For anyone feeling sad, just try today. Don’t worry about anything else. Just try today. You have no idea how many others are feeling the same way, but will never say so. Just try today. Whatever that means for you. ❤️much love! You’re not alone, even if it feels that way.

(And 5 little tips at the end.) 

My wallet was stolen today.

Big deal.

Only on this particular day, it had hundreds in it – of course – and I was running like a nancy to catch up with a friend. Racing in my asperger-ey way in the shortest black shorts, while carrying two giant iced coffees (after having decided to quit all coffee the night before).

I could feel something bounced out of my shorts – the wallet, that is – and turned around, almost dropping everything. That horrible most-horrible feeling set it at that point. I knew the damned thing was missing just by the weight of my pockets, but it was nowhere to be seen on the street. I fully expected to see it a few feet back where I suspected it dropped.

In my panic, and now with fresh coffee stains on my new white t, I asked a UPS guy who was right there if he saw anything drop. I already knew in my mind what had happened. He had an expression like he had just found a pot of gold. He was fumbling in a large bag while getting ready to get back in his truck. He said, “No,” in a way that said “Yes,” and I glanced in the bag to see him holding that large device people sign when they accept delivery. His face told me he had it. His eyes were darting, his head was down. The bag went deep, and I couldn’t see below. What do I do? Accuse? “May I look in your bag, sir?” I made a lightning decision I couldn’t do that for some reason. So, I ran around, stained and stupid, hopelessly examining my tracks.

It. Was. Gone. … F*ck! …

I thought about crying like a little boy. Or, a hissy fit. Wailing like Carolyn Jones when she begged Elvis, oh-so-dramatically, “Take a day out of your life, and love me!!!” before flopping on the ground and weeping. The pavement looked too unforgiving for that. So, I walked. Big coffee blotches on my new white CK shirt. Endlessly aware of the lightness now in my pockets. I indeed felt like the little boy who pooped his pants on the way to school and while the world walked around him, he was in a deep freeze, stiltedly walking and holding back tears.

This could be a bad day. Not to mention the one day I was carrying a sick amount of cash, it was the little stuff. The Member #5043 of the Paul McCartney fan club card, before it grew to huge numbers, and his team discontinued the whole thing. I loved that I was 5043. The massage gift card I never used. The Home Depot one. The Whole Foods one. The “vegan this” and “vegan that” cards. The fact it was the coolest vegan wallet made out of cork! How cool is that?

The violation of it all. I hadn’t been assaulted, but it felt like it in some way. The feeling that lingered in the hours after of … what was it … grief. Grief. Yet, nobody had died.

Then, it occurred to me.

“Todd.” (That’s what I’ve been trained to call myself.) “Todd, you’ve spent the better part of your adulthood – no, screw that, your whole life – as a hopeless alcoholic, and then a morbidly sick one. You’ve made all sorts of mistakes in life, and even when you balked at the word ‘spiritual’, and most definitely at ‘religious’ (I’d met those folks, after all, and at least most didn’t seem so enlightened; and certainly not so kind and loving to me) – even when you were completely un-formed as a human, you always felt there was something more going on behind the rational demeanor that always dismissed anything that didn’t have a tidy explanation as happening by chance. But, then something happened. …

“Almost ten years ago you went vegan. You were still a drunk, but you spent most of your drinking sessions immersed in Joseph Campbell videos, then it took you to Carl Jung, then it took you to Joseph Benner – all along the way seeking pieces of truths that resonated in the deepest part of you. A bit of consciousness opened up almost in synchronicity with seeing yet more of your frailties and flaws. …

“The realization that the way or the path was to shed ego, as endlessly impossible as it still seems – with new layers of ego presenting themselves when you think you’ve finally hit rock when digging. Now, all that work that would be deemed perhaps nothing of any worth by another, but it is everything to you … NOW is the time to use what you’ve supposedly learned. This is what you’ve trained for!”

