how writing unlocks the secrets of the universe

the jail cell designed for 5 people, held 23 of us and a drain in the middle of the floor,
a man named otis sang gospel until four in the morning
and had the voice of an angel with a broken wing.
the drunk beside me pissed himself and apologized
to his mother, who was elsewhere, possibly dead.
cops brought coffee at six because the sergeant
had a soft spot, maybe a hangover, or a sister who drank.
they had me for punching a bartender who deserved it
in front of thirty witnesses who agreed and stayed quiet.
my knuckles were split, my shirt stiff with blood,
and my head sat in my hands throbbing out a verdict.
otis stopped singing at dawn and asked me,
"boss… what do you do?? out there?"
"i write" i said.
he thought that over. "then put this down"
so here it is, 2 years later, otis:
23 people sleeping while sitting, on a concrete floor, a drain, a hymn,
and every one of us dreaming the same dream,
the one where somebody is glad to see you come in.
that dream costs more than the fine did.
i paid both.

if there were only one thing i could teach my son. one skill that would compound into every aspect of his life. it would be writing.

writing is the most superior form of communication ever created.

masterful writing is communication 2.0.

a superpower. god mode.

first, it allows you to access yourself: to turn the jumbled chaos inside your mind into something you can finally understand.

then, it allows you to access other people. to articulate what they feel but cannot put into words.

and ultimately, perhaps, it gives you a way to access something greater than yourself.

reality.

truth.

God.

that's why i wrote this newsletter..

everyone left. broke, alone, heartbroken, facing 20 years of jail, with no one left to talk to.

so i did the only thing i had left.

i opened the notes app on my phone, and i started writing.

that's it. that's how everything started.

me, at the absolute rock bottom, typing my thoughts into a phone.

i wrote so i won't kill myself.

i took every ugly thing rotting in my skull and dumped it onto the page, because the page was the only thing big enough to hold it.

i let the dog run across the blank canvas.

and then something strange happened.

the fog thinned. i started seeing my situation clearly for the first time, the zero hope, the suffering, the incarceration, and instead of drowning in it, i could look at it. i accepted my life for exactly what it was. and there was something gangsta and beautiful in that.

once it was on the page, i could work with it. i could strategize my entire life, because i could finally see it laid out in front of me instead of screaming inside me. my decisions got sharper. the way i talked to people changed. i could finally say what i actually meant.

writing saved me the way a shovel does. slow, ugly, one scoop at a time.

i just kept digging myself out.

but staying alive was only the first thing it did. the second thing was bigger.

because

writing gives you the ability to know who you are.

writing is externalizing your internal world so you can actually explore it.

most people don't.

they think they do.

ask someone what they believe and they'll usually give you an answer they've been carrying around for years. ask them why they believe it, and the whole thing collapses in thirty seconds.

they've inherited their beliefs, from parents, friends, culture, religion. thousands of ideas glued together into something they call me.

then they go through life assuming they understand themselves.

they've never once investigated the man they're defending.

so you dig. you ask, and then you ask again.

"why am i angry?"

because he fucked me over.

why did that hurt so much?

because i felt disrespected.

why do i need his respect?

because…

keep going.

that's where the interesting shit starts.

eventually you hit something underneath the first answer. maybe the reason you're angry isn't that person at all. maybe they touched something much older. maybe you've spent your entire life trying to prove something. maybe your ambition is built around a wound.

maybe you're with the wrong woman.

maybe you're doing work that has nothing to do with the person you're becoming.

maybe the beliefs you've spent your whole life defending aren't even yours.

writing can show you this.

how are you supposed to make serious decisions when you don't know which desires are genuinely yours and which ones you've absorbed from everybody around you?

you have to know the man making the decisions.

writing is the best way i've found to meet him.

and the longer you do it, the more familiar you become with yourself. you start noticing the patterns, the recurring thoughts, the things that keep making you angry, the things that make you feel alive, what you keep avoiding, what you keep lying about.

eventually the scattered pieces begin forming a picture.

the hidden starts becoming conscious.

the different parts of you begin talking to each other.

that's what i mean by synchronization. your conscious idea of yourself comes into contact with the deeper shit that's actually driving you. the closer those two become, the less divided you are. you stop having to maintain ten different versions of yourself.

you become more whole.

it all begins with the truth.

what’s actually on your mind?

what the fuck are you thinking?

truthfully.

don’t give the answer that makes you look like a good person or the answer you think you’re supposed to have.

pull up your phone’s notes app.

then.

give the page the ugly one.

write the thought you would never say out loud.

write about the things you’ve done.

the things you wish you’d done.

write about the sexual fantasies you’re having about your neighbor’s wife.

tell the page about your father. the drug addict who still picked you up from school when it was raining, soaking wet, with a beer in his pocket.

the sexual harassment you experienced back then.

the things that would make people judge you for the rest of your life.

the thoughts that, if spoken aloud, you fear would permanently admit you to hell.

the page can take it.

give it everything.

let the wild dog run across the blank canvas.

open the dam.

