Social media encourages a lot of knee-jerk reactions to any number of things, which in and of itself is dangerous because ideas and opinions, like everything else, change over time.

​But what I think is even worse, is the knee-jerk reaction to someone else’s knee-jerk reaction. And then the knee-jerk argument that ensues. I’m thinking of the recent events in Paris at Notre Dame, many people’s initial reaction towards it, and then any number of critiques as to why that that reaction is lacking, or self-serving, or not woke enough.

The fact is, no one is correct. You’re not correct and neither am I. We are all just reacting to what happens in the world through our own prism, our life’s story, the series of personal events that have taught us how to understand and process the world.

My truth is different than yours. We can discuss our individual truths in a respectful way so that all of our truths begin to expand--shading in the grey--or we can discount other’s truths and shut the conversation down entirely.

This is why I like photography.  Pictures are broad, they sit in the grey areas of life that are left up for each of us to view and interpret based on our own eyes--our background and experiences. No one understands any issue or event the same way, because we all understand the world differently. So by posting a picture I don't tell you what to see, you see it for yourself.

Yet conversations on places like Facebook and Twitter push us to ignore all that. There is no acknowledgement that the tribalistic “for us or against us” mindset is a human construct we use to simplify the world, or oversimplify, because the complex reality takes too much time to process. And so we forget that it's not all black or white, we ignore the 7.5 billion shades of grey all around us.

There is definitely right and wrong--I’m talking about racism, sexism, homophobia, eurocentrism, and anything society teaches us to segregate and take advantage. That is ingrained in all of us, no matter how woke. I can see eurocentrism is and has been violent and cruel, I also see the ways in which I benefit from it as a white man, and then I can see the ways in which that same historically heteronormative culture has bludgeoned my community as well, and on ALL fronts I work to educate myself and change my mindset. That process isn’t black and white for me or anyone else, it’s part of the grey, and it only gets clearer when we blend our individual backgrounds of pain and prejudice with dialog and love.

All 7.5 billion people on earth, all from different places and communities and educations and experiences, all in our own unique grey area. When we spend time honestly talking and, most importantly, listening to each other, instead of leaving all communication up to quick-take reactions, that's when all those differences disappear.

I have many opinions on the issues of the day, but I typically spend a lot of time thinking through them (and yours) before I say anything about them. None of them are black and white, they're always grey.

Figuring out how to capture a natural sun glare was the first thing I learned on my “fancy” camera (and might have been the last lol). It’s not the photograph I’m so intrigued by, though yeah it is usually pretty. It’s the perspective gained.

A sun dapple is an immense power stymied and diluted by distance, filtered through a nearly infinite number of elements on its way to your eye. Even at the very last moment before reaching you with its life sustaining rays, it hits a singular needle on one of a million pine trees on this particular range of mountains, dispersing it’s power one last time into something simply beautiful.
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I’m not even sure what that says about life, about you or I, about the cosmos or the forest, about politics or the present, but I know it gives me joy to feel both small and incredibly important as the one eye that gets to see that one glare at that one moment. This moment.

It’s that feeling you get out in nature,
When the hawk flies by and whistles it’s caw,
When you get to the top of the peak and look out over the 360° expanse,
When the cool wind of a waterfall abruptly elbows you back an inch,
When the breeze kicks up and you pause to feel the hum and sway of the towering trees.

Los Angeles is notorious for its isolationism. We move around alone in metal boxes, surrounded by millions of people moving around in their own metal boxes. We sit in rooms staring at white screens, at coffee shops staring at slightly bigger screens, at home staring at even larger screens, surrounded by millions of people in their own rooms staring at their own screens.

Urban disconnection is about detaching from our modern lives to reacquaint ourselves with our wild roots, at least every once in a while.

We disconnect to run toward something, not away from anything.
We disconnect to find ourselves, not lose ourselves in nature.
We disconnect to become more grounded, not to stick our heads in the sand.
We disconnect not to escape the real world, but to feel more real than we ever thought possible.

It’s not what you look at, it’s what you see.

