A Gypsy, A Rose, Head Ringin Lunatic Born From a Waxing Gibbous Moon. Crashing Into Saturn Friday.

Let’s do this, a wild ride from the moon to the ringing in my head, a gypsy song, to a couple car wrecks with precious IPAs and bourbon along the way. Sounds like a less-than-average Friday for Dr. Dre. Maybe I can pick up a couple spares here, by telling the truth to myself.

A waxing gibbous moon – an interesting term I just recently learned about, part of another fruitful discussion with one of my therapists (yes plural). And I’m looking forward to another session tonight. He doesn’t think I’m a lunatic, per se, but he is now certain I’m bipolar and agrees that Luna Mar is a very cute girl, our beautiful 2-year-old pup who is my lifesaver most if not all days (she likes to jump up for the camera too when she’s laying on my lap). I agree on all counts except for the lunatic verdict, because the moon does get my attention and always has. But my moon is becoming brighter each day, the dark region receding, revealing the lies and issues which previously lay in the shadows. Becoming full, like a waxing gibbous moon. Like a rose finally blooming perhaps also, the thorns cutting and bleeding me no more. Revealing is healing.

Definitely an awkward start to this one, but I am feeling more than awkward lately. My bouncing up and down and back around has been exacerbated by times of change, positive changes directionally speaking, but excess perturbations to the system none the less. And the ringing in my head is growing louder and more constant than I remember, silence and a ‘calm mind’ is not golden for me. Is the hissing and ringing growing louder or am I finally hearing the tinnitus as I work through all the other fog, noise pollution and misconception of my reality, physical and emotional/mental, that is clanging around in my head?

When I hear the term waxing gibbous moon – I think of another dichotomy or bipolar reality, the light of the moon growing and shining so brightly, but also uncovering the craters we previously didn’t see. The visibility to the nasty parts growing just like the entropy of our universe all around us, tying back to Gibb’s free energy when I think of gibbous. Principles of disorder and energy conservation, a battle we will never win due to the certainty of thermodynamics and physics, but applicable to so much more in our lives all around us and in my wobbly head, barely remaining in orbit.

Let’s start with the Luna Lunar lunatic, madness in the attic of my mind, portion of the session - lunatics – sure they call us crazies lunatics because the moon makes our minds howl like werewolves, the light of the night shaking our instabilities free from our souls for all to see. The term lunatic came about from the Greek lunaticus meaning of the moon or moonstruck, referring to epileptics whose madness was somehow caused by or related to the moon. Then you can break the word lunatic down into luna for moon and atic which means of the kind of, also referring to the people whose insanity was dependent on the phases of the moon, or thought to be as we all searched for causality or logic behind the unexplainable then just as we do today. Our personalities cycling in phases between two poles just as the moon and earth circle each other and the sun in orbit. All of this lunatic nonsense is first attributed to Aristotle and Pliny the Elder (the author, not the sought after NorCal cult IPA beer) as well as noted by workers in insane asylums who swore up and down that during the full moon nights, the patients were increasingly restless and wild. Pliny and Aristotle believed that the full moon brought on fits of rage in bipolar individuals, as the light during night caused sleep disturbances that impacted those bipolars mood dramatically. It seems wildly foolish to me that a little extra light at night is the trigger that makes us go goofy, but I wanted to learn more, so I dug in. Trying to shine a little light on myself.

Pliny the Elder (officially not Gibbous, but named Gaius Plinius Secundus AD 23/24 to 79), the one related to our original arc of the moon and lunatics, was a first-century Roman author who spent his days studying and writing about the natural world. Pliny created the first known encyclopedia model, with volumes of work. A note from Gaius to historian Tacitus, whose name sounds like the ringing in my ears, tinnitus, said this from Wikipedia:

For my part I deem those blessed to whom, by favour of the gods, it has been granted either to do what is worth writing of, or to write what is worth reading; above measure blessed are those on whom both gifts have been conferred. In the latter number will be my uncle, by virtue of his own and of your compositions.

