We Are Told To Stay Away From The Highs In Life

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This post was fueled by and is intended to be read to the music included above.

We are often discouraged from the Highs in life: the simple blood-pumping, lung-burning, hands tangled in the stars, hoped-fueled nonsense that drives out the mediocrity and welcomes the new. The peak. The beginning or the final sprint. These are the life changing moments, and rather than encouraging them as a steady diet, we are prescribed steady, rational, and often times mundane routine. We are told that if we are too high we will experience too many lows, driven by a fear of diseases and mental states so labeled in the last century.

I am an advocate of meditation, have an advanced yoga practice, and have read from Zen as equally as Hemingway and Hedonists — I believe in relaxation and a peaceful minded present as readily as I do their counterparts, for the world is built on balance.

But we are told to stay away from mania, keep it on the level, and to a degree there are medicines and industries forcing us away from these Highs. As if the most natural, faith affirming moments which draw us closer to our own humanity are in some capacity not healthy.

Fuck no.

Our parents were the generation of steady marriages, long careers, and far removed from our ancestors whose every day was a constant fear of famine and survival. Our society in many capacities is driving us to be functional members of a larger entity. We are given iPads, pods, and information tools now at incredibly early ages, and the spoon feeding of such is leaving us dull and desensitized.

But the summer convertible burning under stars, the sunrise in the desert, the slow night in the most meaningful of sheets and partners, the last wave, the terrible song that is too good, building anything for someone else, the first taste of the unknown be it fruit or folly, and the long goodbye waved from a distance fading into the ether — these are the stuff of memory that we are not giving their due, by simply not doing more.

When did nudity, our most natural state, become a bad thing? Why are we discouraged from quitting jobs we don’t like in a few months and told to stick it out? What is the deep and visceral fear of the unknown?

We spend an infinite amount of time collectively pushing toward something which may or may not matter, and give the most common excuse of “I have too much work” to justify an existence where we have altogether vilified pure moments and traded them in for jobs we cannot love, and responsibilities we perhaps didn’t need to take on. I see you. And you can live more of this life. Go fail. I promise you’ll feel more fulfilled in trying than wondering.

I say stay high. Take each moment more than the last, and give in turn a ten-fold gratitude to those who have given it to you and the universe who hosted it. Remember hope. Crush all of your responsibilities and excel at everything you do. Revel in it. We are the last of the creative despots bred from an earth that will replace the connectivity derived in our experiences and humanity with technology and accessibility. We are running full keel on the dichotomy of more creation, music, art, and greatness than any generation previously, juxtaposed by growing mediocrity and desensitization. We are so much greater, and you are owed thanks for inspiring us all. Shine and dream in equal measure.

Turn this computer off, put down your phone, and for the love of all things life-changing and inspired: Go. Get. High.