as far as you’d like. This old self will die and be forgotten by all but family, and replaced by someone who makes a difference.

Your new self is not like that. Your new self is the Great Chicago Fire — overwhelming, overpowering, and destroying everything that isn’t necessary.

Julien Smith, “The Flinch”

I came across this quote the other day on the Tumblr and I am sharing it with all of you today because this is exactamundo what I went through to discover my current renewed self. I mean, I wasn’t too busy shopping or gossiping about others, but I was sure watching the days go by and asking myself why the shit am I not where I want to be and how the heck can I get there? Actually, I had no clue where I wanted to be. I just knew that I wasn’t happy with myself at the time – with where I was or with how I was – and I needed to figure all of that out, so, I started at square one… Why am I me? I questioned abso-tu-ta-lutely everything. I wrote list after list… Why am I not happy? What influences me to be unhappy? What influences me internally to be unhappy? What influences me externally to be unhappy? How did I get here? Why did I get here? What influenced me to get here? What experiences throughout my childhood have molded me, for good or worse, to be who I am? Am I ready to take responsibility for myself? Am I ready to admit all of my faults and claim them as my own? What is the cause to all of my symptoms? How are my symptoms related?

I think what helped the most in my trials was the immense desire of just wanting to be happy, and wanting to be happy more than unhappy (because people can get stuck in negative land and develop a comfort in unhappiness. It’s easier to be unhappy because sometimes happiness requires change and change isn’t always easy, especially when you have to take responsibility for yourself). I vividly recall days that I would just repeat to myself, “I just want to be happy, I just want to be happy, I just fucking want to be happy,” but I didn’t know what made me happy or how that was even possible from where I stood at what seemed to be the bottom rung of a 100-story ladder. What I did know, however, was what made me unhappy and I realized that if I wanted to make any forward progress at all with myself, I needed to address that first and why that reality existed. My unhappiness weighed so much more on me than anything else and so in order to get that weight off my shoulders I had to suck it up, face my fears, face my demons, face my denials, face my conditionings, face my family, face my friends, face my career, face my passions, and face all of my responsibilities to myself, including the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of my life that were completely out of balance. The thing is, I confronted myself with everything first and last. I experience the world before the world experiences me and I had to take responsibility for everything that I was internally and externally. It wasn’t easy. I went through weeks where I felt that every day was one step forward and two steps backwards. But, I kept on trucking because the desire to find my happiness was the greatest realization I have ever come across in my (then) 26 years of life. “Without darkness, one cannot know light” is what I had to experience in order to appreciate a bliss that I have always dreamt of but never could place its reality in my life. I had to lose myself and hit rock freaking bottom before I could place a value on the importance and incredible feeling of finding myself and making my way to the top with all of the responsibility on my back.

Addressing my all-encompassing self was one thing. I had successfully managed to put my entire life to-date into perspective and was able to truly figure out why I am me (of course with plenty-o head room for new discoveries). Then came the biggest step: I had to change into who I wanted to be. I had to experience myself from birth to the present moment, I had to discover and understand that I wouldn’t be able to move on without letting go of who I was at the time, and so I set fire to my old self, leaving my old life in the dust so a new life could rise from the ashes. I forced myself to die. And I always feared death, so that was a huuuuuge thing to put into perspective and overcome for myself. I had to actually face and experience one of my biggest fears in order to move on. I had to die to live. It’s incredible.

If it is useful to do so, you must abandon your identity and start again. Sometimes it’s the only way.

I agree with the above statement in the context of myself and the path I needed to take. Not every needs to embark on such a drastic change, but I believe that it is useful to explore oneself, to explore the why’s and how’s to your current self, and to address any unhappiness that may exist. I support unhappiness because it is often a necessary starting point to bring about a change for the betterment of you.

I’m still me and, in the same breath, I’m not me at all. I am no one and someone at the same time. I am. I am not. I am and I am not. Neither I am nor I am not. It’s a really cool time in my life and I’m so grateful for all of the shit I stuck through to get me to my current self.

If you’re unhappy, don’t stop until you find it. That feeling, better yet the achievement of that feeling – knowing that YOU made this happen because of such a dedication to your happiness – is greater than words could ever speak.

jdperryhealth.com
jdperryhealth.tumblr.com
jdperryhealth@gmail.com

See what happens when you forget about the world?