We all have a different set of eyes. Each set of eyes are connected to our own unique brain. And each individual brain holds an irrevocable understanding of life based on our unique and sacred history of experience.

The eyes show us what we look at, the brain tells us what we see, but ultimately you are in charge of both.

It comes down to a choice then. When challenged, do you crumple in despair or rise to meet it? When you fail, do you despair in defeat or use the lesson for transformation? When decisions loom, do you waffle or do you lead? When stuck in a hamster wheel of regret, fear, doubt, or FOMO, do you wallow in the mire of negativity or do you choose to get mindful now?

How you see any situation is up to you. No matter how difficult, painful, or upsetting, you can always adjust your focus.

Open your eyes a little wider today, and see the possibilities.

Don't just face your fears, embrace your fears.

Taking a chance, putting yourself out there, doing that one thing that sends shivers down your spine, it’s risky. Personally, I can't stand heights. Just being near a sudden drop in elevation, be it a stairwell or the top of Yosemite Falls, turns my hands into puddles and my legs into noodles. I could be behind 6 feet behind a chain link fence and tethered to a cable, and still the fear of death strikes me.

But there’s a wealth of opportunity for personal growth that comes from tackling our trepidation. Diving into the complicated extremities in life is how we become better people. 

The way I see it, you can reach two outcomes after facing a fear:

1.  you fail, but you learn something about yourself that you can use to succeed in the next go around. Or... 
2. you triumph, still learning about yourself, this time in the form of setting new expectations about the fears that hold you back.

This applies just as much to something as basic as a fear of heights, as it applies to those big life decisions, like career and commitment.

When we take a risk and fail, it’s easy to become discouraged, to give up. But that is a reaction we have chosen. Our reaction to everything in life is up to us.

We can choose to embrace our fears, get out of our comfort zone, take the risks that expand our possibilities, and react to failures as life lessons.

It’s up to us to embrace our fears.
To take a leap of faith expands our possibilities.
To view our failures as inspiration.

With risk always comes reward. Always. 
Change your mindset and collect the bounty.

In nature as in life, we often appear static. At any given moment our jobs, our friends, our finances, our homes, our entire existence can seem to others, and feel to us, as immovable. But that's never really the case--underneath the shell we are a roaring rapid of constant change. Every friendly conversation, every new idea gleaned, every experienced moment, an opportunity for growth.

In nature as in life, nothing and no one is as simple as they seem... thankfully, because it would be pretty boring otherwise. ​

The word "friend" is incredibly amorphous. This is especially true on Facebook where you can be friends with such a wide range of individuals: people you've never actually met, people you knew 20 years ago, people you see in-person on occasion, and people you consider your besties.

Everyone has their own definition of what friendship truly means and every relationship, like everything in life, will change over time. Some friendships last a lifetime, so that even if you're apart for long periods of time you can always pick up right where you left off. 

But it's also true that your besties today may not be your besties tomorrow. And while it feels sad to even type that out, I wouldn't have it any other way. People come in and out of your life for a reason, it's all part of our path, all a lesson. No matter what type of friend they are, that's how you grow, whether that's growing together or apart.

I love all of my friends, no matter how close or far, because you all bring something different to my life. I refuse to place my expectations on any of you based on how I think you should act or how we should be. I choose to grow with the punches. I chose to have fun in life... with whoever cares to join me.

As the giant Coachella snail said, "if you want to go fast go alone. If you want to go far, go together."

We've all heard the whole “pain is inevitable, suffering is optional” idiom thrown around. 

I hear it a lot in yoga, often referring to the emotional pain that comes in life, or perhaps the few seconds of “pain” you feel when you get into a triangle pose after a week away from your practice. Suffering in either situation being a choice. That phrase, as I used to know it, sounds so quaint to me now.

Last week I had a tonsillectomy, and for those who've never had one let me tell you, it was one of the worst experiences of my life. I had a terrible recovery, but as with any dark cloud in life there is also a silver lining. The pain/suffering idiom became lodged in my mind, and it was the first time I truly, actually, honestly understood it.

