ŷ������

��

If you want to know what the Upanishads are,

We’re going to jump right into the first Upanishad. It is called the Isha Upanishad, which means “Your inner ruler.�� The name relates to the central message of the all of the Upanishads mentioned in my ��

"The Self is everywhere...��

Before I get into the analysis, I’d like to be clear that I am in no way trying to prove any of the claims made in the Upanishads or any of my interpretations.

Whether anything I interpret is accurate to the world as you know it is for you to decide, so I’m not going to twist your arm. But, I am going to do my best to demonstrate that the messages in the Upanishads are not a thought experiment or to be taken metaphorically.

They mean that “the Self is everywhere�� in a real way. But, “Everywhere�� is not an attempt to describe the phenomena in the outside world. It is the inside that the Upanishads address. And, even though our consciousness is still a , but it is still real.

Even evaluating inner experience on the basis of factual accuracy is narrow. Risking cliché, consider a dream. A philosophy professor I had who screamed “I’m teaching my ass off,�� on more than one occasion, told us that what a dream is is electricity lighting up certain parts of your brain. But, he screamed, “That’s not what my dream looked like at all!�� The point should be clear��scientific truth and experience are two different things.

But, the difference between scientific truth and experience often lead to the thought that our experiences are haunted by looming falsity, like that we experience the sun as revolving around us but in scientific truth, we’re revolving around it. Here, to prioritize experience over scientific truth in terms of accuracy makes your experience just plain wrong. But, most people don’t think of their dreams or any internal experiences this way.

These internal experiences are still real, even if you cannot accurately know them, even when you’re asleep and your senses are not interpreting the outside world. That dream happened to you. Definitely that a dream is electricity in your head is a more accurate account, but it would be a mistake to confuse an account of what a dream is with the dream itself.

A dream you’re having is not the definition of “dream”—going to sleep and continuing to experience things. A dream is like this��I was in a park and I found a waterspout, and a snake came out of it.

The sciences treat the park and waterspout and the snake as not real because they don’t refer to an actual park or an actual waterspout or an actual snake. These and all other internal experiences are often written off. It’s all in your head is the most colloquial way of saying it.

I’m not here to tell you that the park and the waterspout and the snake are real or false. We’ll stop at the experience. How did they make you feel? What do you think you should do after seeing them? If you think your dreams really are only nonsense, then this mode of inquiry is silly.

But, your internal experiences in waking life ask these questions similarly—how does your life make you feel? What do you think you should do? I hope it’s clear at this point that a scientific answer to these questions is insufficient.

Look at these pretty flowers. They show I'm a considerate writer who breaks up the text with pictures.

Thankfully, the Upanishads address these exact questions. The quote mentioned above continues��

“The Self is everywhere…He it is who holds the cosmos together."

I think that the self’s holding “the cosmos together�� is best understood in tandem with another famous passage that you might have heard before��

“Those who see all creatures in themselves and themselves in all creatures know no fear. Those who see all creatures in themselves and themselves in all creatures know no grief. How can the multiplicity of life delude the one who sees its unity?��

At the first look, this resonates with calls for compassion that cannot escape cliché if you stop there. I think compassion would definitely be symptomatic of seeing life as a unity, but it is this unity that I want to call attention to. Seeing life as a unity is what the self’s holding the cosmos together means.

The most practical interpretation is that all things that you encounter in your life are fundamentally in your perspective.��There is no outside world, only your interpreting the things in your experience.

Kant proposes a similar idea in the Critique of Pure Reason, a groundbreaking contribution to philosophy that states that any thing that we experience cannot be separated from our mind’s perceiving it.��So, any thing is the “correlate�� between the thing and your perception. Things have to be filtered through you in order to know them. We can’t know things by themselves.

This might seem so obvious as to be negligible, or you might question what difference does it make? I’m not trying to prove that our consciousness literally animates the physical world around us as . However, the experience of the world in the present moment feels like that. The outside world appears first thing in the morning and disappears the moment we fall asleep. To reiterate, it is this direct experience that is in under investigation.