[I hope I am doing something worth writing about for once, yet I know what I have muddled through is worth reading for someone else as a cautionary tale or eye-opener. Blessed I know I am, even though the gifts I finally see ran up one hell of a time and materials bill.]

Pliny the Elder, ca. 2000, is a beer from the Northern California Sonoma County Russian River brewing company, which has become a cult frenzy as the supply is dwarfed by the demand – lines of hopeful hoppy aficionados forming for days around the brewery when a new batch is released. There’s even a secondary market for this hoppy IPA just like the famous Kentucky bourbons from Buffalo Trace, Pappy Van Winkle. It sounds to me like Pliny and Pappy are somehow kindred spirits, suffocating supply of a sought-after product to drive mania. Imbibing, I mean I’m babbling here, just another detour in my mind, let’s get back to the moon.

I started this digging by looking up the phase of the moon I was born under, November 30, 1979. I don’t know why I went there, but it was an interesting start. On that night the moon was in a waxing gibbous mood, state, or phase. And what waxing gibbous means is that the moon was in an intermediate phase which is less than a full moon but more than half illuminated, on its way to becoming full and bright. [Whereas a waning gibbous moon represents the same degree of illumination on its way to disappearing in the moon cycle from full to new or absent, in full darkness.] The waxing moon is getting bigger and brighter each night, the waning moon smaller until vanishing. Again, not revelatory, but we will get there. For so much of my life I felt like I had a great light inside me from which something significant would result, but at the same time extreme darkness, with the darkness taking over minute by minute, day by day in more of a waning fashion. I felt I was fighting an unwinnable battle with my mental state, my mind entropy consuming me bit by bit, devouring me from the inside out. But now I see the waxing nature of my life and self, a bipolar opposite opinion from my bipolar opinionated self.

From a personality perspective, they say those born under a waxing gibbous moon are growing, expanding increasing in their light as they move towards something greater. I don’t know that I believe in the palm reading, fortune-tellers with their tarot cards but I am leaning a bit towards there being something interesting there. People born under the waxing gibbous moon are great at forming relationships, very compassionate and motivated, positive and enthusiastic, fickle and indecisive. Those born under this phase are like the moon, mostly bright and visible but also have a part that is hidden, secrets unrevealed, shrouded by darkness. That shadow is where we hide the pain and trauma, but all we present is the bright light. Gifts of great communication, wanting to share and pass on knowledge, learnings from experience, the role of teacher or therapist in the group of friends. They also tend to be slightly radical, do not accept compromise in any form, holding their views and beliefs strongly, not good at reconciliation. They are perfectionists, over-analyzers, yet find themselves as great leaders. Great allies but worse enemies, great guides and healers of others, but lonely. This part really got to me – “They may know and take on their mission in life around the age of 30. But true fulfilment may come later, after the age of 50, and that’s when they will reach the highest sense of satisfaction and fulfilment in life.”

Hmmmm, it all does sound familiar when I look in the mirror. And at age 30 I knew who I was, my self was revealed only to myself, but I denied my identify and didn’t take on my true mission, I continued to fight myself, I continued to make excuses, continued to lie to myself and everyone around me. And I definitely didn’t reveal myself to anyone else, I was deep in the darkness. Definitely sounds like me - Present the light, ignore the darkness. But now I am here, in this moment, for the first time wanting to live past the age of 50, do something good for myself and for others, walk into the light. I hope the rest of the story is true for this waxing gibbous moon that is me.

Of course all this moon talk also takes me back to my acid-filled teenage years and Pink Floyd. We were always seeking, and often found, the dark side of the moon and back. I remember so many nights sitting out at the docks on the Chesapeake Bay admiring the reflection of the moon on the water, endlessly gazing into the ripples with the dancing moonlight and seeing so much more. Using a trip to escape from reality and to run wild.

