“How does it feel to be the same age as Jesus?” asked my sister, Krystal, in a message.
Rather than snatching at an answer, I pause to consider the question properly. Such questions are invitations into a game. To rush an answer is to ignore an opportunity for play.
How does it feel?
His hips are tighter than I had imagined, I conclude after feeling into the 33-year-old hardware I’m wearing.
I’d always thought of Jesus as bendy-bodied, lean and practiced in yoga. This machine is stiff from travel and excessive chair. It feels more sore than I’d hoped it would. However, it’s not as if I’ve created the conditions for a groovy temple in the last week or so. Long flights in coach, quick junky meals, too much time inside, nightly ice cream, and gym-skipping in favor of movies.
“Jesus wept.”
Another feasible answer.
Question: How does it feel to be the same age as Jesus?
Answer: Jesus is roughly 2024 years old (If the Gregorian Calendar is to be trusted). I’ll let you know when I get there.
The 33rd year has been pleasant, thus far. I enjoy the pace of its mind…
I experience myself now: more centered and steady. My body, mind, and spirit have- at last- chosen to work toward synergy rather than discordance. Harmony, instead of cacophony.
Little dweller by the well.
Heartbeating resonance in steady ripples.
A whisper that propagates into a roaring multitude.
The name Paul, its meaning, and my translation.
Become the one who becomes that one.
Life is more reasonably navigated at this age, though I certainly haven’t mastered it. I’ve reached the age at which I practice hydration and morning sunlight before my coffee. I’ve reached the age at which I spend the first 10 minutes of the morning in a cold plunge, followed by breathwork as I bake my dermis purse1 in the Vegas daylight on the egg chair. While it seems strange to me that we must create walls to feel we can safely get naked, I understand that in this equation I am the stranger.
If my practice is hogwash or bothers you, ignore me and be well…I’m not claiming to know. I’m simply an ape who has taken language, and I’ve learned to feel into the practices I sample. This particular practice makes me feel great.
At 33, important questions are answered in simple wisdom. The caveat? One must ask and be willing to listen. “Simple” and “Easy” do not mean the same thing. Though at first glance these two words might be conflated. I practice that which fills my cup first, and I’m ridding myself of those habits that drain it. The practice is one of experiencing Love. To love oneself, to love the “other”, to understand that we are each a thread in the fabric, part of a whole, and no one is separated from reality.
Question: How can I be happy?
Answer: How else does anyone become anything? Practice. Do not wait for happiness to practice. Does the student await mastery before touching the piano?
I don’t practice because I’m happy,
I’m happy because I practice.
You might replace the word “Practice” here with whichever discipline you observe. [dance, write, sing, etc.]. For me, the discipline I know is breathwork, and by engaging with each breath gladly, I find that simple wisdom is often revealed…that I am never denied access.
At 33, I am learning to relax, to engage with each moment, and to follow the direction of life’s guidance. I have learned to breathe into resistance and to remember to feel when I get stuck in a think-hole. I have learned that everything happens in its own time and small steps forward made consistently are “quantum leaps” in disguise.2 I have learned that being in this life is far more important than having.
I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.
- C. G. Jung
My possessions and titles do not define me. My career and position do not make me what I am. How I practice my being within circumstance is one of the ways I define myself. By watching what I do I know what I am. What is it that I do? I practice.
Practice what? One practice is distilling information to find what is “true.” Often, truths (especially of the spiritual variety) are hidden within contradictions. Such as:
Keep less to have more.
Keeping, holding onto, clutching…the embodied practice of attachment. Willing release is an exercise of faith, and a practice of clearing space for more having. More laughter. More opportunity for learning and expansion. Surrender is freedom. Attachment is its absence.
This life, the great balancing act between attachment and freedom.
In reflection of 33 years:
What am I most grateful for this year?
Of all the muchness I am granted, I receive the most robustly from the connections that I cultivate. It is through generative relationships that I am most rewarded and to which I give of myself the most readily and gladly.