let the water out.

let it flood the whole fucking village inside your mind.

then look at the wreckage.

that’s where the work begins.

and from that point on, i want you to do something.

whenever shit happens in your life.

write.

something pisses you off, and you don’t know why?

write.

you’re sad, but you can’t explain what’s making you sad?

write.

you’re anxious.

emotional.

happy.

ecstatic.

jealous.

ashamed.

confused.

or maybe there’s a thought crawling around your mind for days, slowly eating away at you.

write.

write everything.

do not filter it.

don’t make it sound better than it really is.

write every stupid, irrational, ugly, contradictory piece of bullshit inside your head.

just get it out.

because sometimes, the only reason something feels so fucking overwhelming is because it’s been allowed to run wild inside your mind.

put it into words.

put it somewhere you can see it.

just keep leaving evidence of yourself on the page.

then, over months and years, something strange begins to happen.

you begin to notice what makes you come alive.

and what slowly kills something inside you.

and eventually, through thousands of small entries scattered across months and years, you’ll begin to understand who the fuck you really are.

an excerpt from the alchemist

why do we have to listen to our hearts?” the boy asked, when they had made camp that day.

“because, wherever your heart is, that is where you'll find your treasure.”

“but my heart is agitated,” the boy said. “it has its dreams, it gets emotional, and it's become passionate over a woman of the desert. it asks things of me, and it keeps me from sleeping many nights, when i'm thinking about her.”

“well, that's good. your heart is alive. keep listening to what it has to say.”

. . .

“my heart is a traitor,” the boy said to the alchemist, when they had paused to rest the horses. “it doesn't want me to go on.”

“that makes sense,” the alchemist answered. “naturally it's afraid that, in pursuing your dream, you might lose everything you've won.”

“well then, why should i listen to my heart?”

“because you will never again be able to keep it quiet. even if you pretend not to have heard what it tells you, it will always be there inside you, repeating to you what you're thinking about life and about the world.”

“you mean i should listen, even if it's treasonous?”

“treason is a blow that comes unexpectedly. if you know your heart well, it will never be able to do that to you. because you'll know it's dreams and wishes, and will know how to deal with them.”

“you will never be able to escape from your heart. so it's better to listen to what it has to say. that way, you'll never have to fear an unexpected blow.”

- Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

at the surface, we, homo sapiens, might look completely different.

but go beneath the surface, and we're all running on remarkably similar code.

a man in Manila gets jealous. so does a man in New York. a woman in Tokyo falls in love, fears rejection, wants to be seen, worries about losing someone she loves.

a man halfway across the world might have nothing in common with you on paper, yet somewhere inside him are the same fundamental forces that move you: fear, desire, love, shame, ambition, jealousy, lust, grief.

different circumstances. same fucking species.

we all suffer from the strange experience of being trapped inside a mind we didn't choose, trying to figure out what the fuck we're doing here.

the more deeply you understand yourself, the more you begin to recognize these same forces operating inside other people.

you understand jealousy differently once you've sat down and honestly examined your own jealousy.

you become less confused by someone's anger once you've spent enough time investigating where your own anger actually comes from.

you understand why people lie, hide, manipulate, love, run away, cling to each other, destroy good things, and pursue dreams that terrify them, because somewhere inside yourself, you've found the same machinery.

that's what honest writing gives you.

you start with yourself because that's the only mind you have direct access to.

but if you investigate it deeply enough, you eventually discover that you are studying something much bigger than yourself.

you're studying human nature.

and the deeper you go into yourself, the more people you find there.

you'll eventually reach a point where you can look at another person and recognize patterns they haven't yet recognized in themselves. you'll understand why she does what she does, why she wants what she wants.

you'll understand her better than she understands herself.

once you've written long enough.

something strange begins to happen.

the voices start to dampen.

the noise begins to disappear.

all the bullshit you've been carrying around has somewhere else to go.

and in that silence, i found something i wasn't expecting.

God.

when i finally saw God, i cried.

i fucking cried.

like an animal howling into the night.

and i told God everything.

my whole life.

starting when i was fetus.

until now.

love. jail. derision. valor. Château d'If. chibi.

the people i hurt. the people who hurt me.

every fucking thing.

nowadays, i always talk to God

in the early morning and late at night.

sometimes only for a few minutes. but thats enough.

life started looking different.

i started seeing beauty in things i would have never even noticed before.

a paper cup on the table with a brown ring of dried coffee at the bottom.

the smell of old alcohol trapped inside an empty bottle.

attagirl.

a dead sparrow lying on the pavement.

the ceiling at four in the morning when the entire world is asleep and you're wide awake, staring into the darkness.

even those things.

especially those things.

life is an infinite disneyland

from an atom to entire galaxies.

an infinite field of beauty.

and maybe it was always there.

maybe i was just too full of my own bullshit to see it.

so write. empty yourself. tell the truth until there's nothing left to hide behind.

because God is speaking right through your heart.
why the fuck aren't you listening??

and with that, i’ll leave you with my favorite quote of all time.