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To celebrate his 50^th birthday, a friend of mine attempts a standing back-flip in a public plaza.

He hasn’t performed this stunt in fifteen years.  For six months he trains hard to regain the strength and coordination that underpinned his comedy act as a younger man. 

Come the big day (last Saturday)… he almost makes it. 

Instead of landing on his feet like a Nadia Comaneci, Rick winds up on his knees like a peasant in the rent collector’s courtyard.  Then, in the blink of an eye, he’s on his feet, hands in the air, “Tad-da!”  As gymnasts do. 

Of course, people applaud.  Of course, Rick is disappointed.  Because, of course, he has come up short.  He has (in his own mind) failed.

I know, I know – big deal.  An over-achiever learns his limits – so what?  But wait… freeze that frame.  Actually, let it run a few more seconds…

To the part where Rick is digesting this “failure” amidst the applause.  To where he’s become aware that his flip-flop has not broken any laws of nature or society.  The only thing slightly damaged is his self-esteem.  Well, he’s 50, for goodness sake.  You can’t turn back the clock.  The flip was probably near-impossible, anyway.  Is that what the audience finds so compelling? 

Look at the crowd – drawn like moths to the flame of sheer audacity, sheer determination. 

Look at Rick – he seems to be getting it.  How can this be failure? he’s asking himself.  And even if it is, So what?  He seems to be okay with these new facts of life.

“It occurs to me that I might be growing up.” These are his words.  

What we have here is a failure that looks more like a triumph.  Better yet, call it a liberation. 

Here’s Rick Lewis reflecting later in the day on his blog:

“So now I’m sitting here on Day 1 of my 50^th year with a feeling of joy, anticipation, and, yes, liberation, looking forward to trying many more things that may or may not work and joining the ranks of those whose exploration, discovery, and striving is not limited to the sure thing, or perhaps even the probable.

“Getting older ain’t half bad, especially if it provides opportunities like this to get more human.  I suspect there is much more to come.”

All I’m trying to say here in my blog is that “growing more human” pretty much defines the Art of Life.  And if that sounds trite, just try it – try to stay conscious while failing.  See what it has to offer. 

Don’t need to attempt a back-flip, but a springboard of some kind is essential.  We need to launch ourselves out of our comfort zone. 

We’re victorious before we even hit the ground.

You wake at dawn with things on your mind—not the least of which is getting a new blog post out the door.

The antenna on the right side of your brain is therefore twitching in the direction of any idea on which to hang 500 words.

 It’s getting easier as time goes by because you have cultivated a talent for perceiving a nexus of meaning wherever you look. 

(What is this—the anatomy of a blog post?  Well, there…you see how easy conceiving a blog post can be.)

Let’s say your blog’s focus is: “THE FACTS OF LIFE as revealed in fiction”.  Your beat has broadened (mercifully) to art, essays, interviews, reviews and cultural rants of all kinds including those found in other blogs.  There’s a plexus of blogs out there, a force field in which all bloggers have become one virtual organizm, feeding off each other in a kind of e-symbiosis.  It’s called the blogosphere, and it’s a great place to e-forage.

For the sake of this exercise, let’s visit a blog that I have pillaged recently and perhaps a tad too often.  (I do have the blogger’s permission—very important.)  Here for example is a recent item exploring the dynamics between lies and honesty:

“We live in an age of lies.  In the moments we use them, it seems as though they give us an advantage. In actuality…” 

You can hang your blog post on the coatrack of that thought, no problem!  Your blog, after all, is largely about showing how fictional characters must necessarily suffer the consequences of their folly.  Lying to ourselves pretty much defines the human condition.  

“In actuality they (the lies) disconnect us from reality and soon nothing is workable, because we have no traction with the truth.”

Absolutely.  Writers force their fictional heroes to live a lie until the skidding begins—until they reach the point where, as Rick Lewis says, “nothing is workable”.  This is nothing less than the all-important Act II crisis, where the protagonist hits the wall head-on.  Old strategies—based on a deluded sense of self—prove powerless to effect the change they want.  Every protagonist has an existential crisis, a “who am I?” moment.  Then it happens.  The sea-change:

“The smallest act of honesty is like drilling a new well; a rich source of power, life, and energy for ourselves and everyone around us.”

This moment—when the hero opens to a new way of seeing herself—is a moment with a thousand faces, and your blog, like a paparazzi, shoots them as they appear. 

You pray that this short post is useful to someone.  That it’ll help someone perceive crisis and struggle as part of the very real human plot.  That it will encourage someone to be a little easier on their imperfect self.  And to accept that being imperfect is part of our perfect design.

So, there you have it—a blog post.  It only remains to invent a catchy title, a phrase that will excite a search engine.  You review your post for ideas or words you like—like “nexus” and “plexus”.  Hmmm…

With apologies to Henry Miller…

Fellow blogger and “intelligent misbehavor”, Rick Lewis, has kicked a hornet’s nest in my brain. 

Rick was in Philadelphia last week, where Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence and where the great American issues of “freedom” and the “pursuit of happiness” became grist for Rick’s daily blog.  I commented, sceptical about all this so-called happiness and liberty. 

Yes, back in 1776 the notion of individual rights must have been a radical concept, and happiness perhaps in short supply.  The demand for those “inalienable rights” has since become society’s mantra, and that would be okay if, over the years, conventional wisdom had come to embrace a profound understanding of happiness.  Or freedom.  But has it?  `

“Look what freedom has brought us,” I suggested to Rick, who then invited me to elaborate.  And that’s why my brain’s all abuzz.  No one has ever invited me to continue a rant. 

