Living Bodhi is Living Well

I started tuning into this in Iraq and Afghanistan — desolate places, a handful of coworkers, different jobs, different outlooks, but out there we just had each other. TV was limited or nonexistent, social media hadn’t become the time-suck it is now, no movie theatres, no McDonald’s, no malls anywhere close — no diversions. So when the last meal of the day was done, we’d gather around a fire pit with a few beers and cigars, if we could scrounge some up, and shoot the shit. Tell stories. Laugh our asses off making fun of each other.

Somewhere in the middle of that, nothing special happening, I’d wake up to the fact that I was happy. Grateful for being with those exact people at that exact time — people I’d finish the job with and might never cross paths with again. For that moment, it was great. I didn’t have a word for it. It just felt complete, like it didn’t need anything added or taken away.

That’s a Bodhi moment. I didn’t call it that at the time — I didn’t call it anything. But that’s what I was doing without knowing it: waking up, in the middle of an ordinary night, to something that had been happening the whole time.

Years later I felt the pull to name it. A friend in advertising told me to pin the feeling down in a word short enough for a domain name, in case I ever did something with it. We spent a weekend on word plays and creative spellings — a genuinely dumb way to spend a weekend — until I remembered a word from my travels: Bodhi. It means “to awaken.” That’s what had been happening to me. So that was it - Live Bodhi. I don’t know shit about starting a business or what would ever become of it, and I still mostly don’t.

Turns out the internet is completely saturated with “Bodhi” — yoga, wellness sites, essential oils, somebody telling you how to meditate. I probably should have looked into it more before I jumped in. I didn’t. So whatever this is sits wedged in among all that noise. So be it.

A Bodhi moment isn’t permanent. Sometimes I don’t know I’m in one until it’s over. It’s a snapshot you can look back at and say, honestly, “I wouldn’t change a thing, because that’s what brought me to right here.” I attribute the feeling to God — a small glimpse of something like perfection, handed to me for no reason I earned. Living Bodhi is choosing to go looking for that. Not performing it. Tuning into it.

I read a lot of history, and one thing that’s stuck with me is how few people who ever lived are actually remembered — and the ones who are get filtered through whatever lens the historian is holding, so even that isn’t really them. Most of us just build things, raise families, work hard, and pass the time. That used to bother me more than it does now — it puts the weight back on the choices in front of me today, the only ones that are mine. I’ve still got obligations I chose, even before I knew the cost, and I’m responsible for them. I still waste time, still choose badly plenty of days. But it’s on me, not whoever I’d rather blame.

If you want one real decision instead of a philosophy, I’ll give you the hardest one I’ve got: choosing to get divorced, after twenty-eight years.

It finally came apart in Thailand, while I traveled a lot for work. The bottom line is this: choosing to pursue a divorce was a hard one. We had our own reasons, just like every other person who’s ever been divorced, and they’re personal. It was painful, it was disorienting, it was not how I envisioned my life going. That choice cost both of us plenty, and it’s still the hardest part of any of this to say out loud.

Mid-life crisis? I don’t know — you be the judge. I’ve decided to see it the way I see it.

What came after wasn’t grim the whole way through. My brother and cousins talked me off a ledge and told me I’d come out fine on the other side. Then I did something I’d genuinely never done much of, married as long as I had: I dated, badly but with real enthusiasm. Somewhere in there I met the woman I’d go on to marry, and I waited until the divorce was final before letting it turn into anything. Once it was, we started exploring Thailand together instead — she became my guide into a culture I’d been living next to without really seeing. I’d already been posting “#Living Bodhi” on Facebook whenever I stumbled into something worth noticing. But it was out there with her that the idea gelled into something real instead of just a hashtag.

These days the smallest version of choosing well doesn’t look dramatic. It’s choosing to be with my wife. Watching her take something new in, all the way, and choosing to be right there next to her instead of somewhere else in my head. We can talk about anything, and we do, constantly — one of the better choices a person gets to make on a random Tuesday: just showing up, present, for someone.

That’s more or less what it looked like this week, when my wife and I took the day and went to a beach up the road — Micklers, in Ponte Vedra. We put up an umbrella, laid out a blanket, and didn’t do much of anything. Drank a few beers. Waded in when it got hot. Mostly we watched — pelicans working the shoreline, helicopters from the naval air station nearby, the tide sliding out with every wave, a hundred strangers living their own lives on the same patch of sand, connected to us by nothing but timing. Nobody would call that remarkable. It was one of the better days I’ve had in a while.

I wish I could tell you I’m equally good at all of this, but being around people has never come easily to me. My father’s work moved us every couple of years growing up, so I was constantly the new kid, starting over right about the time I’d found somebody worth keeping. I’ve got exactly one friend left from childhood — haven’t seen him in person in maybe forty years, but we still needle each other on Facebook. Strangers intimidate me — I never know what to say, and I get stuck in my own head. What I end up with is a wide ring of acquaintances and a very small circle that actually holds. The one exception is Thailand — something about being there with my wife makes it easier to meet people casually, and I genuinely don’t know why.

