A bit of backstory about the author: I started stand-up at the age of 17, senior year started on Wednesday and I did my first open mic that Monday. Spurred by the limitless potential of youth I excelled for the first two years. Then, succumb to the crushing expectations of self and performance, I floundered for the next two years. Then, scorned by self-contempt and aimlessness I faded for the next two years. Each stage built upon the last, all predicated on killing any authentic part of myself to be who I “should” be. The idea was that I was inherently worthless and therefore needed to create something valuable to be “good enough.” I sided with the expectations engrained in me, that I needed to embody a perfect ideal, judging myself with fatal conclusions about the entirety of my being, based on moments that I believed reaffirmed the worst-held beliefs about myself. I had become a “human-doing,” and ceased to be a human-being with the grace to grow and change and become something closer to who I want to be.

At 23 the paradigm shifted. I turned a corner, the idea now being that I’m valid, and worthwhile, with the goal to honor my inherent value by valuing myself. Which gave new room to create things, because now I could care about the things I naturally create. This shift did not spring out of nowhere. After the life-long fight to do the impossible and prove myself valid and worthy while hiding any true part of myself, or at least any part I deemed unpresentable, I had to reset. I had to rest my mind and my soul. Which meant stepping away from my known art form. Because my relationship to it existed within the very bounds I sought to destroy. I needed to release the pre-constructed ideas about who I’m “supposed” to be, and what I “should” be doing.

I had spent so much time trying to be a good comedian that I never got to be a real person. When I outgrew this version of myself I took a conscious sabbatical, and avoided any thought or inclining that tugged on the old strings of goal-oriented performance. Getting stronger and healing through finding little artistic outlets that allowed my hands to wander and gave my mind freedom to wonder, I eventually had my sufficient rest and got the energy for new effort.

Resilience revealed new direction and I began focusing on what I need instead of what I want. I wanted to be a comedian, to be excellent through goal-oriented-performance that would see me prove my worth to the world. But what I needed was to fill myself up, and stop existing in the rigid roles of life. To gain an understanding of identity and self, to continue an understanding of my identity and my self. To stop self-abandoning by chasing results through goal-oriented-performance, and start honoring myself, my skills, and my creativity through process-oriented-practice. The result being a singular combination of the world I know, the most resonant truths I have to tell, and the gifts that the world has filled me up with: beautiful art and entertainment that has spoken to me, the experience of moving from a life of despair into one of fulfillment, and the knowledge that freedom means breaking free from the stories we tell ourself about who we are.

This reading material speaks a lot of a character making a positive change from the void of a nothing, deflated ego. But it is important to remember the risk on the other side of this positive change, the black abyss beneath a swaying tight-rope walked with quivering legs - the illusion of separateness. 

Tricking one's self into thinking they're separate from everything they observe, including their own feelings and experiences. Buying your own bullshit about right and wrong, good and bad, deserving and undeserving. To identify with only the "good" parts of one's self is to believe yourself purely a hero, when really you lack accountability and fail to realize responsibility to the entirety of yourself. 

It's good to understand this now, because while the treatment is focused on the positive, the deepest gift, the most resonant truth I have to give others, this has not been born purely out of understanding for myself, and grace for my mistakes, it also comes from a deep, searing, hatred for those who have tricked themselves into thinking they've outsmarted the world around them. Usually by denying their humanity, and encouraging those around them to do the same.

In an insensitive world, feeling is weakness, and therefore a means of control, meant to be conquered. 

People subject themselves to “harsh realities” because they believe reality to indeed be harsh. Talking only long enough to reaffirm their held worldview, because to question their suppositions is to attack the very foundation of their known existence and risks crumbling their understanding of the world around them. THAT is the reasoning behind the way things “should” be. 

Programmed by angry and bitter people who have already bought into the lie themselves, when everybody buys in it becomes the status-quo. And when you buck the status quo you are in conflict with the unconsciously held, and aggressively upheld beliefs of society at large. Aggression physically, mentally, and emotionally by the enforcers of an idea that exists so deeply within collective reasoning that it goes unquestioned - mindless, reactive violence.

