Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

Perhaps you’ve noticed I took a couple days off from this website, and much of social media – or perhaps you are like most who didn’t notice a bit, save for the lack of the minor annoyance that my incessant posting has likely become. As a wayward teenager once wrote in a fledgling work, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but I can’t help but wonder if the word should be wander.” As November ended and December began, I sought out knowledge and wisdom in the quiet mornings, pulling back from friends who had pulled back from me, in the way that the universe piles on when things get dark. Even writing about what I thought ailed me failed to fix anything, and a therapy session yielded similar results. My daily meditation worked its temporal magic, and kept my heart calm, but shifts were afoot that felt like the culmination of the past three years. It is said that when you grow and change in certain meaningful ways, friends and family don’t always come along for the journey. For the most part, that’s not proven true for me, as I’ve had a pretty good collection of lifelong friends and family who have supported and loved me no matter what. Still, time changes things. A pandemic changes things. And in the world of madness that we’ve all experienced for the last three years, such seismic shifts and changes have revealed to me that there are little to no pillars of stability, and all those things that once felt so solid and true move into the past, further and further away, until they are only faded echoes, remnants that merely approximate what we once felt. 

This is what I mourn for now – the realization that our happiest memories cannot be repeated or kept going forever. It’s a lesson that’s been in the making for years. Maybe it’s just the final stage of growing up. I’ve watched traditions I’ve started and done my best to keep up slowly crumble – getting the family Christmas tree with my brother, a holiday stroll with Kira, and a litany of holiday parties and get-togethers with friends – and as they crumbled so too did the connections I once had with people who populated such integral parts of the past. Those people moved on, even as I tried in vain to keep some silly notion of tradition and ritual alive. I held onto such rituals as though they might keep us together. It was folly – noble and heartfelt folly – but still folly no matter how much love and fear was behind it. 

Coming to terms with that has taken a while, and in so many ways I’m only just awakening to it, so there’s still a long way to go. I rise in more subdued form these days, because disillusionment robs everyone of the stupid, happy energy that illusions inspire. Clarity is cold at first. Sharp, too. Without sacrificing all sentiment, I go through the days with a clinical and admittedly-calculated precision, designed to acknowledge the messy pain and hurt, to feel it and move through it by being present,  failing and faltering in my petty expectations and resentments, all in the service of letting go.

Because I know I must. 

A coating of frost on the front lawn catches my eye as the first beams of sunlight sparkle in reflection. It feels like a solemn morning, the way certain December days can in the lead-up to the holidays. Venturing out to examine the frost up close, I breathe in the brisk air, taking the moment for a little meditation first thing in the morning – to set the tone, to ease into the day, to inhabit the moment. The windless atmosphere is quiet – there is a calm that I will try to carry throughout the remainder of the day.

It’s been difficult getting into the holiday spirit this year, and to be brutally honest I’m already over it. I’ve been feeling down lately, and the holidays haven’t done much to perk me up. I haven’t even brought out the decorations for the house yet, and there’s a good chance we may not do them this year. For whatever reason even that feels too daunting.

What a laughable privilege to claim that decorating for Christmas feels daunting. I hear it as I write it, and I don’t care. Such uninspired periods happen often in life – I usually just don’t document them, setting this blog and all social media on autopilot and turning on the public charm whenever in public. As we near this website’s 20th anniversary, however, there are simply no more fucks to give, nothing left to prove, and absolutely no need for polite pretend. 

So for the moment I’m going to coast on whatever holiday fumes make be left in this old battered engine. Surely there is enough residual energy to see us through to the next year. And if not, well, too fucking bad.

December

These are the things that I remember

And, so no matter what my fortune may be, or where I may roam

In December, I’ll be going home

There are many thieves looking to steal your joy. 

Negativity.

Jealousy.

Pettiness.

Hurt.

Hatred.

But of all the would-be criminals out to rob you of your happiness, one of the greatest and most insidious is the one with which most of us directly engage on a regular basis: comparison.

Comparison is the ultimate thief of joy. 

As soon as the mind posits something you have – a quality, a physical attribute, a possession – against something someone else has, you have created a perspective that immediately alters and shifts whatever your original appreciation of that something was. If it’s a possession, such as a car, which you might have originally loved and adored, the moment it is compared to another vehicle, it loses some of its luster, because from that moment on it is no longer just the car you loved – it’s the car you loved, in line in your mind next to whatever other car to which you may have compared it. Poof, joy altered – and, more often than not, joy diminished. 

If it’s a physical attribute, maybe the gray hair you once loathed but have learned to love, the moment you compare yourself to others is the moment some of the loathing returns.

And if it’s a quality – a spark of generosity perhaps – the moment you compare what you give to what anyone else gives immediately robs the moment of some of its altruistic intent, taking away the modicum of the joy that might have been present in the sole act of being generous. 

It’s understandable why we do it. Comparison is one of the first ways we learn of ordering the world and making sense of our placement here. It’s how we find our way in the daunting expanse of an endless universe that constantly threatens to overwhelm if you ever really got your head around its scope and reach. When you realize how small and minute we are in the entire universe, it’s a terrifying feeling. We must craft something to compare our stature and scale to what is around us or we would all be lost. To that end, comparison is helpful and useful. 