Posted on by
Reply

Happy Monday,

The Philadelphia area recently had a two-day span of summer-esque weath-hair. Everyone was freaking out and smiling and outwardly happy for the first time since, I’m guessing, September when we last had similar days of rays. Two days of full-on swamp ass, coming out of no where, followed by an equally-intense-out-of-the-same-vein swampy experience; a thunderstorm. I forgot about summer thunderstorms. I forgot how much I loved them. I forgot how necessary they are not only to my life, but to the life of the Earth. It is nature’s yin and yang in full-effect and I think that’s why I subconsciously gravitate towards [thunderstorms]. I need that balance of give and take, of heat and cool, of push and pull, of intensity and sedation just as much as nature does, and my ability to put that relationship into perspective has been so gratifying/awe-inspiring for me lately. But, despite all of my ‘isms, I still have my 21st-century moments where I lose that one-with-nature perspective and get lost in the constricted world that I choose to be a part of rather than the boundless world that is a part of me; i.e. fabricate technology, fabricated societal pressures, or fabricated internal fears vs. a living nature, the living stars, or the living universe.

Keeping all that in mind, picture an Anytown, USA warehouse with a dock and a tin roof as a prime vantage point for kicking back on some uprooted mini-van captain chairs to watch a thunderstorm roll through the night; vivid lightening strikes streaking through the sky, ginormous rolling thunder clouds, and the melodic sheets of rain pounding against an old tin roof. Sounds good, doesn’t it? It’s the first thunderstorm of the new year and there I am, head buried in my iPhone texting excitedly about the storm, frantically searching for my Camera App so I can then “watch” the storm through a 3-inch screen while recording it so I can send it to a friend some 1000′s of miles away, requiring me to re-bury my head back into a world that is something us humans made up. I was sharing the physical stormy experience with a good friend of mine, only he was actually experiencing it while I was just riding the bench. I missed a few sweet lightening episodes and I made it pretty obvious that I was annoyed with myself for paying more attention to my phone. So, I picked my head up a little more often, but each time I soon dropped my head back into my phone to miss yet another lightening strike, which was followed by more frustration. Hearing my sighs, a little birdie chimed in with, “See what happens when you forget about the world, JD?” Man. Yes! Perfect! I was immediately brought back into perspective, into what matters…. only to realize this would make a great blog post to go into my Notes App and add one more line to my “Blog Ideas” note, and, of course as irony would have it, I missed another great lightening strike. Can win ‘em all, right?

But, what happens when we don’t miss “the small stuff” like jaw-dropping lightening strikes and the beauty of the rain to cool off a humid night, and, instead, we miss a turn on the road… or ample time to study for an important test… or a chance to meet someone that could change your life… or to give someone your undivided attention and eyes in a conversation… or to even have the ability to hold a conversation in person? All because we get caught up in the world that isn’t real and in a world that we’re not biologically designed to be a part of.

See what happens when you forget about the world?

The world doesn’t give a shit about you, but you sure as hell should give a shit about the world. Full-on oblivion and a sack full of self-irresponsibility equate to missing a huge part of what life really is. No, it’s not the concrete and advanced world we have built, rather it is the stripped-down, the-soil-is-the-root-of-all-life world that we were born from. We are children of the Earth and the Earth is a child of the Stars. It’s not the Earth’s responsibility to take care of us, but you can bet your ass that it is our responsibility to take care of ourselves so we can then take care of the Earth. And it’s when we lose sight of that – when we lose sight of what is real, what is important, or what we are all a part of – is when we lose ourselves, when we lose our perspectives, when we lose our true meaningful existence, and the loss of the living, breathing, moving Earth and it’s infinite life forms are not too far behind.

I encourage you all, if you haven’t already, to discover the Earth and our place, our role, our contributions, our give and takes, our reciprocal responsibility atop this floating ball of life that is amongst an endless, living Universe. The world would be the same, if not probably better off, without us. But we would certainly not be the same without the world. Don’t ever forget it.

Thanks for the wake-up call, G.

jdperryhealth.com
jdperryhealth.tumblr.com
jdperryhealth@gmail.com

Carl Sagan’s The Pale Blue Dot

Posted on by
Reply

Happy Monday, 

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

300px-PaleBlueDot

Carl Sagan’s “The Pale Blue Dot” – a perspective encouraged by a photo taken from Voyager 1 of the Earth from the distance of Saturn, 3.7 billion miles away.