What they don’t see is that fighting nature is a losing battle and abandonment of the self. A fight that, even if you could win, you would lose, because to win would be to divorce one’s self from your own humanity. A denial of the five freedoms of a fully functional human being. The freedom to feel what you feel, and say it, instead of what you ought to feel. The freedom to think what you think, and say it, instead of what you could or should think. The freedom to see and hear what is here and now, and say it, instead of what could, would, should, or ought to be. The freedom to ask for what you want instead of waiting for permission. And the freedom to take risks on your own behalf instead of always playing it safe. 

The core trick to the illusion of separateness is the game of black and white. The convincing that two things are completely separate, total opposites even. In order to obscure the fact that they are one in the same, two sides of one coin.

I hid the worst parts of myself away, those deemed burdensome, undesirable, improper, self-important or otherwise invalid, believing that hiding them away was the best thing to do. Keeping them from affecting other people. But all this does is make it so these parts of self can not be looked at, can't be examined, and in that way I started a war within myself. So that when I decided to identify only with the light, I created a war between who I am, and who I'm "supposed to be." Leaning more into one way just strengthens the other because it leaves the other unchecked, unexamined, unintegrated.

And so having tricked myself into thinking that I'm doing good, doing right, tricking myself into thinking that I'm a good and righteous person, when in reality, being unable to examine the darker parts of myself, or those I didn't desire allowed those things I thought were hidden away to seep out unrecognized, myself having succumb to the illusion that "I"as the knower and controller, was different than "myself" as someone, something, to be known and controlled. 

I was fully convinced that I was doing the best I could, that I was doing right as right should be done, but in reality there was a whole half of myself that I couldn't stand to look at, the burdensome, undesirable, improper, self-important, and invalid "me" inside of "myself." Because the aggressive propaganda against black, the feeling parts of ourself that are seen as weakness and a means of control, make them exactly that. 

By internalizing the idea that the feeling parts of ourself are weakness that can be controlled by others, we inadvertently allow the feeling parts of ourself to be a weakness controlled by others, and in some ass-backwards way expect that the only way to conquer these insensitive "others" is to conquer our sensitive selves. This is the exact propaganda of who (the collective) I "should" be; programmed by the insensitive and the aggressive, this refuses the grace to be who "I" am.

Our sensitive connection to the world around us has been turned into a weakness by weak people who lack the strength to acknowledge such sense as a vulnerability that deserves to be nurtured. It is in a way a mercy killing of this being too precious within themself that they believe will only face suffering in the world because they themself are incapable of protecting it. In this way vulnerability is strength, and the fight to be "strong" is weakness. 

There are those on the other side who claim to feel more deeply than others. I’ve always been an intensely feeling person, and I don’t subscribe to this idea, but it may be correct to say, only, that I allow myself to feel more than others. For years feeling deeply was weaponized against me to the point that I tried to conquer this “weakness”, but it was a losing battle.

From the blackest part of myself that I once struggled to look at I must admit that I sometimes struggle to see the humanity in others that they deny within themselves. It's not something that I'm proud of. It's not something I'm ashamed of. It's simply the truth of who I am that I have to remind myself that the darkness, the angry propaganda, and the lie are my enemy, and not those it devours, though they may be mouthpiece for my oppression it is they too who are lost to it.  

Which is why it's up to me to gift this fabled folktale. It's not a sermon I preach. It is a fight I practice. Because "they" are me. And “I” am them. I can only be "enlightened" if I was once in the dark. So let's not forget what's on the other side of sunshine and rainbows. There is no light without darkness to shine in.  

And what's a better way to honor myself than showing the world that what they’ve thought to be weakness is actually my strength? That's what I've focused on here, the feeling of the series. What an audience, and what a character feels at a moment of the show, and the things contributing to that, influenced by psychology, philosophy, and physics.

This is my power. This is my gift.

This is what keeps me erect, 

when so many other things may drift.