Understanding that every thing comes from your perceptions puts you as solely responsible for everything in your perception in the present moment.

Certainly, many people are actual victims of terrible things that they had no part in causing.�� But, viewing the outside world as a separate from you can lead to a victim mentality to the bare drudgery of the day. Waking up on the wrong side of the bed, you trip, tear your shirt, spill your coffee, you’re late for work, you feeling like no one understands what you mean when you talk, you walk around irritable. The physical world reaches up and out to get you, and everything is someone or something else's fault.

Putting yourself as solely responsible in these instances disrupts the onslaught. You realize that the door didn’t jump out and grab your belt loop. You walked too close to the door. That’s a benign example, but trickier scenarios with conflicts between people also benefit from seeing “the Self... everywhere.��

I can’t count the number of interpersonal conflicts I’ve been involved in where I felt like I shouldn’t have to be dealing with the conflict. It’s like I was walking around, trying to be as sweet and sun-shiny as you please when I was rudely accosted with someone else’s problem. It’s easy enough to write off if it’s a belligerent stranger, but the conflicts that cause me the most turmoil usually involve people that I know really well.

It’s possible that I did something to upset the other person without knowing it. But, taking responsibility here should be obvious: acknowledge the wrongdoing, say sorry, move on. But, taking responsibility in the instance where you really haven’t done anything wrong is just as important. And, it’s especially easy to run from this responsibility since you’re just trying to live your life while the other person becomes a burden.

Facing this responsibility might improve your relationship with the other person, sure. But, facing this responsibility is important for you. The outside world has given you an opportunity to define yourself, and shrinking from this opportunity still defines you. In this way, the message to see the self everywhere is anything but conceptual or abstract.�� It is a call to create yourself with every action.

More flowers. Aren't I nice?

This point is further driven home in this section��

��...The self is everywhere.�� Bright is the self, indivisible, untouched by sin, wise, immanent and transcendent...�� In dark night live those for whom the world without alone is real; in night darker still, for whom the world within alone is real.��The first leads to a life of action, the second to a life of meditation.�� But those who combine action with meditation cross the sea of death through action and enter into immortality through the practice of meditation.��

When someone mentions reincarnation, a lot of people try to escape the conversation. And, unless you enjoy speculating about what could happen after death, a lot of people think it's simply a matter of belief. That is, they consider it as a proposition that might be either true or false, but since it cannot be verified, there's nothing really to discuss.

But, this passage addresses the problems that people experience by being either only introspective or ignoring their interior lives. By looking only “within,�� you withdraw from the world, which is a death of sorts. This death is avoided through action.

By looking only “without,�� you lose touch with your interior, the only place that is unbounded by the restraints of the physical world. Defining yourself internally achieves immortality as a version of yourself that is not dependent on external validation.

Experiencing your interior grow and change over time is practical reincarnation. Ideas that used to mean so much to you can become stale and eventually change to something else.��Perspectives on the world can be shifted when traveling to new places.��Who you think you are can come into question when you do something that surprises or scares you.��All of these oscillations in your interior are your old self dying and being born again with new ideas, a new perspective, and a new understanding of yourself, for better or worse.

But, the cycle of rebirth is something that the eastern religions are trying to escape.��How does this square with practical reincarnation? Do we want to escape what ultimately amounts to growing as a person? The more practical interpretation of reincarnation is still enriched by trying to "escape" this ceaseless redefining and questioning your identity.

