Living It

Back in college, studying biology and chemistry, amino acids and carbon chains, ingesting huge swaths of information to fill in multiple choice exam bubbles at least 90% correct — it occurred to me that I knew a lot of scientific theory, but next to nothing about life.

Everyone around and I were cramming our heads full of biochemical knowledge, but I, at least, knew little about the things that mattered a whole lot more. What’s really going on here? How did we get here? Why? What should I do with my life? I felt rushed past the biggest questions. Hustled down a path. It began to haunt me.

By the time I graduated from college, I was desperate. I had to go out and look around. I had to try and find out what it’s all about. I pointed my thirst for knowledge and high-achieving-pre-med-student work ethic at life’s big questions. I wondered and wandered. I read books and copied thousands of quotes from them down onto index cards for re-organizable reference. I sought humanity’s best answers to life’s biggest questions. I drank written wisdom in big fat gulps and exposed myself to the broadest set of experiences I could muster to find out “how to live” and ensure I wasn’t wasting my life on the first path I set foot on only because it was the first path on which I set foot.

Well, tomorrow will be May of 2026, and that search began twelve years ago. I still read every day. I still strive to learn in varieties of ways. Lately, though, I’m beginning to feel near the point where gaining wisdom is less important than living what wisdom I’ve gained. We don’t sharpen the axe to sharpen the axe — we sharpen the axe to swing it.

I sense I’m arriving in a season of life where living what I’ve learned outpaces the importance of learning. Not that the learning stops. But that living it may be more important now. Living it is, after all, the point.

QUOTE:

A photo of a fresh-marked quote from Awareness by Anthony de Mello colored in the late-night, amber-pink light of my trusty salt lamp.

Pause a moment. Slow your roll. Take those words in. How deep… how serious… can you take the above questions?

I realize and forget again and again: now is eternally where it’s at.

PHOTOGRAPH:

Collected Goodness Symbolized

I’ve felt Collected Goodness could use a more meaningful banner image. Something more “collected” and symbolic than the wonder of clouds dancing at sunset.

Late afternoon, I intuitively pulled this space painting 2dreamagain somehow found at Goodwill off my wall, placed a bunch of personal symbols atop it, and snapped this photograph. Overlaid with a trippy waving effect, I feel we’re finding the feeling.

Symbols are more powerful than we consciously grasp. The past few years, I’ve tucked many of the smaller ones pictured in my backpack in one of those Crown Royal drawstring bags, and not unlike Carlos Santana, and as I have tonight, place them around me when I write.

Dig It

LYRICS:

I love the band Incubus. Yet I never caught the lyrics of their famous song “Drive” until a few weeks ago. Holy wow. “Drive” sings the inner riches of following intuition over fear in navigating life. I know it a deep truth that “when I drive myself my light is found.” Wrapped in music, these words have been lightning in a bottle for me lately.

LIVE MUSIC:

Prove It All Night (Phoenix, 1978) - Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen played Phoenix last week. As I walked to my gym downtown, I heard a dozen restaurants, bars, and pedicabs blasting his tunes. Everyone was noticeably happy. There was that special feeling of “electricity in the air.”

I read his autobiography a few years ago (highly recommended). Witnessing the effect of decades of, as Bruce put it, “man comes to town, detonates; man leaves town” touring — on a city — just struck and moved me to tears.

Want to see a human create the kind of energy that can move a city? Plug into some good speakers, crank the volume, and click below:

Watch On

NEW WEBSITE:

TruLens Commercial

My biz partner Cole and I, with the help of a cool handful of creatives, just launched our newest venture in capturing visuals for multi-location companies and brands. Desert Lens and Denver Lens are running well as ever, we’re just casting lure for the big fish too.

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