Now do you see what’s more important?

jdperryhealth.com
jdperryhealth.tumblr.com
jdperryhealth@gmail.com

The sweetness of doing nothing

Posted on by
Reply

Happy Monday!

Il dolce far niente, which, of course, in German means a whale’s – wait… no. That’s not it. Oh, right… it means, the sweetness of doing nothing. Yes, how sweet it is to sit back, relax on the couch, kick up your heels, scroll through the Ryan Gosling tag on Tumblr, creep on people’s Instagram photos, or catch up on The Walking Dead episodes while simultaneously telling yourself not to go on Facebook because there are spoilers everywhere. A friend of mine sent me that phrase (the nothing thingy) in a text earlier this week. We were shooting the shit about weekend plans and I said that my Saturday will consist of absolutely nothing; a full-on “me day” to catch up on all-things JD because I’ve had a hell of a busy month and the next week will be a culmination of a majority of those efforts. I’ve never heard the phrase before and when I read it, it just clicked for me so instantaneously. Say what?… Is that a Italian phrase?… Because if it is that’s awesome! And I’m blogging about it today to go a bit more in-depth about what it means to do nothing and why that is so incredibly beneficial towards the betterment of one self and towards the betterment of the world that we build for ourselves (and how we influence the world around us) with our thoughts.

I have a lot of friends that will joke about doing nothing; basically disclaiming how they aren’t doing a thing because they’re a waste or a bum or lazy or don’t have a direction to their day. I know the jokes are all in good fun, but I like to think that there’s some truth to every joke… or at least a hidden mindset that is being covered up by poking fun at oneself so others cannot do the same. I used to have that mentality; that doing nothing meant I was not accomplishing a single damn thing… until I stumbled upon meditation (I’m not about to launch into a why-you-should-meditate spiel so rest easy). Meditation is centered around nothingness. For me, meditation takes on a monkey-see-monkey-do interpretation because I am able to calm my body and it transposes to my mind. At first my mind freaks the freak out, but, sure enough, my mind settles and I am literally sitting there doing absolutely nothing. It is one of the most enjoyable I have with myself, which is where one of my main points in doing nothing lies… because if you’re not having fun then what’s the point?

Ok. So. I sit by myself with my eyes closed and it is the epitome of doing nothing, but I am accomplishing so much with myself, right? So, why can’t that same mindset be applied to the cliche “lazy” activities like lying in bed all day, browsing the internet for hours on end, playing videos games, watching movies or tv shows, or, if you want to dive into a reality that exists despite its taboo aura, looking at porn? Because, in my optimistic/seeing the big picture opinion, every single one of those nothings equate to a beneficial experience of the self. If an experience allows you to spend quality time with yourself, allows you to get to know yourself better, allows you to have fun experiencing yourself, then what’s wrong with that? You’re not lazy. You’re not a bum. You’re not doing anything wrong. In fact, I think you’re doing everything right.

But what if that’s all I do because I don’t have a direction or I’m not good at anything or I hate my shitty job and my life is going no where?

My answer to those made up questions in my head is this: You’re figuring things out, right? You’re getting yourself from A to B, right? You’re taking each day one at a time, you’re doing the things that make you happy, and you’re paving yourself a path for the future with each present-moment experience, right? So, what the fuck is wrong with doing nothing if you’re actually doing everything that you can to be happy in the present moment, a.k.a. the only one that matters? And being happy in this lifetime, on this green earth, is all that matters, right? 1) Stop comparing yourself to others or to your past, 2) Shift your mindset to positivity because it’ll do wonders, and 3) Fuck societal standards. Fuck status-quo. Fuck anything that anyone tells you that says you should do this or that or you shouldn’t do this or that. Because you are figuring your life out on your own time, at your own pace, and on your own terms. If you want to sit in bed all day to watch movies then fucking do it to your fullest potential and have some fucking fun, man.

I will say that procrastination and a lack of self-responsibility can each play a factor in a form of nothingness. But, that’s a completely different blog because the desire to do nothing is can be a symptom of the aforementioned greater causes. It is important to differentiate amongst the why’s to nothingness.

I like to encourage perspective shifts, and today’s blog is one of those: Treat doing nothing as doing everything. These days nothing comes much easier to me and when I’m able to have a day to indulge, I freaking kill it. I know that it’s so important for me to have those days because at the end of the day I am still working towards my ultimate goals of: Being happy, getting to know myself better, learning about myself, and bettering myself in any way that I can.

