Skydiving Without a Parachute

Since abandoning my former life as an English teacher, I've found that I have a lot of time to think.

Which can be troublesome.

I lead a sort of bizarro-schedule that's like an inverse reflection of the typical working week.

Currently, to fund an album, I'm playing covers in bars, restaurants, and at weddings every night apart from Mondays, which means I do all of my work during evenings and weekends.

Monday to Friday, 9-5, is a vacuum for me.

I occasionally feel like a little piece of antimatter, inhabiting the gaps in other people's lives.

It's not always easy to know what to do with that time.

You can't really see anyone - they're all at work.

Of course, I broadly know what I should do.

I should devise myself a schedule: carefully block my hours out for yoga, meditation, exercise, writing, reflecting, journaling, gratitude practice, ice baths, steam rooms, and whatever else I'm continually recommended in varying amounts and at varying intervals by people on the internet.

Because, like I suspect many of us do, I always have this sneaking feeling that I'm somehow missing the mark.

Probably not by much.

I certainly wouldn't say I'm lazy; I've never had too big an issue with self-motivation, and I feel somewhat proud of the way I've dealt with a few bad habits over the last couple of years.

As I've alluded to a fair few times before, though, I do suffer from this fairly acute fear that life is going to pass me by; that I'm not squeezing as much out of it as I could, and that one day I'm going to look back at myself and feel disappointed.

I'm constantly conscious of the sheer miracle of my existence: the unlikelihood that anyone - or anything - should exist at all, multiplied by the impossibility that I, myself, should exist, as me, in my precise genetic and ancestral sequence, squared by the fact that I not only exist but exist with a healthy body, a well-functioning mind, and financial safety in 21st-century Britain, one of the most developed, successful societies in human history.

This is a cause for gratitude, but also constantly makes me reflect on the fact that if I, having been dealt the historical equivalent of a royal flush, don't end up playing a pretty memorable game of cards, then I'll really only have myself to blame.

We're increasingly surrounded by very visible, very successful, and very communicative ideals in the sphere of self-actualization (whatever that means).

Never before has it been easier to get inspired and instructed by the most insightful people in the world.

They perpetually gaze at me - a gallery of willing mentors - from the thumbnails on my smart TV, from my podcast feeds, and the streaming platforms on my phone.

Some of them even sit spine-wards on my bookshelf.

The problem is that there is now such an unconquerable tsunami of daily advice crashing all over us from this army of gurus - the Wim Hofs, Tony Robbinses, Steven Bartletts, Sam Harrises, Jordan Petersons, Joe Rogans - that rather than being slowly lifted by a rising tide, I often feel like I'm being washed away.

Because every ideal you set up to emulate ultimately also serves as a judgement; a standard that you are currently failing to meet.

And not only are their high standards difficult to emulate; you also have no way of knowing whose high standards are the best to be emulating.

We live in a world of infinite possibilities and limited time.

Which means you probably can't meditate, run, read, gym, follow the carnivore diet, give up caffeine, microdose on magic mushrooms, abstain from masturbation, smoke DMT, become a Catholic, do a silent retreat, and write a half-decent song all at the same time.

Which inevitably means making some choices about what you might be willing and able to do in order to further your own life.

But even then there's no guarantee that you'll be making the right ones for you, or even that it was sage advice to begin with.

Ultimately, I suppose I'm always comforted somewhat by the fact that there probably just can't be any universal right answers, for anyone.

The more I come to understand about life, the one conclusion I seem to reliably draw from my experiences is that everyone probably struggles with these feelings to a lesser or greater extent.

Ultimately, no matter what we've achieved or how competent we may appear, we're all just sort of making it up as we go along.

Nobody has 'the answers' because there aren't any.

We all have occasional insecurities; we all wonder if we're enough.

It's part of what it is to be human.

We've just got to do our best, act in accordance with the values we trust, with the limited information we have, and try to enjoy ourselves (I suppose).

One of the most profound metaphors I discovered in my exploration of Buddhist teaching a few years ago was this analogy about life by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (a reincarnated Buddhist master), who said:

“The bad news is that you're falling through the sky without a parachute. The good news is, there's no ground.”

I constantly search for parachutes when I know I should really just relax, loosen up, feel the air rushing past, and enjoy the view.

Then again, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche regularly abused alcohol and had inappropriate sexual relationships with his adoring disciples.

So how are you meant to know who to trust?

Keep dreaming,

Rob