I wrote previously about the sun rising and setting, and now we have a similar riddle about more of the same in the moon waxing and waning, oscillating up and down and back around. All tying to our perspective and personality - The moon and the sun, the ups and downs of our mental state, the oscillations and orbits of our thoughts that control our actions, how do we manage those? In my case, from all I have read about being a bipolar waxing gibbous moon, I need just what I know, medicine, perhaps in the form of a strong dose of the extended-release divalproex sodium pill, coincidentally that’s a drug we make in the drug manufacturing factory I work at. Something is speaking to me here, helping me connect more dots. But that something is screaming in one moment, whispering in the next, the inconsistent inside voice that represents my chemicals running wild – too much acid, too much base, too many hormones, no modulation. Jumping from one thing to the next, springing from feelings of accomplishment and perfection to hopelessness and despair with needed modulation, untimely amplification provided from the past, the environment and on and on. No wonder there is an inescapable ringing inside my head, migraines a daily battle.

Our ability to control mood and outlook, which translates to actions and inaction, is a complex matter. We all have our default disposition, controlled by genetics, and that is matched with our experiences and the lessons we learn, what we observe and process. Many of the voices in the dark corners of our minds come from powerful experiences or events we don’t even realize. For so long I felt like a professional bowler, wrist brace, shiny shoes, combover, beer gut and all - incapable of controlling whether that next ball heading down the lane would be a strike or a gutter ball, with nothing in between. But stepping up to the line time and time again just to find out. Strike after strike and gutter after gutter, no balance or explanation. Well, I say that in a past tense mentality and I hope my total process, inclusive of learning, reflection, therapy, help from those close to me, medication, meditation, and so many more things will help me pick up some spares in the final frames of my moonshot. I also described our home the Isla del Encanto - Puerto Rico as nothing but strikes and gutters, high highs and low lows, the highs and lows flashing in an instant or lasting what seem like a lifetime, with no explanation or control, no rhyme or reason. The land of bipolar bubbles, a tropical conundrum. So, it’s appropriate I have lived there for so much of my life, also appropriate that at the time I am learning how to manage picking up spares, I am packing up and heading off to a new home and chapter. A new physical place and a new mental state. This time, with true knowledge and enlightenment to overtake the darkness, unlike in the past. I was awakened in a cold sweat last night, dreaming feverishly and then reflecting on a lesson that intertwines deep scars and a prior departure from Puerto Rico about 10 years back (one that I learned absolute zero from). In some convoluted way, things are falling into place for this gypsy, maybe settling out finally. All that time in my past, maybe I thought things would be Coming up Roses, but instead I was still just a gypsy dancing in the moonlight. The Rose – that is where I really wanted to go with this.

The saying ‘Everything’s Coming up Roses’ originated from a song by Ethel Merman with music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, written for the 1959 Broadway musical Gypsy. Gypsy was based on the memoirs of a striptease artist mother Rose. Gypsy follows the efforts and dreams of Rose to raise her two daughters to perform onstage, shining a spotlight or moonlight on the challenges and hardships of life in show business. Many have given significant critical acclaim to Gypsy – calling the musical one of the greatest of the mid-twentieth century or perhaps ever. High praise for a musical many have never hear of, not surprising in this modern day age of musicals spawned out of movies and TV, comic books, rock bands, etc. to carve out another revenue stream to further capitalize on mainstream Hollywood and whitewashed pop culture targets. Jimmy Buffett is probably the greatest example of this. The old pirate shuffled from a flip-flop too-cool-for-school moderately talented but highly likable folky fun singer to selling everything from beverage blenders and retirement communities, to starting up restaurants and brewing beer, now even Jimmy has a Broadway musical weaving a story from his many ballads about boats, bars and beaches: Escape to Margaritaville.

