The Bad Boy Syndrome

We are animal lovers, me, my wife and kids.

We have two dogs, one cat; thou technically the cat adopted us and a rabbit.

We used to have a fish too but after several premature deaths, we decided we are definitively not fish people.

We adopted the first dog, Daisy, from an animal shelter. We believe adopting from a shelter is much better than buying from a pet store.

The cat, Oreo, was a stray cat and we happened to be on his hunting grounds. We start leaving cat food outside and now he’s sleeping in our house, but most of the day he just hangs out around the house. The rabbit is my older daughter pet and the second dog Ollie is a rescue.

We found Ollie running in the streets. No collar, no tag, no chip. He had a rope around his neck and it looked he chewed it up to escape. He was badly abused; we believe they kicked him because he has a fear of feet and legs and still attacks and bites people’s ankles.

He was less than one year old, still a puppy, and didn’t have any kind of education.

He pooped and peed everywhere in the house. He destroyed our living room rug. He destroyed several pairs of shoes until he learned to play with his toys.
He destroyed the mail and would do the same to the mailman if he could get to him. And of course, he bit everybody.

After several months of training, we decided to put him up for adoption.

He was almost perfect, young, cute, potty trained but with a little leftover issue.

On the day of the adoption, he bit the lady that came to adopt him.

So that little habit of biting everybody he didn’t know, made him practically unadoptable.

So time went by and after a year we realized he’s ours and nobody else will have it.

My wife comes home from the morning walk and she’s furious.

Ollie found some fresh manure on a neighbor lawn and decided to roll in it against my wife yelling to stop.
I’m not even paying attention to her angry rhetoric; I heard it a thousand times before.

She takes Ollie in the bathtub and gives him the required shampooing.

After the bath, Ollie promptly gets out through the doggie door, goes to the back yard and rolls in the dirt.

My wife loses it. She screams at the top of her lungs and threatens to take him to the shelter.

I get worried. She is really mad, but then I detect in her voice a different nuance.

Is that tone of voice you use when your kids do something bad, like making a comment on the plastic surgery your mother-in-law got.
You have to admonish them but at the same time, you think the kid is right and damn funny too.

I recognized the “bad boy syndrome” behavior.

Women love bad boys. They love the drama they cause. It is in their blood in their genetic makeup.

It is like us guys loving sports. It is in our blood. It is the thrill of the hunt embedded in our genes.

Men love to watch sports women love soap operas.

So is Ollie in any danger?

Nope, not at all. All that bad boy behavior will just make my wife loving him even more.

It is the bad boy syndrome. Women love bad boys and they could get away with murder if there wasn’t for a little clause:
You can do anything you want as long as you don’t fool around.

And Ollie doesn’t have that problem. He is loyal as a dog.

PS: That reminds me that I have to do something bad to spice up my romantic life.

Maybe I’ll tell my wife’s best friend that if she keeps gaining more weight she will get her own zip code or something equally bad like that.

I know is bad but women like the bad boys. Don’t ask me why.

Faith and Control

"To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead, you relax and float."

            - Alan Watts

The continuous dialog between Ego and I, the continuous debate between control and faith rages on like a wildfire searing both flesh and soul with its blaze.

The battle continues. The fortune of victory is constantly changing sides.

One day faith, optimism, and hope reign for a moment, the next day fear, and despair open the doors to the reign of control.

(It is pretty much like the political arena of our days.)

The ego needs to be in control because it perceives itself alone against the universe.

Alone in a hostile environment, the Ego has to survive and to survive it needs to control events and people. The reason it is his main weapon, and what a mighty weapon it is.

We can reason any action no matter how absurd or immoral it may be.

Ego has devised the MAD doctrine.  Mutual Assured Destruction. Which basically states if you attack me I will kill everyone so no one can win.

Hell is paved with good intentions.

Ego has started wars and genocides all with very good reasons, or what it has perceived a good reason at the time. In the end reason leads always to failure.

Control is a myth. You cannot control anything, you cannot even control yourself.

Control seems reasonable because it employs ignorance as its basis.

We think of control on a localized scale. I can control a person or I can control a certain situation and it may even work, for a short period of time.

The problem is that all people and events are intertwined.

As you attempt to control anything you will find our pretty soon that you sphere of control has to expand. It is because everybody and everything is connected.

So if you want to control a person or event you have to control also the other people and events that are competing to control and manipulate the situation on their own benefit.

So the situation escalates until you run out of stamina and resources and the situation gets out of control

Control is a myth because in order to control anything you have to control the whole universe.

The only alternative left when you run out of control is faith.

Faith is the natural state of our higher self, of I.

I is the manifestation and materialization of the infinite intelligence that is the one source of all.

I is never disconnected, never lacking, never ignorant, never fearful.

When we perceive our live as a raft caught in the current of a raging river, the Ego tries to take control.

The Ego rationalizes that the only way out is by fighting the river, by going against the flow.

The I, recognizes there is no river.

There is only one. One is the river and I and the flow is mine.

The I flows with the river and the river flows back to the ocean.

Is the faith above all reason.

We all return to the source.

Our rivers, no matter the course, will always return to the ocean.

Fear no Fear

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

Whenever I feel tempted by fear (like these last couple of days) I do my decomposing (or composting, if you prefer thinking in positive terms) meditation.

I go to my Zen temple – Here in Hollyweird for some reason, they call it “Public Park”

I lay down under this ginormous tree (it is essential to feel the grass and the earth pressing against your body)

I look up at the sky and the leaves, and I drift away into this reverie.

I close my eyes and see myself like on one of those national geographic videos where the time takes off at hyper speed.

I grow older and older, white beard, long hair, season after season changing, then I pass away.

