Getting Deep About Being Zen

     As some of you may know, at about this time last year I made the resolution to become Zen. As of right now, it is the only New Year's resolution that I have ever come so far with (it was also the first New Year's resolution I actually resolved to do). I just want to tell you all that it has been the best decision I've ever made. *reader beware: this post has the potential to be a bit on the sappy side. I apologize in advance. (Also, to any of my friends from DU who may read this, my aim is not to offend, as we have clearly become friends for a good reason, but merely to share)

     Last December I had just finished my first quarter at DU. It sucked. I was having major culture shock from going from an incredibly diverse inner-city school (Go East!) to fancy-ville USA. I don't want to sound rude, racist, stereotypical or whatever else you want to call me when I say this but it's just a fact that the vast majority of the DU population is upper class to flat out wealthy white kids. And obviously that is not what I was used to, I'm still not really. I got the feeling (and still do) that between my four years at East and three at the renaissance festival I had already encountered and become friends with more kinds of people than lots of these kids even knew about. There was practically no diversity to speak of and the campus had an air of entitlement that cut right through and made you feel inferior. I have since found a lovely group of people who break this mold and I am sure that there are more out there but you gotta understand that I had never felt poor in my life until I the day I moved into my freshman dorm and heard the girls who would become my neighbors complaining that their maids would have been doing all of the moving had they been at home. And that feeling grew with every designer hand bag attached to the shoulder of the girl barging in front of you in the hallways and every popped collar of the guy letting the door smack you in the face after he's done walking through it.
     Then there were the classes, they were hard, not so hard that I couldn't still scrape up A's and B's but everything is harder when you're doing it alone. Nowadays I joke around about being anti-social and having no friends my first quarter but it was dead true. Part of that was because I was still in culture shock mode and felt like I had nothing in common with anyone. I'm gonna quote John Lennon here, not because I fancy myself to be some kind of suppressed genius, but because I can relate, "the second verse [of "Strawberry Fields Forever"] goes, 'No one I think is in my tree.' Well I was too shy and self-doubting. Nobody seems to be as hip as me is what I was saying. Therefore I must be crazy or a genius." Okay, so that's not exactly how I felt but there are similarities (amd now this post is related to music so HA!). I've always been shy, I doubted whether I fit in at all, whether I should be there. So maybe I overcompensated by convincing myself that I was the cool one in a sea of squares. I was clearly different so why not go one more step to say that I was the cool kind of different? I never thought I was a genius though ;)
          So yeah it basically sucked. I thought about transferring but that wouldn't be til the next year, either way I was stuck there for 2 more quarters (20 weeks). At the end of winter break I was absolutely dreading going back (much like I am right now but on a far more severe scale). With all my old high school friends still in school, I had been watching a lot of That 70's Show, I know it makes me a bigger looser that I want to admit but I felt like I had more in common with the TV gang than any of my schoolmates. In one episode Hyde teaches Jackie to be zen.

     Yep, that's my big secret, I learned zenness from TV. But I didn't rip it off completely, I made the concept my own (though in extreme examples I still resort to "Whatever" and "It's Cool"). I decided the only way to save my sanity, to save my happiness was to learn to deal with what was in front of me. So it started off as "whatever, it's cool" as an attempt to dismiss all of the crap I saw everyday. All the rudeness and self centered-ness, whatever. You think you're better than me rich kid, that's cool. One day in particular, I was failing at not hating my life so I took refuge in my records and somehow came out of it thinking, "Damn it I am the hip one around here. If you don't like it I don't care." Sure it was a bit of an angry period but it got me to stop moping around and actually talk to people. And, shock and awe, they weren't all awful! Lo and behold, right there in front of me the whole time, there had been a group of perfectly lovely people who I am now lucky enough to call my friends because they were kind enough (or stubborn enough) to wait for me to stop acting like a butthead and give me another shot at being normal. Then I went a step further not just not hating what I saw but learning to see things I liked. Oh I had something there!
     From there on in I was seeing the good in a lot of situations. It's my Zen and it has grown a lot from Hyde's advice to Jackie, now I do what I can to love my fellow man and the world we all live in together because hey, it's all we've got. It's a good life. I don't get too wound up about the little stuff anymore because I realize, hey, if no one is getting hurt or brought down in the grand scheme of things it's just not that big a deal. Move on. All of that from one little resolution. I decided to be happy person and that's what I did.
     This past year is what I shall now refer to as Stage One. Because this New Year brings a new resolution that's even better than the last my friends! Last year it was about me being happy, doing what I needed to to fix up my own life. This year I want to take the next step, a bigger step to be sure but I want to do it. I need to do it. This year is about spreading my Zen, spreading the love, spreading the joy. I firmly believe that what you put out there you get back. Call it the Golden Rule call it Karma. Whatever you call it that is what is at the core of this year's New Year's Resolution. I am resolving to put as much good and love into the world as I can because I truly believe that it will come back to me and I will be an even happier person for having done what I can for the people in my life. No I'm not going to be the next Gandhi, I'm not going to give away all my worldly possessions, I'm not going to fly to Africa and a build a village (no matter how much I want to I just don't have the money). It's got to start small and grow, that's why from New Year's Day on, whenever I see an opportunity to make someone's life a little easier I am going to do my best to take it.

     So here's to you my good friends, may the new year find you in peace and love. Cheers!