The intent behind the song title ‘Everything’s Coming Up Roses’ from Gypsy was to coin a phrase that sounded as if it had been in the language for years but was in fact invented for the show. Maybe there’s a parallel here too – my father whose last name is Rose, wanting to meet me and have everything seem like we had been hunky dory father and son for years. But in fact the meeting and letter he wrote me 3 months earlier was all orchestrated for his own psyche and benefit. Things didn’t come up roses for me before, during or after this encounter. And this encounter is at the center of my universe of tidal thoughts on this evening. And I am surely twisting things up in knots as I have for many, many years.

In the musical Gypsy, the song Everything’s Coming Up Roses is performed at the end of the first act by the stage mother Rose, upon learning that her daughter had eloped, abandoning their planned vaudeville act and leaving Rose without a star for the show she had devoted her life. My father the Rose was counter-eloping and escaping just after I was conceived. Running to the dark side of the moon as fast as he could, long gone in the darkness by the night of that waxing gibbous moon on November 30, 1979 under which I was born. Roses represent happiness for most, but my Rose brought me nothing of the such, in my head at least. Until now when I can begin to process these deep, dark thoughts I have back to their origin and grow from them. Something I felt was impossible until just a few months ago.

The first time I physically met my father face-to-face was in early 2003, when I was 23 years old, wintertime in the middle of a snowstorm that rocked the east coast. Winter was definitely on its way to collect, and collect it did. I was driving back to PA where I worked since graduating in 2001. I was returning from a weekend visit with my fiancée in Virginia who was finishing up school, getting her PhD. The meeting with my father took place at his home in Northern Virginia. The long-awaited or dreaded meeting the culmination of a letter I received a few months earlier and a few phone calls after 22 years of radio silence. My father the Rose had a very nice home, he and his wife of 1-2 years had carved out a seemingly wonderful life and were in the upper-middle class region of society with 2 children from his first marriage who were in the 10-14 age range. A traditional 4 or 5 bedroom, 2 car garage home in a very nice blahh suburban neighborhood. The exact location of the house, the neighborhood, somewhere in Chantilly, that part is a bit blurry also when I try to think back to the moment, although it was frighteningly crisp in my dream last night. Its odd to me that I don’t have a crystal-clear memory of this encounter, you’d think I would based on the significance, my generally above average memory, but maybe the cloudiness is by design – the brain and mind are smarter than we can understand at most, if not all times. I don’t even remember his wife’s name, or should I say my stepmother’s name, that sounds eerily odd for sure. All I do remember was that she was the same age as my wife-to-be and she was a smidge uncomfortable looking at me and holding their new baby of 10 or 12 months as we spoke on the sofa in their living room. [name or sex of the baby again I have no great recollection of] I want to say that little somebody’s name was McKenzie or Mackey, some M name and a girl. A girl that now is probably in college, and wow that puts things into perspective.

From the moment I walked through the door of my father’s home, I had a very unique uneasiness overcome me, a feeling I never felt before. Like a flame dancing in a candle. That part is crystal clear. I would love to have my vitals from this encounter for reference – couldn’t have been a good set of data, but alas no apple watch back then. I wasn’t feeling specifically sick to my stomach or nervous, or afraid, happy, excited, relieved, or angry, or sad – it was more like an amalgamation that has some similarity to a bowl of fried rice, somehow it all comes together and creates a new flavor than any of the ingredients on their own could add up to. It was a feeling I can taste in my mouth but hasn’t been recreated to this day.

I was greeted warmly and politely and we sat and talked for probably an hour. What about, I am not sure other than the typical pleasantries and general background when you meet a long lost relative or are making small talk with a colleague, etc. We were filling space, a little more than talking about the weather but no more than hearing about their kids and their school and his job, her job, etc. My father was a technical writer for the Department of Defense or something associated with the military machine of the nation’s capital, work he had been doing for quite some time after leaving the Navy. His wife, the younger stepmomish figure I guess is the correct term, was some executive for a consulting firm or technology company – perhaps it was PriceWaterhouseCoopers or something like that. I can’t recall, or maybe an executive at T-Mobile or AT&T, McKinsey, who knows.

