Have you ever broken a promise to a dying man?
I have, and don’t recommend it. It took me just six years to finally break the promise, and even now, a year and a half later, lessons are still being learned.
Flashback to that night…
“Thursday night showers. Lows in the upper 30s. North winds 10 to 15 miles per hour. Chance of rain 100%. And Friday, cloudy with a chance of rain and snow showers in the morning. Then partly cloudy in the afternoon. Highs in the upper 20s.”…. a weather report.
Lasted about as long as microwaving a bag of popcorn, then repeated.
The Old Man laid in a bed about double arms reach away. Maybe more. He stared blankly at the TV very interested in the current weather conditions as he crunched lemon drop candies as loud as possible.
I’m not sure if you know this, but Chemo/Radiation doesn’t just kill cancer. It kills everything — tastebuds, appetite, key areas of the brain and hope
Everything chemo/radiation touches dies. Some people survive. Not The Old Man though. His life was nearly at its end.
“CRUNCH”…
Dad’s teeth always made this God-awful screeching sound when he ate. To me, it felt like a pencil stabbing my ears. This rage inducing sound amused The Old Man that night. He loved to annoy me, and did for a while that night.
“Chance of rain 100%. And Friday, cloudy with….”
14.
On a recliner I laid back, notebook sitting heavy on my lap. Pen in hand. News anchor’s voice fills the room as The old man’s teeth screeched.
“Thursday night showers. Lows in the….” 26
Note to Self:
“Don’t waste your life worrying about stuff that doesn’t matter, especially when in the presence of people that do.
We only get a few moments together.
Make them magical.”
Paying attention to stuff that matters doesn’t come easily.
The world is a noisy place. Years later, I discovered PTSD from a car accident in 1994 making my brain hyper aroused. So, apparently it’s somewhat noisier in my head than people around me. Which is one of the many reasons, I broke the promise.
Even though I’ve intellectually known tricks to Shift How You Think and Make the Narrator of Your Life Tell Better Stories for nearly 20 years, it’s been an ongoing struggle for me to ever sustain happiness, joy, or any sense of belonging. Another reason.
This video is an eye opener, and I hope it helps you more than it helped. Have a listen.
“How’s the Water?”
I’m with David Foster Wallace here, I am not the wise old fish.
The point of me writing this is to better understand those seemingly obvious yet overlooked parts of my experience of reality in a way that could facilitate a different way of engaging the world around me, that might help me make up for this broken promise.
Many experiences of life happen the way they need to, regardless of how we envision, plan, or desire.
Like saying Goodbye to Mikey; The Old Man chomping lemon drops without a clue that Friday would be “cloudy with a chance of rain and snow showers in the morning” even though we’d heard that shit 50 times in a row.
Around the 60th loop, it all stopped being annoying.
It’s funny what happens when you stop needing people to be anything other than here.
Did I mention that Chemo/Radiation scrambles brain circuits?
It does.
As a witness, you sit a room with a body of a person you knew.
They are even a little bit there, but not quire.
It’s surreal.
Sometimes the person you love comes back online (so to speak).
Just like that. Without warning, Dad came back online and started dropping bombs.
Went a little something like this.
“Boy, don’t say nothin’. Keep your damn mouth shut. Don’t know how long I’ll be here. My brain ain’t working right. Can’t find words.”
It’s not often I keep my mouth shut.
But, I kept my mouth shut.
“You got a damn good woman there.”
It’s true. If you met her you’d know right away. She’s so kind and sweet. Patient.
“And you turned yourself into a damn good man. Don’t be a McAuley and screw it all up like I did when my dad died.”
BOOM!
“Don’t let the anger control you.”
BOOM!!!!
“And promise me something.”
My mouth open, but not letting anything come out. Not a sound or my breath. And part of me, to this day wishes I’d never heard these word.
“Start writing again.”
BOOOM!!!!
He continued.
“Boy, you changed my life. Taught to me see things different. Wish I knew that shit when I was twenty, could a been better for you, a good man like you are. Maybe I wouldn’t have messed it up so bad. Don’t mess it up. Get back to doing what you’re ‘posed to do. Write. If anyone is crazy enough to change the damn world, it’s you. Get on with it.”
He plopped a Lemon Drop in his mouth, and crunched it with a smile.
That’s pretty much the last conversation we had.
A few days later we transferred to the county home.
A few days after that, the hospice lady came with Morphine.
Mikey’s last day, like his whole life, he suffered.
Uncle Chuck and I sat next to him. It was brutal for all of us. At some point, we needed a break.
I was back at the Trailer eating pizza, crying, and throwing all his stuff in a dumpster when he took his last breath.
My heart didn’t fully break until a few days later. It’s still a little broken. And it stays that way.
Let me ask you something.
Have you ever broken a promise to a dying man?
I did.
I lost her. After years of disappointment, she couldn’t handle it any more. My moods. My lack of consistency and lack of results, and decided she’d be better off in life without me as her partner.
As she spoke, I realized, she was right. Her quality of life will improve without me as her daily companion. And that hurt like hell to realize that I was a source of ongoing disappointment and frustration to the woman I loved so much.
As I rewrite this website, determined not to break the second promise I agreed to that day, it still stings a little bit.
