Be your fear… okay, so I’m not really going to embody a spider, so I’m gonna dig deeper into a metaphor that suites a purpose… one that’s been on my mind recently and one that’s apt for this blog.

Recently I have seemingly landed myself onto a new plane of consciousness, alright, I know… but hear me out! You see, in tackling my demons, bettering myself and kicking my addictions in the ass I had to change everything, my way of thinking especially. So in order to “relieve me of the bondage of self” I had to gain some insight into what that meant and how it’s done.

It is with a sigh of reluctance that I have concluded- I am my own worst enemy, so how does one set ones self free if one is the enemy (I swear that just wrote itself)? Wellllll, to free myself from the prison of myself I have to use logic and embrace change, but what about fear? Fear is the fundamental basis of my conditioned, skew whiff logic, and the core of my problems. Other than spiders, what do I fear the most? -the Ocean, well, not the Ocean but what lurks underneath, in the abys of the unknown, my imagination assumes the worst and cripples me with fear, so I now know I have to become the Ocean, embrace the chaos, the unknown, the depths, uncharted territories and unfamiliarities of life and rather than fear it- be it!

But how?

Just as Kurt Russell says in Big trouble in Little China – “Just remember what ol’ Jack Burton does when the earth quakes, and the poison arrows fall from the sky, and the pillars of Heaven shake. Yeah, Jack Burton just looks that big ol’ storm right square in the eye and says, Give me your best shot pal. I can take it.”

I now try to embrace the fear and weather each storm, keeping my feet firmly on the ground and head held high… with one simple analytically humble battle cry; ‘I’m the Ocean’!

Having spent my entire life trying to surf those menacingly varying waves, and wiping out every time, then plunging into the ocean, panicking and repeating over and over until I was beaten to a pulp on the ocean floor. Y’see here’s the thing… the ocean is life… you got that, right? my inability to surf its waves was because I’m scared shitless of it, so I inevitably fall in and get hurt because I’m going about it all wrong… I’m not the only fucker in that ocean, we’re all in it, but I refused to acknowledge that fact and blindly, shambolically kept trying to fight something that was really just skew whiff thinking of how life was, or is… (have I lost you yet or you still with me?)

If that big, scary ocean is life, then why not embrace it rather than fight it? why not become it? Because in the end you’re either in it or out of it… alive or dead, healthy with contentment, or self medicating to hide from it and numb the pain it’s causing…

As Canadian physician Gabor Maté makes clear in his studies and work with addiction;

“The attempt to escape from the pain is what creates more pain”

Then ask yourself…

“Not why the addiction, why the pain?”

So if life is pain, and pain is the ocean. Be the ocean, explore it, immerse yourself within it and be bold enough to become one with it and then perhaps, with a focussed effort and much practice, we will see it from an entirely new perspective! One of harmony, understanding, respect and compassion. Yep, them motherfucking oceans sure will be rough and stormy, that’s a given, but this will pass, and on the other side will be stillness and peace… as it always was and ever shall be.

Running away from life is as effective as trying to stay awake for ever… sleep will inevitably get you in the end …and it’s fucking exhausting! Try to embrace life, face the fear and become one with it and you will not drown… Besides- We’re all just treading water really, as for me, well… I’m The Ocean!

so I’ll leave it with a simple quote by the Turkish poet Yanus Emre;

“I’m the drop that contains the ocean”.

Be that fucking Ocean! You can’t surf it or swim in it forever… you’ll get tired and drown.

Samwise the brave x

For any Neil young aficionados out there, the song ‘I’m the Ocean’ from the Mirrorball album with Pearl Jam is a huge source of inspiration behind all this. As with most things in my head, in order to make sense – it tends to resonate within a song… an overlooked fucking gem from an underrated album… check the link above, tune in and just go with it, it’s a repetitious fucker, akin to waves continuously lapping on a beach, and is packed full of empowering narratives that just makes the soul that wee bit warmer. X

(Didn’t mention Led Zeppelin once!!!) …D’oh!