I for one am someone that likes to hop from thing to thing.�� When something is new, it's exciting, and I have to confess, I frequently think to myself that that new thing will solve all of my problems. Everything will be smooth sailing. And for a while, it is.��

But, the novelty wears off, and it reveals itself to be insufficient, not the cure-all that I wanted it to be.��Eventually, that part of me dies, so I'll dive into something else to make me happy, and the whole cycle repeats itself.��Escaping the cycle of rebirth in this more practical example might mean escaping the perspective that the new way you define yourself will be the answer, the cure-all you always wanted.��

Escaping the cycle might still allow you to continue to grow and pursue new interests, but it will come from seeing a certain constancy within yourself among the radical changes that you go through.��You might define yourself as a powerful, confident person one day, and the next day define yourself as timid and uncertain, but escaping the cycle of rebirth in these examples might be to shift your perspective to the thing that is being defined, even in radically different ways, is constant—you, your consciousness, your awareness, the Self.

Knowing the self as separate from external definition is further developed with this passage:

"The face of truth is hidden by your orb of gold, O sun.�� May you remove your orb so that I, who adore the true, may see the glory of truth.�� O nourishing sun, solitary traveler, controller, source of life for all creatures, spread your light and subdue your dazzling splendor so that I may see your blessed self, even that very Self am I!"

This is a clear take on the concept of light illuminating knowledge, the truth, etc.�� However, it's significant that it says that "the face of truth is hidden by [its] orb" begging the sun to "remove [its] orb so that I... may see" and to "subdue [its] dazzling splendor so that I may see."

This is calling specific attention to the fact that the external world is not the truth. It is insufficient for defining the Self.��It is by turning away from the these external signs ("turning out the light") that the truth of the Self is revealed. It is best to know the Self as the Upanishads told us to know the world around us: not separate from us at all. This seems obvious for the Self, but in this light it's more profound. The Self is experience, awareness, consciousness itself.

When you remove all external definitions from the Self, elevating it to a holy status is not as absurd. Without anything scientific to know the Self by, we are faced with the radical proposition that something transcendent permeates our every experience.

��

There is so much more to talk about, but I'm going to leave it at that for now. Thanks for reading. There will be more Upanishads posts in the future.

Source:��

The Upanishads by Eknath Easwaran, 2007

��

��

Any book that's old piques my interest, especially if I find it on a friend's bookshelf. It seems like its worth is self-evident if people still read it all these years later. But, any book that is thousands of years old that people still read induces reverent fear in me, and throaty bass notes from monks come to mind.��

I want light to pour out of it when I crack the spine and a mysterious indoor wind to tussle my hair. Granted, the copy of that I read was published in 2007. But, the low estimate is that the texts inside are 2,500 years old, and I was shocked at how relevant they were to my life.

Going through the Upanishads was very fun and creatively inspiring, so I decided that I'm going to make a series picking them apart to get more people to read them. Actually, I originally wanted to cover the entire book in one post, but it started running long, and I'd covered only the first section, which is only 3 pages. I hadn't even touched on what the Upanishads are, so that's what this post is.

What Even are the Upanishads ?

It's safe to say that the Upanishads are old and all of the implications that has for us as people. They are stories and philosophical tidbits for orienting your interior world that are surprisingly straightforward. Obviously, their meaning is up for interpretation, but the symbolism and language are clear. The themes repeat themselves, and they add up to an arc that is clear as well:

"The Self is everywhere."

This could either be totally hollow or incredibly insightful depending on who is reading. If it does seem empty to you,��plenty of great thinkers of the last one hundred years have proposed ways for thinking about the self in relation to the outside world that are strikingly similar to this message, without any of the baggage that a religious text might carry. More on these thinkers later.��

After all, the claim that "the Self is everywhere" is more of a metaphysical claim than a religious claim. But, philosophy and religion are different only in the west. In eastern traditions, they are the same.

So, the Upanishads are free from the endless definition of terms and dense writing that philosophy scares people off with. They can indulge in talking animals and humor. The Upanishads' philosophical aspects bring a real-world relevance that other religious texts can lack. Believing in anything isn't required, and there are no weird rules about when you can sell livestock (I'm looking at you, Old Testament!).

You know, if you think about it, in a way, you are this tree.��

What are the Upanishads as Documents?