The suffering was real, and not in some esoteric yoga way, but in the real-life, excruciating pain way. It was a powerfully important lesson. Pain in all its forms just exists, there’s nothing we can do about it. But how we handle that pain is a choice. We can wallow it until it’s physically and emotionally out of control. Or we can change our perspective on it, see it as a means to an end, and ultimately be in charge of our own happiness.

I’m definitely not the first, nor the last person to go through this. I talked to many friends about it beforehand, and those who had their tonsils removed as a child said something like, “It’s not so bad, I just remember eating a lot of ice cream!” Contrast that with those who has the surgery as an adult, who said, unequivocally, “It was the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life!”

So I was warned. I knew what I was getting into. Or at least, I “knew” what I was getting into. I came to learn over the week-plus of recovery that it’s one thing to imagine what the “worst pain in your life” might feel like, and it’s quite another thing to actually feel it. The value of experience cannot be underestimated.

In those seven or so days I endured more pain than I could’ve ever imagined, the worst being night four, which seemed illogical (shouldn’t you be on the mend at that point?) but was true. Terribly true.

That night the level of constant, throbbing, overwhelming pain—and in the throat which is so central to our everyday life—quite literally broke me. Forget swallowing food or water, it hurt just to breathe. My ears were cauldrons of fire. My jaw had just finished a round in the boxing ring. Speaking one word sent razor blades down my throat.

No mindfulness exercise or act of positive thinking was enough. I was bulldozed by regret, “why did I agree to have this surgery?!” Flattened by anger, “you are such an idiot!” Conquered by suffering, “you are so weak!”

At the peak of my suffering I briefly considered taking every pill I’d been prescribed, because it just wasn’t worth it anymore. Life was no longer a viable option. Thankfully, that idea was quickly dismissed by the quiet voice of rational thought I could still hear through the white noise of pain and narcotics.

That emotional breakdown was a low point in my life. But sometimes it’s at our lowest that we finally learn to look up.

At a very basic level, my emotions that night made the physical pain worse. Like so many other things, crying uses your throat. So that was my first realization: by wallowing in my pain I was making the pain stronger. Getting upset by it was actually counterintuitive, because it perpetuated the problem.

The same lesson goes for many other parts of life: nerves before public speaking is counterintuitive, because that anxiety can actually cause you to make the verbal mistake you’re so nervous about. Anger at someone when they’ve talked smack is counterintuitive, because that anger causes you to be an asshole which actually encourages a negative persona.

At a much broader level, letting myself get dragged down by the pain caused me to lose all hope. This was my most important realization: by wallowing in the pain I was letting the pain win. I had no choice in the matter—the pain existed no matter how many deep breaths I took or vicodins I popped.  But the suffering I felt, that was entirely up to me. Instead of suffering I could be mindful about the pain, view it as part of the healing process, a means to a much more positive end, as evidence of my throat repairing itself.

Wallowing in any pain—physical, emotional or yogi—and letting that pain drag me down, that is entirely up to me.

I had a choice: continue to suffer or make up my mind to be happy.

I chose to be happy.

The next morning was day five, and I woke up in the same excruciating pain. But I also woke up with a smile, because I knew that in a day or so I would feel relief, in a week I would feel back to normal, and in a month my sleep apnea and constant colds would (hopefully) go away. I woke up with a smile, because I knew it was all downhill cruising from there. I woke up with a smile, because I saw the light at the end of the tunnel.

I woke up with a smile, because I knew that I no longer had to suffer, and turns out that was really all I needed to know.

I'm taking a break from blogging this week, but that doesn't mean I'm taking a break from mindfulness.

This can be a busy and stressful time of year, and a sad time of year if you let it. In the midst of this hectic holiday, take a mindfulness break. Use it as a moment to reflect on the holiday season, on your life, on the year that has passed, on all the people you love. Recognize all that you have to be grateful for. Notice how taking this moment to breathe and reflect makes you feel renewed. Accept all the love that is around you and reject the stress.

Happy Holidays friends! Thank you for reading.