"The Secret"

The first time I saw the movie "The Secret", I had arrived at my best friend's apartment in Astoria, NY around noon, still drunk from the night before. I had done the proverbial 'walk of shame' that morning, beginning with a two-block stumble to the closest subway from a friend's house in Brooklyn, which included passing four kids dressed up as ninjas on bicycles. I felt their glance through the mental haze of leftover drunkenness and looked across the street at them. Even though the glance only lasted a second, it pierced my awareness like poison darts. This exchange was followed by an abrupt knocking over of a string of trashcans before they all disappeared down a distant alley. I dismissed the visual exchange as a dare to stop them, and switched my mind back to trying to remember the hazy details of what happened the night before. Pieces were missing, and I was trying my hardest to fill them in.

I realized several of the people on the train seemed to be looking at me with a mixture of sympathy and disgust, which made me consider for the first time how disheveled I probably looked after a solid string of multiple days of heavy drinking and nonstop partying. This was the most sober I had been since the previous Tuesday, and it was a Saturday. Getting off the train was even worse: I had to endure walking down four vibrant and populated blocks in a trendy part of Manhattan to switch train lines. The looks I got that morning.. oh man, the looks are STILL burned into my memory! I've never seen such looks of disgust!! I was still pretty drunk, though, so I just said "fuck 'em" in the back of my head and moved as quickly and deliberately as my intoxicated body could carry me to the next station. My legs, and life, felt like melting Jello. It was awful!

When I got to my friend's house, he looked at me, shook his head as he giggled softly and asked how things had been. At first, I laughed as I recounted the bits and pieces of endless nonsense that had somehow congealed into an amorphous, incoherent series of days, but by the end of the story, I was in tears. They came out of nowhere, but luckily, he was able to recognize that those tears were the only way I knew how to ask for help.

He knew me long before I turned into a raging alcoholic, and had correctly identified my seemingly perpetual state of irresponsibility and never-ending intoxication as an inability to cope with life. I was beating myself up all day, every day, for having failed at a shitty marriage, failed at achieving my dream of becoming a doctor, failed at everything (which is what it felt like back then). I was angry at myself (as well as the world) for being in the place I was at, yet was doing absolutely nothing to change it. If anything, I was digging a deeper and deeper hole to have to climb out of by living as recklessly as I was.



Being the awesome person he is, he gently nudged me to become more self-aware. He knew that until I changed my perspective, I would be stuck in victim mode. It's virtually impossible to grow in victim mode, as you pretty much shit on everything great in your life and take for granted all of your blessings while keeping busy counting your problems. His wife had recently borrowed the movie from a friend, and he said it may help me to think differently about life in general. In all fairness, he did warn me that it was kind of corny, but said the message was a good one that may be able to help me get out of the funk I was in. That was in 2007.

It was corny, but since I was indeed drowning at that point in my life, the message successfully acted as a life preserver of sorts. It planted seeds of awareness that I was going to have to heal myself in order to get out of the rough waters of my life and back onto dry land. But it left me floating  in shark-infested waters. I had to figure out how to get back to the shore, and although a positive attitude made the cold water and sharks looming in the distance easier to tolerate, it didn't provide me with the energy or direction that I needed to get myself back onto dry land. That energy came from somewhere deeper within, one that is independent of how we think. It came from the part of us that is the difference between acting on an idea and being content just thinking it; the energy that makes us "do" and allows us to turn a dream into our reality.

It was one hell of a swim!! It took YEARS of learning to be honest with myself, learning to trust myself again (which, for me, meant I had to entirely eliminate alcohol from my life, as I could no longer trust myself once I started drinking), learning the lessons of forgiveness and patience, and giving myself the time and space I needed to properly heal before I managed to gain enough strength and courage to swim to the shore from that little life preserver given to me by the so-called secret; yet, I made it a choice to do it and stuck with it, day after day, year after year until one day I realized I was out of the water and back on dry land. That feeling was the deepest happiness I have ever felt! And now, I make it a choice to carry it with me always.

I watched 'The Secret' again last year with a friend who happened to turn his life around at roughly the same time I did mine, and we laughed at most of it. We appreciated a few good points that were made, yet could recognize how unhealthy the outcomes of such thinking could be if rooted in selfishness or ego-centrism. We compared it to a life preserver that would keep you trapped in shark-infested waters, rather than a solution to getting out of the water altogether.

I'm thankful that the movie was able to plant a seed of change in my life back when I needed change most, but it offers no real solution to achieving genuine, lasting, long-term growth or happiness. The real solution exists within a consciousness that the secret seems to ignore. Only after much pain and resistance was I able to gain enough consciousness to come to peace with the past, release my fear of the future, and accept and appreciate each and every moment that I am alive. Now I love the thought of being able to unlock the endless potential that is locked away in time yet unfolded, rather than fear what the future holds. I'm more in love with the endless possibilities of AWESOME that this world has to offer than I ever thought was possible! Yet, that perspective is balanced by the reality that there are some not-so-awesome pitfalls to watch out for.

The best part?  I managed to get here with only a few good books, a couple of awesome blogs (like this one ), some Jiddu Krishnamurti videos, lots of Bruce Lee, Rumi and Hafiz quotes, and a few good friends and family members who have loved me unapologetically and unconditionally along the way. Oh yeah.. and an unwavering, unfiltered, raw commitment to changing myself for the best.

It takes much time for a single seed to grow into a fruit-bearing tree, but given the right conditions, it will one day bear enough fruit to nourish and sweeten the lives of many. :)

One love! 

"The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education." - Albert Einstein

"Life itself is your teacher, and you are in a state of constant learning." - Bruce Lee