My father was previously married to another woman, also not my mother, shortly after graduating from the Annapolis Naval academy and had 2 or 3 children there, ended up getting divorced, for reasons again I cannot remember from the conversations we had, or were not shared beyond the classic growing apart idea, and then met this new wife around 2000. I cannot remember if she was married previously or not, and now they had a new baby together to make a blended family with their other kids. I was weirdly relieved my wife and I hadn’t already bore a child in similar fashion to my parents out of wedlock. If we had, oh boy, that one would be slightly older than theirs, my stepsister younger than my daughter – how do you draw that upside down tree? Oh well, not a real problem, but I do recall thinking about that and being quite perplexed. Still, my family tree became instantly more complex on that day than it was that morning.

My father and his wife looked very comfortable and happy with each other, perhaps the lessons of the first marriage and younger adult years provided wisdom in this second go-round, or third go-round actually. They genuinely looked very happy and content together, which I thought was good and I was generally happy for them in that moment. But my mood cycled many times in the discussion over the course of the hour or two I was there. So here I am, 23 years old, sitting with my 40-year-old father and his 27-year-old wife, their baby, using up a lot of energy to keep things together in my head and before long the awkward conversation also ran out of steam like my insides. [I don’t remember having Tinnitus then but not sure] So, I was on my way again. Had to run, had to escape before the moon appeared – driving in the dark can be dangerous, almost as dangerous at putting at night. Very empty and anti-climactic it all felt as I got into the car, kicking the snow off of my shoes as I sat down and belted in for safety. Now I ask myself: In that moment, were either of us on the search for something true – I doubt it at that time, but I am certain of it for me, now finally, I will find the truth by going back to these dark places of emotional trauma.

I don’t know what I was hoping for or felt would come out of this face-to-face introduction but whatever I thought, it didn’t materialize. Many times in life the reality doesn’t match the fantasy and the buildup creates a catastrophic letdown. Like pulling out that last Jenga piece that topples everything you thought was built smartly and stable. For me, while I was not expecting a fantasy, I didn’t get much at all and that took me very very low and to the dark side of the moon inside my head. Entropy took over again and it got very negative, all my energy consumed in an instant. I shouldn’t have been surprised because as I think of things more in my older years, reflection with some different perspective, the letter my father wrote a few months earlier, this visit, all seemed more calculated and orchestrated for serving his own purposes than anything to truly do with me. Perhaps I felt a little duped then in the moment also, unsatisfied and then enraged. I do not consider my father at fault or having any sinister motives, nothing of that nature, he is just another guy trying to make it through the day and life as we all are. He put out the olive branch, which is something. More so, I can’t hold anything against a 17-year-old boy, which is all I knew of him up until this day when I met the 40-year-old version of my father to see how the reality measured up against the comic villain created from many years in my head armed with a vivid, wild imagination and raging emotions.

In the letter my father wrote me a few months earlier, the led to this meeting, it does still give me a little twitch when I look at it, I see a self-serving pile of shit. None of it makes sense and none of it materialized, and the only sorry mentioned in the letter is that I wouldn’t be sorry if I gave him a second chance. But that is for further evaluation and processing. Now back to the day of reckoning, a different wrecking…

As we said ‘good talk’ awkwardly shook hands, I got in the car and shot back on the highway around DC for the three-hour trip up to Philly, at about 3pm in the afternoon, I thought more about the pitstop and other memories or emotions inside me and I became very angry. That fried rice all-over-the-place feeling turned into a very specific too-much soy sauce anger – salty with some bite and overpowering, a reaction so sharp and piercing like the tip of a sword.