None of this comes from having it figured out. Most of my days are wrestling — reading something, turning an idea over, catching an old ingrained reaction and having to let it go, again, with no promise I won’t do it again tomorrow. A hand does five things, but you feel it as one motion. The second you start managing a moment to be meaningful, you’ve usually ruined it — a watched pot never boils. I don’t plan for something to be a Bodhi moment — that would be fake. I just try to notice, in the middle of whatever’s happening: this is it.

I believe there’s something in a person — I call it the Pathfinder — that was there from the start, before any of the noise got laid on top of it. It knows what’s right even when you’re ignoring it. It doesn’t go quiet, not really; we let other things drown it out — your father’s voice still running in your head, or the latest opinion from whatever crowd of nameless mouthpieces you’ve decided to listen to this month. It’s a little scary to trust something coming from inside you rather than some outside authority telling you the “right” way to live. But when I turn the volume down, it’s still there, still pointing somewhere. There’s a version of this in scripture too — God’s law written on the heart, not handed down on a page you have to go find. Maybe the Pathfinder is that.

I still catch myself comparing, more than I’d like to admit — against a standard I’ve decided is better than me, or one beneath me. Both are a waste of time, because life isn’t fair and nobody actually deserves anything. I am the sum of my choices. Plenty of small, unremarkable decisions led me somewhere worse; plenty led me somewhere better. None of it was fate. It was incremental, and it was mine.

What actually breaks through the comparing, for me, is family. My brother, my sister, my cousins on my father’s side — when we’re together, which isn’t often enough, I feel closer to them than to almost anyone, like no time passed. Then it ends, we go back to our separate lives, and the feeling fades the way every feeling does, because if gratitude were permanent it would stop meaning anything. The trick isn’t holding onto the feeling. It’s noticing it while it’s here.

If someone told me this is just another seize-the-day brand with a nicer logo, I’d tell them: no. It’s not “do this and you’re Living Bodhi.” It’s not a diet, a routine, a level you achieve. It’s not about getting good at it so you can be better than the next guy. It’s not performative, and it’s not for other people’s benefit. Posting your best moments on TikTok so strangers who’ll forget you exist by tomorrow can see how alive you are — that’s the opposite of it. Camouflage dressed up as the real thing. Which is a little funny, since I’m putting this exact set of thoughts out on the same internet I just said does that. I don’t have a clean way around it. I’m aware of it.

People sometimes ask me to point to the one hardship that made me who I am. I can’t honestly do it. Both the hard years and the good ones keep shaping me, all the time. It’s not one wound and one lesson — it’s the whole pile of it, plus everyone who said the right thing at the right moment. Would I trade any of it away? No. Not the hard parts, not the twenty-eight years, not the guy I was before any of this made sense. And I don’t have to share any of it to keep it true. I don’t have to put it on the website I bought on a whim — I originally figured I’d slap a couple of clever lines on a t-shirt and call it done. Whether any of this ever means something to anybody else, I honestly don’t know. I’ve made my peace with not knowing.

I’m opinionated, and always have been, and I can come off harsher than I mean to — controversial, angry, or just an asshole, none of which is ever the intent. I’m happy to be told I’m wrong; that’s usually how I learn something. These ideas were tangled up for years in a working life where being outspoken didn’t always land the way I meant it. It wasn’t until I retired — no plan to follow, no set routine, a lot less noise — that I had room to sit with these thoughts long enough to crystallize into something I could say out loud. Waking up isn’t always easy. Sleep is comfortable.

If I never wrote any of this down, nothing dramatic happens. It just doesn’t get the chance to land on somebody — maybe even just me — at the moment they’re ready to hear it. I’m not any kind of authority. I’ve only got my own experience to work from.

So here’s what I’d actually want you to do with any of this, in the next 24 hours: nothing complicated. Stop bitching about the past. Stop worrying so much about the future. Spend a little more of your attention span on the here. I’m as fucked up as the next guy, maybe even more — disorganized, I can be lazy, I talk out my ass more than I’d like to admit. I’m an asshole to some people and, I hope, a genuinely good one to others. What I don’t want is for any of this to sit heavy on you. Life, looked at honestly, is pretty fucking funny — we’re just usually too serious and wrapped up in ourselves to notice the joke while it’s happening.

One more thing — if you’ve had a Bodhi moment of your own, I’d genuinely like to hear about it. Doesn’t have to be a big story. Send it to [email protected]. I’m curious whether this is something a lot of people have and just never put a name to, or if it’s just me.

Take whatever’s useful here and leave the rest. If it lands, that’s great. If you think I’m full of shit, that’s fine too — I’m not offended, and I’m not finished figuring any of it out myself. I wouldn’t change a thing about how I got to this sentence, telling you this. Ask me again next year and I’ll probably have a slightly different answer. That’s kind of the whole point.