So here goes:

Happiness and freedom are so entrenched in our culture as “rights” that we ignore what we all know to be the truth of the matter – what real happiness is and how it’s earned.  It comes at a cost.  I’ve arrived at this conclusion after years of studying films and novels (not to mention my own life story).  Writers know what it takes to fashion a sense of verisimilitude, and it appears to come down to determined effort expended in the direction of a challenging goal or vision. 

Problem is, it has become uncool to appear to struggle.  What to say about suffering or, heaven forbid, failing.  It’s as if we are now obligated to be happy.  Little wonder that we fake it.  No one has explained this phenomenon better than Pascal Bruckner in an article called “Condemned to Joy”. 

Bruckner explains how the right of happiness has become a duty in our individualistic society.  A burden, in fact: “If I don’t feel happy, I can blame no one but myself.”  Never mind if we’re more or less happy than our ancestors, “our conception of the thing itself has changed,” says Bruckner, “and we are probably the first society in history to make people unhappy for not being happy.”

This really sets my mental bees to swarming because we know better.  Everyone understands the nature of honest to goodness contentment, and likewise we understand how profound sadness can be.  WE ALL KNOW THIS!  Yet we tend toward the path of least resistance. 

Every time we see a good movie or read a good novel we are reminded once again how the human organizm achieves its peak experiences – through risking encounters with failure and all the unhappiness that may ensue. 

Rick Lewis, in a more recent blog post, reminds us that avoiding unpleasant experience has become a defining feature of our culture.  And then he says a very important thing: 

“As long as we believe (that) our ability to create comfort for ourselves is freedom, we eliminate the possibility of realizing it.”

Stung with the truth. 

I’d rather you didn’t waste your time reading this post.  Rather, save yourself for:

http://www.breakarule.com/blog/author/admin/

That’s right, MOL goes on hold to alert you to the adventures of Rick Lewis. 

Yes, the same character we met on board my previous post , the one who advocates “leaning into our own unknown”.  Well, in the last few days, Rick has found himself venturing farther into his own dark side than he anticipated. 

Let me explain:

Rick soon turns 50.  Author, Zen aficionado and physical comedian, Rick decided he’d celebrate by turning 30 again…and by executing the perfect back-flip.  Just like the good old days.  His blog is a diary of his training regime and all the mental chitchat that accompanies the pain, the promise, the doubt, and the lessons and meaning (or not!) behind it all.  But in the last few days an injury has put his mission in peril.  Not one to quit, Rick is wondering if the whole idea has been vanity—nothing but the ego’s folly? 

Rick’s blog has become nothing less than the anatomy of a hero’s crisis and metamorphosis.  With a real-time, play-by-play commentary!  You don’t get that everyday!

I tell you all this without fear of crippling Rick with self-consciousness.  Rick is already conscious—and for that very reason he is able to record the details of his own foolishness.  Not that I think he’s being foolish at all.  When conscious people speak of their own folly, we find ourselves grateful for the opportunity to gaze through their window into the human condition.  In the face of which we naturally and oh-so-soberly see ourselves. 

We see ourselves, folks!

If you`re still reading this…I can tell you that for months now I’ve been pointing to the critical moments in drama (sometimes in real life) where the hero meets the wall.  Where failure finds itself abandoned—alone with nothing but the raw passion for life.  It is death and resurrection.  And here it is delivered daily to your e-mail inbox.

In my mission to explore the MOL, I sincerely and humbly send you over to the rare experience that is Mr. Rick Lewis.  Let him know you’re tuning in. 

And I’ll see you in a few short days. 

Last week I left you with a ship hanging precariously over the edge of the known world.  On board were the mavericks Herman Melville and Helen Keller.  Joining them is the American writer and iconoclast, Henry Miller:

“One’s destination is never a place but a new way of seeing things.”

Now he tells us! 

With Miller is a relative newcomer to the world of crazy wisdom, Rick Lewis.  Mr. Lewis signed on to this journey of discovery in order to support the evolution of the species.  While acknowledging that he’s not the first to send e-postcards from the edge, he wanted to see for himself what’s out there.  Here’s part of his dispatch:

“From an evolutionary perspective, whether or not something has happened or not before, whether it has ever been done before, is not the issue.  The issue is whether we ourselves are risking, experimenting, leaning forward into “our own unknown”.

As long as I’ve known Lewis he’s been leaning, juggling, tight-rope-walking, inventing and generally horrifying people by making them ecstatically uncomfortable.  What I did not know before now is that his risk-taking has been in the service of “the greater cause of invention and ingenuity”, as he puts it.  But I’m damn glad to hear it because it presents us with the possibility of… that’s right, folks… MEANING.

Lewis is one of the few people out there talking about an individual life having meaning for the species as a whole.  Or for universal evolution generally.  Here he is again:

“When anybody tries something without knowing if it will work—in their own experience—they’re…liberating atoms of courage into the atmosphere for the rest of us to inhale.”

In other words, courage is infectious.  Expressed another way, courage is a vibration, and one that we may begin to resound with.  Is it possible that other organisms draw benefit from those same sympathetic vibrations?  Some mystics say so. 

Speaking of whom, can you see Miller at the rail of the ship?  He’s gazing over that horrifying scene as if he were standing on the very edge of the miraculous.  He’s saying something to Lewis:

“The world is not to be put in order; the world is order, incarnate.  It is for us to harmonize with this order.”

I’d love to be the fly on mainsail if Henry and Rick are going to start arguing about “meaning”.