Of me, for you.
The connection with myself in a loving manner. The ability to fill my cup with eternal waters. Isn’t that what my name means? Little dweller by the well. The well doesn’t offer sips from its saucer, the well fills my cup and spills into the cups of many others.
My connection with Milena, who reminds me to speak from an open heart and to listen with an open mind to catch the lesson, integrate, and embody it.
The connections with my friends, family, and community. My network demonstrates the necessity for a constant dialogue with the conscience, the soul’s compass, and your Lord and your Savior and your North Node of the Sicilian Sea-Goat in Leo Season, baby.
Life and its many lessons seeking expression. Truth, in its reflection and relevance across the flesh of many patterns. God’s fingerprints smudged into the ass cheeks of reality.
How to be. How not to be.
I am grateful, most of all, that I am becoming. I am able:
to sit for the teaching of each day’s classroom,
to radically engage with each moment I’m given,
and to understand that I am the creator of my circumstances with the energy I am granted.
Every inhale is inspiration, a gift of magic; what one releases into the world in an exhale is potent…powerful. Use responsibly, and accept the consequences thereafter. Of your words, the offerings of your inspiration, spirit given resonance.
You dang rockstar! Think of that magic.
You’re a pile of 120,000 calories of shaved ape who has learned how to think in plans and patterns, how to project them into the glass fractal canvas of time. Future-think, ye sacred gratefuls, and yet another miracle…you’ve been given the voices to speak out the words, covenants with reality, plans of action.
What will I practice throughout this 33rd trip around the sun?
Ever more radical engagement with the present, proceeding with the ages gracefully, the embodiment of faith, and the sharing of that which I notice in moments and can name accurately as it’s happening. The extraction of wisdom from the lesson of today’s classroom. Integrating the guidance I’m granted and following the hints I am given. Becoming the one who creates himself in the word spoken and made true through follow-through. The version of myself who can imagine my desire, to sacrifice my overabundant ego and make sacred the intentions behind them for the benefit of all, to bring harmony and resonance into my surroundings.
The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.
- C. G. Jung
What is my favorite aspect of being 33 years old?
My life, when reduced to its most fundamental elements, is my favorite life. For my birthday, Milena and I cooked every meal at home. We got morning sunlight, practiced breathwork, and hydrated before our coffee. We cleaned up the house and spent a good amount of time writing. We completed our chores together, walked the dogs, and enjoyed a cold plunge on the patio. At the end of the day, we made love happen and read a book about communication before falling to sleep, spent and peaceful.
I didn’t need a restaurant, a rave, or any amount of fancy presents to feel loved on my birthday. Simply living, connecting with myself and my partner, loving my pets, and receiving birthday wishes from my favorite people…
I am blessed and fortunate.
Many thanks for your readership. Your attention is among the greatest of gifts.
Paul
And now, a brief image from Jarvis (the Artificial Intelligence)
Prompt: a coffee shop Jesus weeping over his failed Yoga report card.
[Jarvis generates]
“I almost have the right number of fingers, man…” sighed coffee shop Jesus. “I don’t know which hand to hold which coffee with.”
[Jarvis AI Generates a lot of Jesus in the background, even down to the artwork on the virtual coffee shop walls]
“Oh, wow…everyone in this coffee shop is Jesus. Alright, we can work with that.”
Edit: Change the style to comic book, anime…
Jarvis deletes my coffee shop Jesus and blips in variations of a sparkle-eyed manga chick in his stead. One of her almost has the correct amount of fingers, and the other has a stump arm.3 I become frustrated.
“I wanted an anime style, not an anime subject.”
Jarvis, one of these days we’ll figure out how to work with one another. We’ve got a long road ahead of us, don’t we?
Dermis Purse: [noun], a fun way to refer to man’s lopsided avocados.
example. My boyfriend wouldn’t quit tickling me, so I kicked him right in his dermis purse!
Credit to Milena for this one.
Konnichiwa, stumpy…