But, I am happy that she is happier, and hope she gets to experience what I wasn’t able to create with her.
Anyhow…
Dad asked me to write something that would help him when he was younger, which is why I wrote this series of pages the first time.
I wanted to teach him that he had access to the most valuable resource in the universe, he just needed to learn how to properly harness it.
Recently, things have gotten more challenging for me. I’ve really dug myself into a hole. Feels like drowning.
Today, in the shower, I laughed at the idea of this website. My ignorance and arrogance to imagine that I had any business trying to coach other people, even if I was pretty damn good at it.
Then, part of me decided to rewrite this for me, to remind me the reason I bought the domain “soul surfer school” in the first place, in the hopes that doing so will help be get through this experience and create a life I love.
Oh, if you didn’t know…
Human Attention Is The Most Valuable
Resource In The Universe.
You have the power of creation inside of you. We all do.
Some of us however, process the experience much differently than others; making any one size fits all solution to the human experience a Sisyphean task.
Today, right now, is the most amazing time to be alive in the history of mankind. Yet, I and man other people find it so very challenging to maintain any sense of stability, happiness, or joy.
Originally, I wrote this series to bring paying attention to manner and speed of which technology is transforming society in an attempt to help people harness their own attention so they could more quickly adapt to the coming changes.
Peter Diamandis has a few books that describe these changes.
Everything that seems normal today, will be old fashioned in just a few years, we may benefit from preparing ourselves.
You have a choice.
Not in a blue pill, red pill sort of way. I’m not the old fish and I’m not Morpheus. When I say you, I write this to myself, if it makes sense, use it.
You are free choose a confrontational relationship with reality or you are free to choose a creative relationship. The choice is yours. But, please understand that attention is your most valuable resource, and it’s under attack.
A War is fought for your attention.
Fought at every level, corporations, Nation-States, family, foes, and friends. Me. Everyone. We’re all fighting for your attention.
Hell, if you’re like me, your past and future selves are fighting for your attention as well.
Maybe there is a way we can mine our attention for gold.
The Golden Rule: Have enough gold, make your own rules.
Inside us all is a creative sacred space; a deep sense of knowing. It’s been challenging for me to maintain the awareness in this space in any meaningful way. The struggle was the demise to my marriage, and has helped me create a very precarious current experience.
So, I am here writing this to remind my Self a few fundamental ideas, principles, and practices that could possibly help break the spell of struggle. My hope is this also helps me find my flow so that I can experience life from a different perspective.
If past experiences attempting this has taught me anything, it’s that moving forward with this story, things might get a little weird.
The Old Man used to chuckle, “That boy ain’t right.”
And he wasn’t wrong. There’s something a little off about me. I’m okay with it. Life has been an interesting journey thus far.
The following pages is a collection of stories, ideas, and advice from some amazing people. And me.
I again, hesitate sharing this stuff. After all, I am a newly divorced man who tends bar at the age of 48.
I might not be the best person to give any sort of mentorship.
My life is a mess. I am not accomplished in much of anything. By most measurements I’m somewhat of a failure. I’ve done cools stuff in my time here, but being alive at the end of October 2024, is really my biggest achievement.
Please don’t construe any of this as me giving you advice of any king. I am not certified or qualified to give any sort of advice.
I’m not you guru.
The first version of this story, started during COVID lockdowns.
I wrote about, Breaking Free from Attachment, how the power of stories shape our lives. The idea was to harness this power to better enjoy the present moment as you create a future you envision.
Then, we discussed system’s theory and how to turn your life around in 90 days or less. We talked about why most self-development doesn’t work, and then we discussed how to bridge the GAP between where you are, and where you want to be.
This time around, I am editing this website from an idea of utility and usefulness from results oriented perspective. What I mean by that is if I find ideas here non-useful in a way that produces positive results, I’ll delete them.
I have absolutely no other motives while typing other than finding a truth that resonates with me, and adjusting my inner and outer experience of life happening around me day by day.
I’m not trying to sell anything, although, there are links that could possibly pay me if you by a book on amazon or something. If that happens, cool. You don’t have to use those links.
My purpose here is to coach myself to an illusive state of being and awareness that I’ve experienced many times before and hopefully maintain it through many future now moments.
Click the link below if you are interested. No email required.
Hope this helps.
Love your face!
Tim
PS. I hope you watched the video. It could be the thing that changes everything. Even if you don’t continue, I think you should listen it.
Reminder: Throughout these pages you’ll see things to click that open up nuances in the conversation; deepens it. You don’t have to click, it’s sort of a choose your own adventure story, just like life.
Some of those links lead to some cool articles, videos and whatnot.
Please understand. Some links go to Amazon. They’re affiliate links and I get a few pennies if you buy the books I recommend.
Those books changed my thinking, and helped me on some level my experience of life. They helped me find a new perspective; one that my dad told me changed how he lived his final days.
And even though the marriage didn’t last, some of the ideas I share throughout these pages helped me have a relationship with an amazing soul for 13 years. Hindsight being 20/20, I see many decision points that held the potential for me to create a different outcome for that relationship. But, who’s to say that was in our best interests.
Anyhow… if you want to read more
PPS. This one’s for you Mikey. Sorry I lost a good one. Miss you every day.