When I really connect with a book,��I like to search for others that inspired it. What at first seems like a solitary work by a lone author turns into a single point in a bigger web of ideas. Determining what web of ideas the Upanishads is connected to and just where it fits has introduced me to an intertextual labyrinth that makes me question whether reading would be more informative than anything short of a vision quest.

In the background research I did on the texts, which I admit was slim, I've found all sorts of fun mysteries, inconsistencies, and misdirects, that make its background anything but clear.

The Upanishads are a collection of different parts of the Vedas, which means "knowledge" in Sanskrit. The Vedas can refer to several things:

1 The Vedas - A four-part collection of texts from ancient India,

whose parts are the Rig Veda, the Yajurveda, the Samaveda, and the Atharvaveda,

which are composed of

(a) the Samhitas - Mantras and benedictions

(b) the Aranyakas - Descriptions of rituals

(c) the Brahmanas - Commentaries on rituals

(d) the Upanishads - Spiritual wisdom

2 The Vedas - The mantras within the Samhitas (a) above

3. The Vedas - The collection of texts (a) through (d) above

4. The Vedas - Probably other things I have not discovered yet.

For this project, I'm going to stick with the first definition of the Vedas I listed.

There are hundreds of Upanishads spread across the four Vedas, but the book I read contains the ten most important according to Shankara, a scholar and spiritual teacher who reintroduced the Vedas to India in the 8th century after their popularity had declined. The Upanishads are the most relevant texts in the Vedas to the lives of anyone who doesn't perform sacrificial rituals, I say with the utmost respect for those who do.��

Although there are a few Upanishads in the middle sections of the Vedas, most of the Upanishads are at the end of each of each text, which is why the Upanishads are often referred to as Vedanta, which literally means "end of the Vedas" in Sanskrit. In addition to their literal placement in the Vedas, referring to the Upanishads as Vedanta implies that they are the final word on the wisdom inside, kind of like a conclusion.��

Who Wrote the Upanishads ?

Before we get to who wrote the Upanishads and by extension the Vedas, we need a little historical background. In the Indian subcontinent, the Indus Valley civilization emerged in about 2600 BCE, making it one of the oldest civilizations we know about. The only older known civilizations were Mesopotamia and Egypt. Like both of these civilizations, the Indus Valley civilization emerged in a river valley.

Occasional flooding fertilized the surrounding earth with silt, but it also demanded technological innovation to protect people and houses from getting washed away. This innovation led to agricultural surpluses, which helped cities emerge that were not as dependent on growing food as they had been before. That is, they had more time to dedicate to other things.

Their civilization flourished until about 1900 BCE when a variety of environmental and internal pressures lead to collapse. The remaining peoples were later referred to as the Dasas. They developed into a cattle herding groups. They mixed with Indo-European speaking people called the Aryans (they had the name first) who had migrated from the north. The mixing of these two groups was the beginning of Indian civilization as we know it.

The Aryan's influence brought gods, ritual sacrifice, and nature worship to the Dasas' culture. Over the next 500 years, they settled farther east along the Ganges River, aided by the development of iron tools. But, tensions between the two groups heightened, and the Dasas were pushed farther south, and those who remained were absorbed into the Aryan societies.

A caste system developed, listed in descending order of importance:

Brahmin - Priests and Scholars

Kshatriya - Warriors and statesmen

Vaishya - Merchants and land owners

Shudra - Peasants and laborers (Dasas are here)

This caste system was closely tied to the idea of reincarnation: you deserved your place in life because of what you had done in your past life. Organizing the caste system this way shows the importance that their society placed on religion. It's notable that the highest place in society was not that of kings or warlords but of Brahmin.��

Even though everyone's place in society was fixed, they still thought that they were at the mercy of the gods they worshiped, who had to be appeased with ritual sacrifice. Brahmin were in charge of performing these rituals along with hymns and prayers for the Kshatriya. The information about their rituals and prayers was passed through oral tradition for years, but the Brahmin eventually wrote everything down, and we finally get the Vedas and therefore the Upanishads. That they wrote them further demonstrates the high status of the Brahmin. Writing would not be a common technology in the area for several centuries.