My hair falls off, leaves and ground cover up my corpse, bugs eat my flesh, and bones crumble into pieces turning into the compost that's feeding this amazing tree.

And I become branches and leaves and flowers of the tree.

And I open my eyes and I scream at the top of my lungs: Fuck the fear!

And the winos lift their brown bags and cheer “-All right, Buddha!”

And we all laugh, and I go to pick up my kids from school.
 

Advice on Advice

I am a handyman. I love doing things with my hands.

I can fix a computer, do small repairs around the house or work on my car.

It gives me a certain satisfaction to see things done, to accomplish something with my own hands.

Many of my friends are not so handy when it comes to manual labor, although they are accomplished professionals in their fields.

They all wonder “How do you do that?”

I explain to them that the only difference between them and a handyman is the knowledge and the tools a handyman has and in the age of Google, Amazon and eBay, knowledge and tools are readily available to anyone.

Do you want to know how to work on your car? No Problem.

First, you need the technical manual for your car.

You go on Amazon put in the year and make of your car, and voila, you have all the knowledge you need at your fingertips. The manual will also tell you exactly what tools you need.

Of course, there is also the matter of experience and willingness, but that is a whole different story.

I also like to work on my self-development but that has been a much harder and less rewarding task than working on my car.

The problem is there is no technical manual for working on myself and also I don’t have access to any specialized tools or medication.

Of course there are a lot of self-help books out there but none written specifically for me.

And although I read hundreds of them I rarely found any useful advice in them.

They all are written by experts and full of miraculous examples of people that have overcome anything from obesity to anxiety and depression.  But to me, that’s just self-hype designed to sell the book.

I was in my doctor’s office waiting for my appointment and I picked up a couple of magazines that were lying around. In one of them, I found an article on how to spice up your romantic life,

I read it and it was a doozy.  I had so much fun and tried very hard not to burst out laughing.

All the self-help books make a lot of assumptions and generalizations.

All authors of self-help books believe everybody is the same, that everybody enjoys the same things and behave the same way. If they wouldn’t believe that they will not give the advice in the first place.

So the advice is basically what they would do or what works for them and that may or may not work for you.

A nice dinner, candle light and soft music may work for some but spanking, whips and chains also works for some. So which advice is right for you? That is an answer only you can answer.

My advice when it comes to self-help books is that you should never take the advice they give without thoroughly understanding the “how” and “why” it works.

I have a special ax to grind with the “wishful” thinking philosophy.

You know the one that states that if you believe in it, it will happen to you.

I don’t believe in it because I believe in the laws of cause and effect and to me to have something happening just because you visualize it happening is just a bunch of nonsense.

So listen to everyone but in the end take your own advice.

Don't kill the joy!

This story happened a long time ago when I was a young lad looking for romance.

I was at an industry gathering where lots of young people were invited.

I was mixing with the crowd trying to act confident and important.

I found a small group with a very attractive girl discussing, what else the movies.

I listen for a while then I commented something like this:

-          It looks like today's movies are written by mentally retarded people.Anybody with a half brain could write a better script.

-          How many scripts have you written so far?

Asked the young lady.

-          Well, none but I got lots of ideas.

Was the best answer I could come up with.

-          You and a million losers that think they can write a script.

She said sarcastically and walked away.

I was insulted and furious.
 I went to my friend Danny and tell him the story, hoping for some moral support but to my frustration, he told me she was right. I couldn’t take it anymore. I said

-           I will put down on paper one of my brilliant ideas and prove you all wrong.

Times goes by and of course, I found all kinds of excuses not to write my brilliant screenplay.

But there was a little inconvenience;  my friend Danny. Every time when we met he would ask:

-          So how is your script coming?

Of course, he will laugh and make all kinds of jokes at my expense.

I couldn’t take it no more or I ran out of excuses, whatever the reason one day I sat down at my computer and start writing.

It was a long and painful process. Obviously, I didn’t know what I was doing and had to go to the library get some books on the subject. Rewrite everything again and again but finally, I got a script.

It was a disaster!

One good thing came out of my story. I started enjoying the writing process.

I joined a writing group. I bought the proper writing software. I kept on reading and learning about the art of screenwriting. And so the years went by.

It was my 5^th full-length script when I decided I was good enough.

 I decided to take my best work to the market. I entered several screenwriting contests. I submitted my query to several production companies and waited impatiently for the feedback.

The feedback came and it was a blood bath. I can usually handle rejection fairly well but this was more than rejection, it was nasty.

The result; I stopped writing.

A long time after the events I remembered the joy I had writing, the satisfaction of filling the pages with words. I decided to go back to writing but the joy was gone.  Now I dreaded writing.

What happened? Who killed my joy?

Well, it was me. By setting up expectations to my writing outcome I killed the joy of writing.

You see, when you do some for fun without expecting anything but just to have fun, you enjoy the experience 100%. The moment you attach expectations, a certain outcome your task becomes a chore, you start killing the joy.

Theoretically, everything we do should be enjoyable. Take for example “learning”

Learning is such a joy when you are a baby. To learn, to explore to find out, to do.

But then we go to school. Learning becomes a chore. The joy of learning is slowly killed and we start dreading school and learning.

We do that all our lives. We kill the joy of doing things to the point we have nothing enjoyable to do. We just sit in front of the computer orTV expecting joy from what other people do. We are just killing time.

We have become spectators not actors to life.

So here is my advice: If you have something you enjoy doing, don’t kill the joy. Do it for fun and if anything comes out of it, fine. But do not kill the joy by setting up any expectations.

Also, you can rekindle old joy you have lost. Like me writing for this blog, making writing fun again and hopefully one day going back to my screenwriting.