Beyond that, however, it begins to lead to heartache and distress, and ultimately the stealing of joy. Even if we come out on top, whatever that might mean, there is no true joy or happiness to be found there. The view may be lovely, but it’s usually lonely at the top. Shouldn’t our purpose be something greater?

One of the things I’m constantly working to improve is my automatic instinct to compare and contrast, seeking instead to simply appreciate each moment and decision, each action and movement, each goal and possession, in and of themselves. Taking care not to compare myself to others, making efforts not to compare what I have or don’t have against what others have or don’t have – these are noble endeavors, as I can see that comparison has never brought the happiness we think it will. 

Luckily, I’ve mostly been operating under such an outlook for a couple of decades. It started way back when I was first getting published in some magazines, and someone sent me an e-mail asking how they might get published. At first, I felt a slight pang of being threatened. My brain’s initial instinct was to shield and protect and guard against someone else taking my place somewhere. Soon thereafter, however, that impulse died away, and I laughed a little at my foolishness – first, at my silliness for thinking I actually occupied a space to be taken, and second at being so insecure to not offer what worked for me as a helpful guide for someone else. I ended up offering what my basic path had been (write, write, and write if you want to get published – seems so easy, but you’d be surprised how many people want to write for a publication or website yet don’t have a collection of their actual writing or, worse, haven’t written anything at all) and that change didn’t threaten or affect my own writing at all.

In fact, it illuminated something that would prove to be integral in how I have maintained my joy of writing all these decades later. My most enjoyable writing moments came not from getting published in forums that might edit or remove key components of what I was trying to convey; my love of writing existed solely in the act of writing. The instant I stopped comparing my writing to anyone else’s was the instant I realized the inherent joy I felt in the process.

The other far more important lesson learned in that exchange was the idea that absolutely no one else could do what I do. It was a genuine realization, not of hubris or arrogance or even healthy-self-worth – it was a realization for everyone: no one can do what I do in the same way that no one else can do what you do. We each operate in individual and unique ways. Even if we were to do the same exact thing in the seemingly same exact way, as humans we are each entirely one-of-a-kind, and every outcome would be slightly different. Every single one of us can state honestly at this very moment, and every moment, “Absolutely no one else can do what I do.” Say that to yourself and let it resonate in your head. It holds true for everyone. When you think of it in those terms, it makes comparison futile at best, and deleterious at worst. 

A solitary oak leaf flutters down on a tempestuous wind. Its oak tree of origin stands many yards away. I’ve always loved when the wind is like that, transporting objects through the air for great distances, and depositing them in yards where puzzled finders like myself happen upon them. Somewhere, and I haven’t even figured out where, a birch tree stands that has had its caterpillar-like strands of blossoms carried into our backyard, where no birch tree resides. It gives wonder to the world when we think we know it all. 

On this day, it’s the brown oak leaf that captures my rapt attention. One leaf among many that decided to jump into the wind, it does its quick dance before dropping to the ground. It joins its brethren, shades of brown upon brown, some of them torn and almost shredded, some mostly intact save for a few tears or holes, and some in various states of disintegration and degradation, never to be put back together again. The ground floor of fall is a tattered and largely broken collection of bits and pieces. So the earth gives and takes in its yearly cycle. 

The wind is strong and disagreeably unpredictable. It zigs when you are preparing for it to zag, and it appears when you least want it, wreaking havoc with dust in the eyes or the absolute worst parting of the hair. Impossible to navigate or manipulate, it is a cruel wind, tossing the grass heads here and there, bending them to its wayward will. There is no peace on this day. 

Even when the sun finally decides to appear, it barely makes a difference, and then it is gone. 

Awakened at the ungodly hour of 5 AM with the old man’s urge to pee, I go back to bed only to toss and turn for a few minutes, realizing that my brain is already in overdrive and further sleep will be impossible. Kicking off the covers, I’m up – the irrevocable chain of morning events that will lead me back into the world has begun, earlier than usual, and therefore calmer and more mindful than usual. Time affords such mindfulness. 

Outside, the sky is mostly without light or color – all to be filled in later. I find this calming bit of music and amble into the kitchen. It’s too early to think with any clarity, and so I set up two cups of tea – one matcha and one some elderberry concoction. Normally I would just do one – what compels the double dose is beyond my reason. The piano gently moves the morning along. 

Donning a pair of reading glasses (atop my contact lenses, which went in on autopilot before I groggily exited the bathroom earlier) I type these words while sipping the matcha. ‘I’m getting old,’ I thought. Forty-seven suddenly felt daunting, because I didn’t usually feel it at all. These dark mornings certainly do work their melancholy, but the music was calming, and the tea was warm in my hand, and please God may that be enough to get us through the winter. 

At the dining room table, a collection of Christmas gifts in various states of wrapping surround my laptop. In this dim morning and its lack of light, it all feels a little sad, a little futile. The silly rituals we humans have crafted to feel just a little bit better or to believe just a little bit more. The efforts a person makes to belong and connect…

This is why it’s best to be asleep at such an hour. 

This is how we greet December.