Why Read the Upanishads Today?

The popular notion is that we have dispensed with spirituality as a society. Sure, everyone knows a yogi who goes around saying "Namaste," but science and reason have talked us out of deifying the natural world, and the spiritual people that remain could hardly be said to be central to culture. That being said, I think the wisdom in the Upanishads is applicable to all people because the requirements to fulfill its central message are fundamental: the self and the outside world.

The Upanishads literally means "sitting down near an illumined teacher" in Sanskirt, and I can guarantee you I am not that. But, I have an avid readers' unauthorized degree in philosophy, and I'll be supplementing the interpretation of the Upanishads with more familiar ideas from popular thinkers from the last one hundred years, just in case the imagery in the Upanishads tests your logical sensibilities.

I'm very excited to get started, and I hope you'll join me for the ride.

Sources:

The Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History. Houghton Mifflin, 2005.

The Upanishads by Eknath Easwaran, 2007

��

��

��

I went out to Los Angeles with every intention of becoming famous for something. I figured some combination of music, writing, and film would be the ticket.�� But, pursuing these meant that I needed a job, and after scoring interviews and for an executive assistant position, I thought I'd have all the connections to give me that Hollywood dream, baby!����

It was a rush getting invited to walk into both buildings to sit in their sleek offices that seemed like mansions built into skyscrapers.�� The questionable modern art really set the mood.�� At ICM, the lady who interviewed me pretended to have lost her voice to put me on the spot and make me do all the talking, but she spoke in full voice by the end of the interview.�� Creepy.��

But, as fate would have it, neither offered me a job.�� Going through my resume, the only consistent "career" I had was that of a tour guide, from part-time leading college campus tours to saving arguing couples in kayaks from getting run over by barges on the Chicago River.�� These were more seasonal jobs, but lucky for me, Los Angeles is "seasonal" year round.

This starfish represents me falling through the cracks at the agencies.�� How dare they.��

I got hired at in West Hollywood, and I discovered that I would be leading the groups of yellow-vested bikers that cars whizzed past on Santa Monica Blvd.�� I loved my single speed bike I used in Chicago, but after hearing horror stories about LA traffic and steep hills, I left it at my parents' house.�� Biking was the last thing I thought I'd be doing in LA. ��

Little did I know, I was about to embark on a journey that would send me all over Los Angeles, introduce me to new, interesting, and sometimes crazy people, and teach me lessons about life.�� The first thing that I learned was that biking does not magically give you a six-pack.�� Although, after a few months on the job, I could no longer wear slim-fit jeans.�� These calves became robust.

Of the many tours we offered, the most popular one was also the most difficult - 32 miles in 6 hours, called LA in a Day.�� I was never much of an exercise guy, but some weeks, I had to lead this tour four times.�� We went to West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Westwood, Brentwood, Santa Monica, Venice, Culver City, and circled back to West Hollywood.��

Did I mention that there are hills in Beverly Hills?�� This came as a surprise to more people than I expected, but they were probably just hoping that it was 32 miles of flat, open road.�� When I started, that's exactly what I was hoping for.�� But, the hills ended up teaching me an important lesson about hard work.��

When I started, the only thing that got my ass up the hills was the fear of embarrassment.�� I was leading the tour, and I'd be damned before I let a guest see me walk my bike.�� This worked well enough, but I had to invent excuses at the top for why I couldn't give my spiel about the sites.�� I was so out of breath that sometimes I'd fake a phone call to stall.��

As I continued working there, I saw a variety of methods for climbing hills.�� Plenty of people immediately stepped off their bikes to begin the slow walk up.�� Other people put it into high gear, preferring beast-mode approach.�� They usually beat everyone up the hills, but they were spent after two hours.�� The Europeans didn't struggle with the hills at all.��

