Slow down. Be quiet. That gnawing in your chest, that crushing pressure making it hard to breathe, that’s you. You’re letting that happen. Unless you’re having a heart attack, and then you really need to seek medical attention. But if you aren’t, then it’s probably stress. Anxiety. Your real arch-nemesis. It’s the most powerful, made up, fictional, yet real, monster we have to fight on a day to day basis. But what would you say if I told you that you have the power over it? You have the kryptonite to put it aside and give you the freedom to live your life the way you want?
How do I know? What makes me the expert? I’m no expert. Never said I was. But I’ve lived a lot of life, seen a lot of things, and battled that monster myself. I fight it on a daily basis. By the way, I don’t like the term “fight” because that is what feeds the monster. Fighting is just a metaphor. And it’s actually a dishonest one because the only real way to fight the monster is to ignore it. To just let it have its fun, knowing that when you release your grip on it, your chokehold, your deathgrip, it begins losing its power. Funny, right? The more you fight it the stronger it gets, the more you just let it be, the weaker it gets.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Why should you listen to me? Who am I? What’s my story? I’m just a guy, when it comes down to it. An old guy. Who was I? At one time, I was in the Navy. In the Nuclear Power Program. I learned not only how to be a military person, I learned how to run a nuclear power plant. Yeah, that still scares me. I actually stood a watch station called Load Dispatcher. If you were in the Navy, that might mean something to you. I can tell by the really impressed look on your face that you weren’t in the Navy and have no idea what I’m talking about. Load Dispatcher is the most senior enlisted watch station on the ship. Let me take it back a step. What’s a “watch station”? Think about Fast Food. The guy standing at the fry station? Yeah, that’s a watch station. Or the lady at the register? Yep. A watch station is a job that you work for a few hours at a time. The Load Dispatcher is the person who directs the entire electric plant for an aircraft carrier. Talk about pressure. Hey, we’re going to be operating really close to an enemy country and we’re going to turn off all the power and see how quickly you can get it going again! Fun, right?
So that started me off on a path where stress, anxiety and pressure were pretty much things I lived with on a daily basis. But it also taught me about integrity, about attention to detail, and about learning and following procedure. We had to know every step required to do anything with the electric plant, even when a casualty (a bad thing, like a power outage) occurred. We had to know, by heart, by memory, every step we had to perform to make sure the casualty didn’t get worse. And once we got things to a safe spot, we would have to stop, pull out the manual, verify that we took all the appropriate actions, and then follow the procedure from there to get things back to normal operating order. So I learned about control. About always being in control, and to a psychotically detailed level. Which drove me to my interest in Eastern philosophy.
In high school, I had a teacher who talked about transcendental meditation. He got a lot of resistance from the deeply religious kids in my class, and he defended his position by saying that a forest was actually closer to God than a church because God made the forest, man made the church. So to commune with the higher power, whichever you believe in, being out in the woods was the way to go for the direct line. After years of intense control, and after years of always remembering this somewhere in the back of my consciousness, and minutes after picking up a book on world religions, I found Taoism and Buddhism.
Something about them, specifically the philosophical sides, resonated with me. It brought me a sense of peace, a sense of yeah, this is it. This fits my understanding of the world better than what I’ve seen so far. The religious side seemed a little out there, and to be frank, it’s not really necessary. None of what I’ve learned or found requires or contradicts religion. So that’s nice.
So I spent a few years reading about Taoism, and Zen Buddhism, and how to meditate (which is really as easy as just sitting down and not thinking about anything. Really, just breath and let your mind go blank. Think of ripples on a pond after you threw a rock in, and after a time, the ripples get smaller and less frequent until the surface of the water is like glass again. That’s where you’re going to find yourself). I read Laozi, Chuangzi, and Chinese poetry. I learned about sand gardens, and Tai Chi, and Chai Tea. That’s Indian, by the way, but the pun is good all the same.
I had no idea that I was setting myself up with a psychological life jacket.
A number of years later, with my wife, and my son, and my daughter, we went through a family catastrophe. I can’t really describe it in a good way, a way to let you know just how awful it was. And maybe one day I will write that story. For now, just know it was bad, and it was about the most stressful thing you can endure. It’s about the most a marriage can endure. In fact, it’s one of those make or break events. We fought to keep ourselves together. It brought us closer, and even today, while I’m writing this and she’s out of state with our daughter, who just gave birth to her second son, I’m having trouble getting through the day because she became that important to me.
I think all my studying in those Eastern philosophies are the reason we’re together, we’re still sane-ish.
And now, I’m here writing. Why am I writing? I could’ve easily just kept on living quietly, but no, I’m writing this. Why? That’s the question I’m grappling with right now. I guess I feel like it’s time for me to take what I’ve learned, what I’m learning, and pass it on. To try and share my knowledge and experience with those who need it.
Years ago, before the pandemic, I started a YouTube channel for relaxation videos. The name Relazation showed itself to me, and that’s the name I gave the channel. It has exactly one video. You can still look it up. The name found me before I even know what it was meant for. Relaxation is a mashup of relaxation and realization. Because you have to relax to realize. That’s what came to me back then. Now, I have the new thought, Slow Down. Be Quiet. And that meshes with the relax and realize. Because until you slow down and relax, you can’t really be quiet, and it’s not until you are quiet that you can realize. Realize what? That’s for you to decide.
I could tell you my name. But honestly, it doesn’t matter. What matters is whether any of this sounds familiar.
This isn’t a self-help guide and I’m no guru. I’m just a person who may be a little further along the same path you’re walking, and I’m leaving a few notes on the roadside to help you along. So if this sounds like something that could help you, or sounds interesting, feel free to follow along. I’ve got a lot more to learn, and more to share.
—R