A feeling came over to let it go. Maybe that person needs it far more than I do. For someone like me to still be standing on his feet after all he’s done to himself, well, that’s a miracle in itself. That feeling – despite whatever hopelessness or pain – of being carried along on an invisible string in life. Sometimes it’s only apparent when we stop and look back at all that’s transpired. What an insult to whatever it is that treated me with kid gloves to allow myself to fall into a sea of tortured emotions. And, in doing so, blocking out all the love and the real stuff that always wants to find an avenue through.

If I’ve learned anything at all, it’s that negative thinking keeps us down low, and it attracts just as much of that energy. And, as silly as it sounds in my very limited words, the deep knowing that all that we see around us in this material world isn’t actually what’s real. It will all rise and decay. Even the sun that lights the earth had a birth, and the sun will have a death. It’s all eyes popping up, then receding. It’s all coming and going. It’s all change. Even what makes up all matter, if you dig deep enough, isn’t matter at all! It’s particles bouncing in fervor. It’s energy.

As I grow older and search deeper, that realization that love is the only thing that’s real. How silly, and what an insult after all has come and gone, for me to behave like a child and threaten to end it all. In my defense I at least aimed for comedy; “you’ll find my body in the attic, next to the Dorian Gray portrait.”

A few ideas came to me after the fact that brought me some peace. If this is also your no-good, horrible, smallable day, perhaps this will help you, too, to just get back to your bliss.

#1 Sublimate it!

I always loved the word ‘sublimate’ even before I knew what it meant. I still love it – and not really sure what it means, but I use my own definition. It’s fun to use your own definitions. Turn it into something good. In other words, like this: “x really crappy thing happened to me today – a thing that made this a bookmarked day in the novel of life – but, I’ll also make it the day I quit coffee. Or, the day I ended a certain way of doing things. The day I started working out again. The day I re-evaluated some old relationships that aren’t working anymore. The day I decided to transition into the opposite sex. The day I decided to become a monk. …” You get the idea! You sublimate the whole thing! April 25, 2017 was one of the lowest moments in my life. But, because it was the day I took my final drink, it is now a date that glows in my mind! You see? It really works.

#2 Take Yourself Out of It.

Picture the whole events of the horrible day from another perspective. Imagine it playing out on a screen. An actor is playing you, and you are the director or producer. You’re observing the whole thing. I haven’t thought this one through totally. It just hit me. But, there’s something to it. Because just in the act of doing it something shifts inside you to relieve the pain a bit.

#3 It Could Have Been Worse.

Yes, it sure could have been worse. Far worse. Nobody died today. That’s all that matters, right? And, if – God forbid – somebody did die today, my deepest sympathies. That’s a whole other ballgame, I understand. But, still, when over time, #3 kind of slips in, too. I’ve found myself saying in the deepest grief, “At least her pain is over.” By being reminded of how things could be worse, it forces us to at least consider gratitude. And, gratitude is the magic ingredient of life, it seems, no matter what your feelings or beliefs. Gratitude alone – when you’re feeling it – puts up a firewall against the sludge of the lower thoughts and feelings.

#4 It Was Meant to Be.

When Paul McCartney was recording Band on the Run in the jungles of Nigeria (I think it was Nigeria?) he and Linda were robbed at gunpoint and all their money and belongings were taken – including the recording tapes Paul had slaved over. It was the tapes he mourned most of all. All that work. He had to start over. The result was – probably not even “arguably” – the greatest post-Beatle album by Paul McCartney to this day (okay, maybe tied with “Ram”) – and, even receiving that oh-so-rarest of praise from John (“a great song, and a great album.”). It was meant to be. Even if you don’t believe in such things, well, it happened. So, you can choose the positive road or the negative one. The positive one, I promise, is much more joyful, and the health of your body will thank you for choosing it.

#5. The horrible jars you out of the mundane.

Think about what you were worrying about before the unexpected horrible thing happened. You might have been cycling the same shallow nonsense through your mind, suffering over something that now seems silly and lightweight. Use the event to force change some things in your life that aren’t serving you. See #1.

That’s all I got. I’d leave you a tip, but I gots no cash! I hope at least one sentence in here helps with your bad day. If it’s a good day, keep that gratitude going! And, we both know we have the power to create either one.

If you see somebody with a stuffed vegan cork wallet today, you can let them keep it.

I love you!