I got so upset and disoriented driving back up to PA that I got into two car accidents that afternoon – to everyone else I blamed it all on the snow and careless drivers but I have always known differently. The only thing snowy was my vision due to anger at meeting this person and how casual and superficial it all was after so many years of total silence towards my existence and the letter claiming that I wouldn’t be sorry and there was so much to say. So after the train wreck of a meeting, there were two car wrecks. Both were just cosmetic damage and nobody was physically injured, thankfully. The material damage was done before I got into the car, and it was all internal, unable to be rebuilt or buffed out at that time or for many years later, due to my mental adolescence. The first fender-bender resulted in the back end of the car I was driving, a Saturn (I love the interstellar theme here btw) getting a little crunched and rear bumper getting nearly ripped off because I stopped too quickly from not paying attention to or not clearly focusing on the driver in front of me. When I slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting the car in front of me, the person behind me couldn’t react fast enough. I know they say when someone hits you in the back end its their fault, but this was all me. We exchanged information on the shoulder of the highway and I pulled the bumper the rest of the way off and put it in the trunk for further examination at a later date. This first fender-bender occurred in Maryland shortly after I got on the road back home. The second one, a couple hours later, was near a toll in Pennsylvania, getting onto the PA turnpike or the Northeast extension of 476, not sure. I do remember seeing the blue and yellow Ikea sign off in the distance, and at this point day had turned to night and I was still fuming, replaying the day’s tragic conversation and so many thoughts mixing in my head. I was not bipolar on that car ride, just down and down and dark and dark. Around the toll area, I wasn’t paying attention and swerved into the side of someone just prior to the toll and damaged my driver side door and their passenger side. Nothing major again but it easily could have been given the snowy, icy conditions and my carelessness. Here I was driving my wife’s 1997 Saturn that her parents bought her when she went off to graduate school instead of my recently-purchased 2002 Honda Accord because I wanted her to have the better car. But that good intention just complicated the lies I now needed to tell in order to navigate away from the truth of the matter.

l never told anyone the truth about this until going fingers to keys just now, just one of so many deep, dark secrets and lies I have to pull out of my head and heart to move forward. And also events I have to find the meaning or causality behind to move on from. Pull them out, lay them on the table and process them once and for all. But something good comes out of everything – here is the twist for these two goofy accidents and the Saturn: That little lie came back to bite me, as all eventually do, but also turned into a positive for someone else. A gutter ball that bounced back into the lane and turned into a perfect strike. In 2004 we moved to Puerto Rico for the first time, and that Saturn came along for the ride. When I was subsequently moving from Puerto Rico to Boston in 2009 (just as I am now in 2022), running away from another dark reality, I attempted to take the same 1997 Saturn that I twice wrecked. Easy stuff – ship it from San Juan port to the mainland US, they truck it up to Boston and you go from there. Oh I loved that hunter green coupe of a car. What a coup it turned out to be for someone else. The Saturn was a solid car, nothing flashy but dependable, reliable and tight as a top, except for the leaking roof on top because of a bad gasket in the sunroof. The tropics can be a harsh environment, breaking down almost anything, me included. But all things can be remedied with duct tape and crazy glue and so the Saturn was ready for its next adventure back to the mainland. Having withstood the tropics and the salt and sun overall, the repairs from those two minor winter brush-ups holding up well. Only one thing stood in my way of shipping the car, which had already gone from Ohio to Virginia, to Pennsylvania, down to Puerto Rico and now up to Boston – the requirement in Puerto Rico to pass a police inspection to ensure you are not transporting drugs, that the car is not stolen, you don’t have unpaid tickets, etc. Like all government things in PR, the process requires at least 3 signatures, 4 stamps, and 2 to 4 attempts to accomplish, likely uncovering a bunch of other stuff in the process. Well in my case, I know of two unpaid speeding tickets and thankfully those didn’t come up, but something else did. Since I previously wrecked the car and the fix was to replace the driver’s side door with a new door from another Saturn, we ran into a big problem. More bubble trouble that burst my bubble of leaving the land of not quite right unscathed. The Puerto Rican police would not certify that the car door was not stolen because the serial number on the new door didn’t match with the rest of the car. So no signatures, no way out for me. Really, sometimes all you can say is wow, and I was in the middle of getting Rico’d, hard. [Minor details to add, are that 1) there is no Saturn dealership in PR and this was likely the only Saturn on the island. 2) I had all the information from the accident, the repairs, the importation to PR, etc. but that didn’t matter. No way for me to sweet talk or magician my way out of this, so we gave the car to the housekeeper of one of our friends for a song, someone who really needed it. And I am sure she is still driving it around to this day. I hope she is. ]