I find it interesting when peers tell me that they don’t know what they want to do in their life or they feel like their going no where or are lost because I was at that point not long ago and it was because I had a hard time shifting my perspective for the better. To aid in that, it’s not so much by providing the advice of “figure out what you’re good at,” it’s more so “figure out whatever it is that makes you happy and then figure out a way to have that every day for the rest of your life.” If watching movies all day makes you happy, then build yourself a life that supports that. If playing with your cat for hours on end makes you happy, then build yourself a life that supports that. If playing guitar ’til the sun comes up makes you happy, then build yourself a life that supports that. I have learned first-hand that any shitty experience, any shitty job, and any daily bullshit are all worth it because I am able to put into perspective what makes me happy and the steps I must take to build a life that supports that happiness. Doing nothing is surely one of those steps. And when I am able to do nothing, it is without a doubt beneficial towards the betterment of my self, towards the betterment of the world that I build myself, and towards the betterment of the influence I have upon others.

Fuck yeah, man.

jdperryhealth.com
jdperryhealth.tumblr.com
jdperryhealth@gmail.com

See the big picture in everything

Posted on by
Reply

Happy Monday,

So, I live in the city of Philadelphia in the northeastern region of the States. We have all four seasons and are currently at the tail-end of a frequent-snow-fall-of-a Winter, heading for a-hopefully-warm-and-refreshing Spring. Everyone and their brother seems to be ready for Spring. We all thought mother nature was, too, because she gave us a few warm days here and there, and about a month ago we were blessed with a warm weekend in the 60′s (about 15 Celsius). But, last week, out of no where, the weather took a turn and we were greeted with significant snowfall. Ok, so my day-job has me primarily outside in all types of weather and I am able to interact with a good amount of people who share the same fate. 100% of the people I talked to that day were not happy campers… Where’s the sun? What’s with this snow? I’ll be good when this weather is gone! What a crappy day. Yeah, a happy spring to you, too! Absolutely no one – not one soul – could take the day for what it was (a gorgeous snowy day) and, instead, everyone dwelled upon what the day was not (not sunny and 60). Hallelujah blog post!

This perspective shift can be better summed up as: See the big picture in everything. Take a step out of your skewed reality, your constricted awareness, your filtered conditioning, your negative nancy-isms, and look at life through the eyes of – as cliche as it is – through the eyes of God. And by God, I mean, through the eyes of nature, through the eyes of a greater consciousness, through the eyes of a wholeness and connectedness, through the eyes of a universal understanding, through the eyes of sincerity and compassion, through the eyes of the universe. And by all of that shenanigans, I mean, let go of what you think should be, of what you expect, of what you assume, of what you judge, of what you’re holding onto, of what you impose and project upon others (including nature) so you can see, feel, hear, and experience the beauty in everything.

You, and only you, have the power to turn the 5 random-ass inches of snowfall on the second day of Spring into such a beautiful occurrence that nature so generously provides. You, and only you, have the power to turn any negative experience – it could actually be the most negative and daunting situation in the world – and turn it into the best thing to have ever happened to you, to your perspective, to your humanity, to your path, to your personality, to your mentality, to your emotions, to your spirituality, and to your inner self.

I’ll leave you all with a perspective that I came across on this thing called the Internet…

beforeyoujudge

jdperryhealth.com
jdperryhealth.tumblr.com
jdperryhealth@gmail.com

If you believe that God gave you the Earth…

Posted on by
1

Happy Monday folks,

Picture 4 Picture 5 Picture 6 Picture 7

“That’s such a confusing thing to me, because you believe that God gave you the Earth, that God created the Earth for you. Why would you not have to look after it? Why would you not think that, when he came back, he’d go ‘What the fuck did you do? I gave this to you motherfucker, are you crazy? The polar bears are brown, what’d you do?! What’d you do to the polar bears, did you shit all over every polar bear? Who spilled this shit? Come over here, did you spill this? What is that?

(sniveling idiot voice) ‘It’s oil, it’s just some oil. I didn’t mean to spill it’

‘Well why did you take it out of the fucking ground?

‘Cause I wanted to go faster, it’s not fast enough, and it was cold’

‘What the fuck do you mean it’s cold? I gave you everything you needed you piece of shit.’

