Flukes & Fundamental - The JToth Art Blog
Flukes and Fundamentals is my blog, my journal, and my newsletter. I'll share stories, thoughts, pictures, videos, articles, and updates related to my life and art. It will be updated periodically, but not regularly. There will be no order to it. View it as a window to how I experience and how I operate. I hope you find it interesting, meaningful, and entertaining. But it's okay if you don't. While I happily share Flukes and Fundamentals with you, I’m really creating it for me, to document the journey of this experiment. I happily invite you to join me and would be so grateful if you did. There's nothing like good company on an unexpected journey such as this. Perhaps something amazing will happen that we can share together. All I know is that I've got a feeling, and I'm going to trust it.
“Flukes and Fundamentals? What a strange title.” You may be thinking.
The title draws inspiration from a number of sources, but I believe I first heard it uttered by Alan Watts. The essence of the meaning behind “Flukes and Fundamentals” is that you, me, WE… are not a fluke; rather, individually and collectively we are absolutely fundamental. That, you are "the fabric and structure of existence itself." Each of us are as much the universe as the sun and far off galaxies. We often speak of the Big Bang as a cosmic event that happened billions of years ago, an event separate from us. In reality, the Big Bang is still happening, and we are not merely in it... we are it. Think about what that means. Think about how that applies to your sense of self. I became aware of this concept during a very challenging time in my life. I felt lost in every meaningful way because an illness shattered my identity. The exciting future I had envisioned for myself withered away before my eyes. I felt worthless and alone, unable to contribute and unable to feel connection with those I cared for most because my experience was near impossible to comprehend.
The idea of being fundamental, the idea of being the universe, lifted me up. It gave me hope. It gave me the courage to trust myself, especially when those close to me struggled to understand and adapt. It gave me the courage to trust that everything happening was happening as it should happen. It taught me to pay attention to the things that gave me energy and the things that took my energy. Through the newfound trust, I decided to run an experiment... follow the things and people that gave me energy, let go of what took it away. Follow the things and people that lifted me up. Distance myself, physically and/or emotionally, from the those that made me feel small. My experience was not a fluke, my experience was fundamental.
The experiment was frightening at first. I had to let go of virtually everything I learned about who I was, who I thought I needed to be, what I thought I wanted, what I thought I should be capable of, and hardest of all, I had to learn how to let go of the idea that I was in control (at least, what I thought I could control).
Imagine yourself climbing Mt. Everest. You're marching across the snow and ice when suddenly the ground beneath your feet breaks apart and falls into a crevasse. You manage to grab onto the remaining ice in front of you (the remains of the ground that once supported you) and hang there, dangling in fear and uncertainty. Suddenly, and without warning, everything has changed. Try as you might, you don't have the strength or ability to fight gravity and pull yourself back up. You look below and see nothing but infinite empty space, the unknown abyss. "This can't be happening to me." You think to yourself. To let go, means you fall to your death (you think), you can envision the ground that you know for certain lies somewhere below, jagged rocks and shards of ice sharp as broken glass, your imagination plays your horrific demise on loop. You quickly realize, the more you struggle, the more energy you expend and the looser your grip gets. It becomes clear, the only option you have is to let go and trust. Trust that everything you've done to that point was worth it. Trust that whatever comes next is inevitable. Trust that you will do what you need to do when you need to do it.
And so, you surrender to the moment. You open your hand and let gravity take you.
That's what it felt like for me. Only, I didn't fall to my death. Just the opposite. As I fell, I discovered I had wings I never knew existed. They sprouted out of me at the very moment I needed them most. Then I did the only thing I could do in the moments of freefall… I learned to fly.
This is my first blog post.