But coming back around from the Saturn door fiasco and back to our main story: I lied to my wife (then fiancée), her father and their insurance agent about the experience of wrecking the Saturn due to my shear anger and disoriented state after meeting with my father. The snowy roads (which were salted and cleared by the time I was driving back) had no impact on the situation, and both accidents were my fault, even though it was 50/50 according to the other drivers and the police. Just chalk it up to bad weather. But that kind of thing has always come natural to me, either trying to be clever, or twisting the truth or blatantly lying – all hallmarks of who I am. Just the other day I got a great compliment, or perhaps not compliment, but whatever it is, it stuck with me (as it should). I was told in a nonchalant, casual fashion: “I’m not a great bullshitter like you are” that is what my wife told me before an important investor meeting she had to attend. I was trying to encourage her that the meeting would be all good, that she should be confident about her place there. But she was nervous, so much so that she didn’t sleep a wink that night. See she only started this job a month earlier and her boss put her in the spotlight last minute, and my wife, lacking only in the area of self-confidence, was not comfortable going into this one and needed some encouragement (or the ability to make up wild lies and play it cool just as I would do). She did wonderfully as she always does, unless of course you listen to her critique of the day.

So maybe the car accident is just a small side story, maybe a side swipe compared to the real story here. My feelings towards my father that ate me up from the inside all these years. Examining events and my feelings, what they have done to me, shaped my perception of the world and how I interact with others, how I see things – that is an activity I have only recently partaken in with any shred of honesty. And it is challenging, let me tell you. But let me also tell you that I would give anything to have taken this approach so much earlier in my life. You know, like when I was in my formative years, before I developed all of these mental issues that nearly destroyed me over and over again for the good part of 30 years (they say more than 75% of mental health conditions develop before age 25 – and I am nodding to that one).

Those feelings of anger stayed with me and I am just now getting over it, that snowstorm was in early 2003 and it took my mind 18 years to grow up from that among other repressed emotions about my early life.

As I learn about emotions, feelings, mood and all that is our mental state, it is an understatement when I think of the ‘formative years’ being so critical. Just as your propensity to learn language as your brain matures beyond your teen years is hampered, so is your ability to move past emotional scars and repair the internal damage from those highly impressionable early experiences or events in life. Sure, biology makes up some of our emotional and mental roadmap, but experiences pave the road, smooth or rocky – the experiences and thoughts we draw from them, attenuate and shape your feedback loops in powerful ways.

My therapist told me about the marshmallow test in our session last week, and after reading up on Stanford’s marshmallow experiment from 1972 I am further convinced that much of who you are is established very early on. Nothing is insurmountable, but the steepness of the slope and the height of the mountain is much determined from your early years.

So let’s get this right for our kids of the current and future generations – lets teach them how to understand and manage their emotions. Let’s all take a class on mental and emotional education instead of wood shop or home economics or extra physical education classes. Psychology shouldn’t be an easy-A elective where we learn nothing more than memorization and test-taking. The opportunity here is brighter and bigger than a full moon.

And wow my head is really ringing now – and I'm thinking about Dr. Dre and smoking a J to make it all go away: Keep Their Heads Ringing “Ring ding, dong, ring-a-ding-ding-ding-dong….” from the movie Friday soundtrack 1995.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWJqt0u_TCs