After I gained more leg strength, I relied on the beast-mode approach.�� But, after speaking over the loud cars passing for 6 hrs a day and leading these tours several times a week, my legs were in constant pain, and I had no energy after work.�� This was not a sustainable approach.�� On some level, I was trying to impress everyone or even myself with these insane, heroic approaches to hills.��

Looking back, these little pretentious moves always revealed themselves to be stupid and even detrimental.�� I used to order the hottest wings at BBQ places because I wanted everyone to think I was a hard ass.�� This wasn't a conscious plan, but I definitely did this.�� It took me way too long to realize that no one cared, and I wasn't enjoying my food.�� By the way, hot wings burn just as much going in as they do coming out.��

This self-denying, pretentious, binge-approach was what I had relied on for most of the work in my life.�� So many nights, I stayed up the night before a school project was due, blinking back sleep, trying to rush to throw together something decent.�� These nights rarely gave me an A, and they usually made me feel like shit the next day.

I can't count the number of times I sat down to work on a creative project for hours and hours, and when I couldn't finish in one sitting, I'd leave a little disappointed, questioning the idea, my ability, and my future.�� I had no idea that my entire approach to work was wrong.�� Going up and down hills on a bike changed that all for me.

Maybe it was watching people from the Netherlands finish the tour without breaking a sweat or the family who had just finished a 1,000-mile tour through the rocky mountains.�� Maybe it was the couple in their late sixties who absolutely smoked everyone on those hills.�� I admit, I thought I'd be waiting for them at the top, but there they were waiting for me.��

But eventually, I changed my approach.�� Instead of psyching myself out and pushing myself to my limits, I relaxed my legs.�� I softly and slowly pedaled in the lowest gear and inched up that hill.�� At the top, I had plenty of energy to regale my guests with all the Hollywood stories they wanted to hear (and occasionally more).�� At the end of my tours, my legs weren't in pain.

Biking up the hills taught me that a little bit of sustained work will compound to yield astonishing results.�� Since then, I have applied this to most of my work.�� Before, I'd try to finish a project in one sitting.�� After the hills, I was able to work a little bit every day on a story, and that turned into .�� The moral of the story is just keep swimming.�� Dory beat me to it.��

The length of the tour was hard enough, but consider doing that in LA traffic.�� Sure, there were fewer cars back in the neighbors, but the people who can afford houses in quiet neighborhoods in LA do not buy cars that are easy to keep under the speed limit.�� Ferraris and Lamborghinis are meant to burn rubber on the pavement and occasionally scare the shit out of bike tourists.��

This car was parked in the middle of the road, facing the wrong way.��

��

But, there were some parts of the tour that were on busy roads.�� And, for all of the things that LA has to offer, conscientious drivers are not among them.�� Being from the midwest, I had never witnessed so many illegal U-turns, ignored red-lights, blocked intersections, expletives shouted from windows, middle fingers wielded, drivers' looking at their phones, and cops who didn't care.��

Conflict was constant.�� I had never had to negotiate so many tricky intersections and attempt to read the minds of people who apparently didn't know how to use their turn signals.�� This was trying enough when I was in a car, but on a bike, it was scary.�� And, when I was responsible for leading a family of four that was teetering behind me, it was terrifying.

I jokingly say now that LA turned me into a worried dad.�� So many situations that I saw on and off a bike made me shake my head in disapproval, often wondering, "Why can't anyone just follow the rules?�� They're there to keep people safe."�� Of course, that was before I realized that sometimes the road conditions all but forced you to break the rules.

