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It seems a funny and strange process to write about one's own life. Yet now, as I begin to create my own story, I can already distantly feel its value rising into my chest. And its oddly intense, an experience that mixes memory, inner contemplation, and outer circumstance. And when we add to it the dimension of time, and a human's incredible ability recontextualize past and present events and circumstances, we then have a story that has the innate ability to change and evolve in each passing moment: The story I'm telling you today, is most likely not the same story I would have created five years ago, and equally as unlikely that it'll be the same five years from now. Yet, each story would be based on the same exact life.

So perhaps I'll start with what seems to be the driving theme that continues to help shape my experience of/with life.

As an only child until the age of thirteen, I remember spending lots of time alone, entertaining myself with my own thoughts (and Nintendo). One of my favorite things to do was to stand in front of a mirror and just look at myself. Staring, slowing, barely remembering to breathe, I methodically recited and repeated, "That's me. I'm living right now. . . and that's me . . ." Slowly my world seemed to dilate, and it's really an ineffable feeling, but I can say that it felt good. I did this everywhere: in the bathroom, in the car, in dressing rooms, and in my mother's huge, carpet to ceiling 3-way mirror, which was especially fun because if I angled the outside mirrors just right, I could literally see myself from all sides. I'm not exactly sure what my motivation was, but I can remember the surreal sensations that arose as I looked at my reflection trying to understand that that thing in the mirror was me.
We are born with these senses, literally sensors for experiencing and interacting with the world around us, and the stimuli are all coming into a single self. We have to look in a mirror, hear ourselves on an answering machine, or see ourselves on video to even come close to experiencing ourselves in the same way we experience the rest of the world. And even then, it's not really interaction, it's just observation (at its best, but normally, just projection). So out comes this breach between oneself and the surrounding world and with it my adolescence. . .
. . . which has its advantages, like GIRLS!! and rebellion!! and being cool!! My mind focused more now on the way I was appearing to the rest of the world. This was both incredibly exciting, and absolutely terrifying as I developed a greater sense of being a male and also felt for the first time a real different and independent mind and body from my parents. Thus, I dove in, with sports and girls becoming my main focus. This was coupled with a growing concern with how I appeared to the outside world. I looked in the mirror now, to make sure that I was looking good.
In my adventures outward, I became more and more of a social creature. I developed incredible bonds with friends, and I valued both close and intense one-on-one conversations, as well as experiencing the energy of large groups of people coming together. I fell in love with fine arts, and was incredibly inspired by my Middle School Art teacher, but then fell out of it, and chose chorale singing more in high school, largely because I was never inspired and sure about my art after that wonderful teacher in Middle School. In high school, I had my first experience of being in love, I won two state soccer championships, and discovered how much I loved being a leader, as I become the team captain in my senior year. I can say that I was completely happy and thrilled throughout my high school years.
And as I entered college, I was even more thrilled about my independence, but I stayed close to home, largely because of my little sister, who was only six at the time. I didn't want to miss out on her childhood. So while I was going to college and living on my own, I was still being financially supported by my parents, and I still went home a lot to visit. My college experience seems now more of an experiment. I entered my freshman year convinced I was going to be a doctor, yet as I studied the field more, and really learned about the field of medicine, I was turned off by it almost completely. With insurance and pharmaceutical companies pretty much running the medical industry, something in me said, "There's got to be something better." And so I turned to psychology. There I found lots and lots of studies and deductive reasoning, and labeling of disorders, without any real answers of what to do about them (besides taking drugs). So I again looked and looked and found comfort in Religious Studies and Philosophy. It was here where I was able to read texts from authors throughout history that spent their lives learning, studying, practicing, seeking Truth. And I found that all religions, especially the mystical forms that they took on, were all pretty much speaking of the same experience. I also learned how dangerous religions can be in their ability to control and manipulate large groups of people. I wanted to see the truth for myself. So I went to India. I can honestly say that I am still being changed by this experience. Studying and practicing Buddhism in the country of its birth, being inundated with new culture, I fell in love with myself and the world, and the line between the two was as blurry as its ever been. And I fell in love with a girl.
She was from New York, I was from Boulder. And although we didn't really plan on it, we kept the relationship going. And this began to slowly dominate all of my decisions and intentions. We finished our senior years at our respective schools, seeing each other once a month or so, and as we were thrust into the real world, both of us had no clue what we wanted to do, but we did know we wanted to do something together. I still can't believe how hard it is to make a decision with another person. And our relationship oscillated between two mutually supportive individuals, to one entangled mess. Because I made this person my world, I attributed any success and happiness to her, and I blamed her for any time I was unhappy. And eventually the strain was too much and after three years, we broke it off.
A year later, I am the person writing this story. I haven't stayed in one place for more than nine months at a time since graduating college, I am still disentangling that knot from my relationship, and I am rediscovering life as me. My thoughts are constantly dominated with paradox, this intrinsic, mutually present relationship between inner and outer, between duality and non-duality, between spiritual and practical. My karma gave me a childhood that was happy and comfortable, but without any competition, my ego seemed to form later, and I almost had to thrust it upon myself as I stared in that mirror. My later years, I developed this ego, then gave it up in India, then had it show up in the most unlikely place I would have ever thought: Love. And it was my attachment to love, and this single person that enabled this new ego to take on such a strong and fierce form. My relationship with it began as a battle, is developing into a taming, and coming out as insight. Confusion abounds, but, I am trying to work with it, rather than resist it entirely. I am realizing more the unending and changing adventure that composes life, and want more than anything else to just enjoy the process. I know that I am happy when I am speaking, writing and creating art, and hopefully Waldorf training will provide an environment and context to develop these simultaneously. I look forward to the next chapter.

Adolescence:

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