‘Well cause jobs, I wanted a job’

‘What is a job? Explain to me, what’s a fucking job?’

‘You work at a place and people call when their game doesn’t work and you help them figure it out’

‘What do you that for?’

‘For money’

‘What do you need MONEY for?’

‘For food’

‘Just eat the shit on the floor, I left shit all over the floor, fucking corn and wheat and shit, ground it up make some bread what are you doing?’

‘Yeah but it doesn’t have bacon on it, I like when it has like bacon on it’”

…a snippet from Louis C.K. “Live at the Beacon Theatre”

A good amount of people in this world are so completely out of touch with the reality that our home, “God’s green earth,” is a living, breathing organism just like any one of you and me, which yields the inevitable possibility that it can become sick and will some day die. It is by our hands, as the most intelligent species who has the power to sway life as we know it in one direction or another, to make sure that she is healthy, alive, and well. And I don’t think we do that great of a job at it, at least not as the most “powerful nation” in the world. The ironic thing is that the countries who don’t have all of the gadgets and gizmos as the US does, maintain a life… a perfect give and take… as nature intends. The people live off of the land and give back just as much as it provides. Then there are other lower life forms that we live amongst; these forms also live in complete harmony with mother nature, treating her exactly as she treats them with respect, love, care, and with a two-way road which allows life to flourish. It’s a tremendous cycle of give and take; of life and death.

Over the past 150 years, humans have created solutions whose aim is to promote daily life or to make daily life easier, but in-turn, a majority of these solutions have actually created life-degrading problems in the long term. For example…

We are told to curb our pets, to clean up after them, to follow around a friendly species whom we claim to be “ours” with a will-not-degrade-for-another-500 years plastic bag for the purpose of placing a completely natural and life-giving pile of poop to keep the earth “clean.” HOW THE HELL does that make sense?

We, as humans, eliminate our waste into the source of all life, water. We take this rich grouping of the elements hydrogen and oxygen, and dump bacterial waste into it, thus making it unsuitable to drink while there are literally thousands, if not millions, of thirsty species out there dying on a daily basis because of a lack of clean water. Here we are shitting into it because it makes daily life easy… not shitting into the ground to replenish the soil with rich bacteria so new life can grow… no, we are just taking from this great earth.

We release deadly toxins into the air on a by-the-second basis. Take a trip on the New Jersey Turnpike near New York City and you’ll smell the scent of death as you pass by the power plants (no offense, Jerseyins… but you know that part of your state is horrid and leaves a foul stench in your nasal cavity). Our atmosphere is THE ONLY thing that protects all life on this earth from the “elements” of outer space. It protects us as a dense shield from extraterrestrial threats, and it also sustains life as an interactive canopy. We are treating it as if it’s nothing… perhaps because most of us know nothing about it, are not really aware of it, or do not care to care. Los Angeles has smog alerts for Christ sake because of all the air pollution. Like… what the fuck, people? And we think that watching The Walking Dead every week is such an important experience? Fuck!

We have completed degraded the soil and food supply on a commercial level for the purpose of profit; not for the betterment of nutrition, not for the betterment of breeding life as “God” intends, and not for anything remotely beneficial for life to survive in the long term. Companies have learned how to mass produce processed/mutated garbage that our bodies are so intelligent to convert into energy (*cough* food) at the expense of the soil, at the expense of the animals and insects, at the expense of the immediate proximity and world-scale ecosystems, at the expense of human lives… all to make a couple extra bucks.

We smoke cigarettes. That is a thing. We inhale deadly toxins ON PURPOSE and then release those toxins into the air……….

The food industry is a joke. The medical system is a joke. The government is a joke. No one gives a fuck about the planet because they only care about the profit. We have the power, the intelligence, and I’d put money on the fact that we are able to turn our way of life around 180 degrees with the snap of a finger to better serve, protect, and give back to our planet. But, since it will leave a lot of rich people broke in the interim and those rich people pretty much run our society behind veiled walls, but I have a hard time fathoming that perspective shift will be on a massive scale in the near future. There are even cures for cancer out there… it’s called, “Stop fucking up the planet, stop fucking up the food we eat, stop fucking up the animals and plants we live amongst, and your health will reap the benefits of living in cycle harmony of give and take, as ‘God’ has so graciously given to us.”

jdperryhealth.com
jdperryhealth.tumblr.com
jdperryhealth@gmail.com