Sometimes it was for selfish reasons, squeezing through the intersection a few moments after the red light so I wouldn't have to wait for the next green.�� But, other times the choice was either to make an illegal turn or get hit by the texting driver who had drifted into my lane.�� My hard-line stance on the rules became a little softer.��

Also, I noticed an interesting tactic that others used on the road that had never been taught in driving school--communicating with the other people on the road.�� Certainly, the turn signals count as communicating, but I never considered lowering my window to ask someone to let me into the next lane.��

It was this communication that was rewarded in traffic.�� My roommate told me a story where someone cut him off.�� My roommate, startled, flipped the guy off.�� The guy responded with a peace sign and kept on driving.�� My roommate had no recourse.�� How can you argue with a peace sign?

The more I communicated with my hands and my words, the more confident I felt on the road, whether I was in a car or on a bike.�� Further, when other people communicated with me, the safer I felt.�� I didn't have the same rage and frustration on the road.�� The guy barreling through red light changed in my perspective from a maniac to someone who was conscientious enough to honk.�� At least he let everyone know what he was doing.��

I started out terrified when I was required to do anything more than use my hand signals, but I got to the point where I was confidently blocking traffic on Sunset Blvd.�� I'm sure the people in the cars were annoyed they had to slow down for what was an obviously illegal maneuver on my part.�� But, since I communicated what I was doing by waving my arms, surprisingly no one honked.�� They slowed down and let me cross.��

I found that the majority of the situations that I encountered where I felt unsafe were due to poor communication on my part.�� Sure, the texting drivers didn't help, but I had been biking and driving angry because I thought that anyone at any time would crash into me.�� In short, I was angry because I didn't know what the other people were going to do.�� But, they didn't know what I was going to do.�� I hadn't been communicating well.��

Also, I realized that even when I thought I wasn't communicating anything, I really was.�� By riding along and expecting everyone to stay in their lane and give my bike tour space, I communicated negligence, indifference, and even a certain entitlement that I didn't have to follow the unconventional rules of the road.��

I became way more comfortable talking to drivers in the cars around me.�� I'd politely ask people to lower their windows to tell them what my bike group was going to do at intersections.�� I'd wave cars on when I wanted them to pass me.�� I'd plant both feet on the ground to communicate that I was stopped.�� And, if I or anyone in my group did something that made the other people on the road feel unsafe, I would wave to acknowledge what happened. My bad.

People always say that LA is fake, but that doesn't quite do it justice.�� It's more that LA rewards those who communicate well. What they communicate doesn't have to be true, nice, fair, warranted, or even beneficial.�� People get what they want when they know how to ask for it, even if it's insincere.�� Okay, I admit it.�� It's pretty fake.��

But, it's a city of 20 million people, and there's a lot of weirdos who either want to hurt you or will do so through negligence.�� Living and biking in LA forced me to get better at communicating, which helped me identify the weirdos better and show others that I wasn't one.�� I was surprised that on a bike and in life, most of my problems disappeared when I learned to communicate what I wanted, where I was going, and what I wouldn't tolerate.

I can't believe I took this photo.��

The same thing goes for when I didn't communicate.�� When I didn't go out of my way to comfort a friend who was having a bad time, when I did not ask for what I wanted, when I would forget to return someone's text, I was communicating there too.�� I was communicating that I didn't care, that I was cold, that I was entitled to have other people come to me, etc.�� Those were not my conscious thoughts, but that's what I was communicating by not communicating.��

Lastly, LA introduced me to a broader spectrum of humanity than I knew existed.�� I had lived in Chicago, so I thought I knew what a big city was, but LA showed me otherwise.�� I met people from all over the world on and off the bike tours, and I was floored to the see so many different types of people more or less get along.�� Most everyone I met came to LA with a dream, and from that, I learned that what you want defines you.��

After 2 years of biking around multi-million dollar mansions and seeing some miserable looking people walk out of them, I realized that I didn't want fame.�� And, as my book took shape, I realized that I was far more drawn to fiction than I ever had been drawn to film.�� All of my survival communication on the bike tours and story communication once I caught my breath at the top of the hills had been lost on me. �� I just wanted to survive and tell stories.��

��