My Evil Plan to Save the World.

Want to know how I plan to save the world?

 Well, I'm not. 

Not your world, anyway.  It's too late for that. It's beyond my scope.

The social and political climate of our society is reaching a boiling point. The oppressed dystopian reality that science fiction has warned us of for decades is becoming reality. 

There is a war being fought behind the scenes over you. 

What you can say, do, think, and where you can go are soon to be monitored, watched, and decided by a faceless panel of wealthy politicians. 

Control of your own body is even at stake. Control over who you are allowed to love is being revoked. Control over who you are and what you believe are soon to be taken from you.

Masses of people cling to an ancient mythologies and try to make relevant, informed decisions in modern society based on a 2,000 year old book, all of its antiquated prejudices included.

People kill each other, destroy our planet, spew hatred at one another, and build walls to separate us, all in the name of money and power.

This world is becoming a reality, and unless the collective masses rise up in revolt against the tyranny, it will continue to do so. 

But this is the state of OUR world. The world our parents and grandparents have left us. The world that we are slowly learning we need to break up with. A lot has changed for the better since I was born in late 1982, but a lot is still the same. 

One thing for sure, though, is that it will be a very different world for my daughters as well when they turn 18 in the year 2032. 

What social, economic and political issues will they be facing then? I am hopeful that we will be a more mature race by that time, having put all of the racial, religious, sexual and cultural prejudices behind. 

But how will I change the world for them? 

I may be disgruntled and dissident about my world that has been, but that won't help my daughters in their world to come.

My plan is to fill their heads with so much compassion, love, kindness and respect that no government, corporation or god will be able to leech it out of them. 

To light a fire of passion in them for all humans, so that any injustice to one is an injustice to all. A passion for the earth and it's bountiful yet fragile beauty.

I will instill in them the seeds of logic, of reasoning, and of truth.

They will hear the echoes of my voice in their ear saying:

No government, nor man or woman, nor any signed piece of legislature has control over you or your body. No company or product has any control of how you feel about yourself.

You decide who and what you are, no one else has the authority. 

We all depend on this "pale blue dot" floating in space, and everything we do should respect and nourish it, as it does us.

Fear has no power outside of that which you give it. Authority will always use fear to try to control you.

Dissent is ALWAYS better than blind obedience.  

Question everything and everyone. If something feels wrong or hurtful to someone, it is.

The people you love and receive love from are for your to choose, not anyone else's, regardless of their opinion. 

There are too many beautiful people in the world to worry about the ugly ones. They will only worry about themselves anyway.

You are pure love.

You are pure energy.

You are pure beauty in form.

You will not be overcome by hate. 

You have a voice, and if you choose, people will listen.

You are the most powerful force in the world.

I love you.

The Dragon Within.

I had an epiphany in self realization tonight, and it happened on the treadmill.

It had been a pretty good day, in all. I had the day off with my wife and my girls,  but in my mind there was a strange dark cloud.

This dark cloud is not unfamiliar to me.  

I've called it by many names over the years: Anger, Frustration, and even Defeat.

A co-worker and I used to call it The Dragon Within.

In high school, a doctor called it Attention Deficit Disorder.

And just a few years ago, a psychologist called it Depression.

But none of those names really seemed to fit it. It was more than that.

My father had it, and by the harrowing stories he's told me, his father had it too.

I've always just pushed it back down, suppressing it until I felt it subside. If I ignored it, it didn't exist.

Right?

Let's go back to the beginning.

Ever since elementary school, I remember always getting into trouble. Always acting out. In junior high it continued, and in high school it led to a doctor diagnosing me with ADD and putting me on a narcotic called Ritalin.

The Ritalin made me feel like there was a ball of tension in my chest and it came out expressed as anger. I hated it. I always felt as though the doctor who diagnosed me didn't even try to find out why I was acting the way I was.

This was at a time when kids all over the U.S. were being slapped with the same blanket diagnosis. ADD or ADHD seemed to be the easy way to tell parents that their kids needed expensive pharmaceuticals and nothing else would help.

Now, I'm not saying ADD and ADHD aren't real. I don't have the experience or knowledge to make that claim. What I do know, is that myself and countless other kids were being pumped full of amphetamines. And we hated it.

In high school I found something that changed my life. The skatepark.

I felt something when I went to the skatepark, and it was absolutely liberating. Here was a place I could go and exert as much energy as I had to exert. It was a place I could go when I was feeling the cloud build up inside. I spent every waking moment that I wasn't in school skating.  It was such an outlet for me that I kept it up ever since.

Later, in my twenties, I found cycling. First it was fixed gear road bikes for several years, which evolved into mountain biking. As long as I was on the bike I was happy. Hustling as fast and as far as my legs would take me, I was free. The dragon never reared it's ugly head.

Then, just after I turned 30, we had our twin girls, Parker and Zoe. The free time all but disappeared, and I would go months without riding, skating, or running.

Having kids is hard. Having TWO AT ONCE was insane. The amount of joy and beauty was matched only by the stress and exhaustion. Stress from lack of sleep. Exhaustion from working 2-3 jobs at once, then coming home to a brand new challenge. Being a new parent felt at times overwhelming.

 The clouds began to gather.

I want to make one thing abundantly clear here: My wife and daughters are the BEST things that have ever happened to me. My heart is filled with so much love and joy having them in my life. Every new day I am awed by how much my daughters are growing and learning, and my wife amazes me with her seemingly unending patience, love and support.

So why do I feel angry? Why do I feel like the weight of the world is grinding me into an emotional mess? My life is filled with so much love and no shortage of support. For the last few years it has baffled me that I can have so much but feel so down all the time.

Last night I realized why.

I got on the treadmill after more than a year off of running, and I couldn't stop. I ran for an hour straight, all out. It was like a release valve had just opened up and all of the tension was able to escape. It was a feeling I don't get very often these days, so I almost forgot how cathartic it was. As I was running, I came to the realization that all of my acting out as a child, all of my grumpiness and my "Attention Deficit" was all stemmed from an accumulation of energy to the boiling point.  It became clear to me why I loved skating so much when I was younger, and why I loved physical exertion in general. It was a pressure release that saved me from exploding.  I may never have put the pieces together before, but I realized last night just how necessary that was for me.

Physical exertion is a necessity, not just for me, but for a lot of people. Countless articles will tell you how exercise helps release endorphins and dopamine, causing a reduction in stress, anxiety and depression.  Too many people (including myself at times) turn to alcohol or drugs try and quell the stresses of life, only to find the hole still there. From now on, the only drugs I need can be found within my own brain. And now I know how to unlock them.

I can't help but feeling that all my younger self needed was an outlet. I didn't need drugs or booze. I found them, and they led me to darker places. I didn't need counselors or even a shrink later on. What I needed was that pressure release.

I've always known, somehow, that there was a simple solution. but I could never quite put my finger on it. I never realized just how important that outlet was.

Now, whenever I feel that pressure beginning to build and the clouds start to gather, I know how to clear the skies.