WHAT A YEAR.
I honestly never knew how sadness can multiply. How it can permeate every corner of your existence like a floodlight in an empty Costco warehouse.
These last few months have taken a lot from (and out of) me. I had lost my sense of "Play" to the weight of this... Shared ? existential crisis. That looks like not being able to show up and be present in a virtual improv scene, sure, but it also meant a departure from my daily reality.
Every interaction felt like being underwater, where the voices of friends and family were met with the weight of entire oceans in my ears. My emails and messages piled up. My work both personally and professionally came to quite the halt. I would barely and rarely come up for air.
I moved into LA in March 2020, (that sentence itself says a lot) my grandmother transitioned a month later, then a month after that I was evicted from that home I had come to love just to move into a Hostel that would shut down operations two months later (and seemed like it🐭). The police were out here being total D-bags, murdering people. Then all that was followed by a tumultuous end to my 2 year relationship.
Looking back, I wasn't grounded even before I left. Having begun my commercial career with an exciting momentum in Seattle without much guidance in navigating the financial and psychological side effects of such work, I burned myself out in both arenas.
My experience of myself had inflated so much that In LA I turned to substances to help bide a sense of happiness... Found out that doesn't work. Short term, maybe for moments, sure... But being dumb litty is a bandaid on a torn ligament.
This sort of experience is maddeningly complex. To be so caught up in one's own reality that any deviation seems like an intense, disruptive turn. The rigidity of that sentiment welcomes the opportunity to snap.
So... I definitely broke.
Recently a dear friend of mine abruptly transitioned... Eh, more like just a regular friend. (He'd like that joke).
Kevin Guzowski will forever be the guy who lit up a room. We'd go back and forth with that compliment, now he's got the upper hand. The dude can traverse space and time now. He IS the light.
His passing is a stout reminder of our mortality. We don't know when or how we'll leave this place. I just keep thinking of him, randomly. This man isn't here with us as we are, anymore. Just like that. This guy that would make the room erupt with laughter simply off of the delivery of a word. His improv scenes regularly made me laugh out loud, and not like a courtesy laugh or anything like that. an ACTUAL real laugh. We are beyond fortunate to have his legacy from his impact on all of us; that impact is why he is dearly loved by our community. He's deserving of all that love he gave.
🖤You will be missed dearly, my friend. 🖤
We all have that love to give.
I've felt myself stray from the obnoxiously positive altruistic guy I came into adulthood as... And with that tangential exploration I've come to a bit of certainty.
That, while sadness multiplies, the love that we give is exponential. It's transformed into a simple smile, or into a hand that can drag someone from the depths of their own ocean of despair. While we may fall into the depths one by one, when we lift each other up, it happens all at once. We're able to carry each other.
When we're this deep in the shits, it's important to remember to keep flushing. Stay honest, adhere to the fulfilling moments we have. Breathe in the presence of love. There will always be something to stress about. Something to cry about. This is true because the opposite is true, it's cosmic math.
We have the paramount decision of how we approach life. And while there are no wrong choices, make no mistake, not only will our discernment shape and define our legacy- it will shape and defines our PRESENT LIVES.
I'm choosing the Kevin way. I'm choosing to be what lifts others up. A smile. A laugh. A source of that good ol' fashion unconditional love.
I'm going to continue to find my balance in all things, because as pervasive as the sadness is, the happiness cannot be ignored.
We have a lot of reasons to wonder how we are going to die these days, but that's none of our business. I'm deciding how I'm going to live....
How 'bout you?