My Girlfriend Is Better Than Me and I'm OK With That

If you're reading this, you probably know that I try to be an open and honest guy.
TMI in many cases but it's how I roll.

I've had a topsy turvy battle with love so far in my life.
I've gone all in with people when I wasn't ready, when they weren't ready or when the timing wasn't right.

No one has to explain to me why they're skeptical when I find myself in a new relationship.
I get it.

I've learned many lessons. I've put my hand on the same hot burner several times thinking that the temperature and / or the pain would be different.

With anything, so far, I've found that experience is the best teacher.
Nothing has a simple answer when it comes to life goals, career goals, love goals, etc..

Experience is the best teacher until you meet the best teacher.
Many of you have been lucky enough to meet Paula.
I say 'lucky enough' because it's how I feel whenever I have the privilege of being in her company.
Whenever I get the opportunity to eat a meal across the table from her.
Whenever I have the honor to walk by her side in public.
Whenever I'm blessed with the beauty of her story as she tells it from her heart.

I wasn't looking for a teacher. I thought I knew it all.
I thought I knew what I wanted.
I thought it was a person whose essence and being and experience would be equal or somehow maybe lesser than my experience. I was almost arrogant about knowing how relationships should go even never having had a successful one. (No marriages, no kids, etc...)
Despite my failures, the 'right girl' will come along and I'll manage to somehow know her immediately based in my own life experience.  COME ON, DJB.

Then, my teacher arrived.

Man, she's a beauty. The killer thing about her is that she has so many facets of beauty that I forget to tell her how good she actually looks. The girl is stunning. But what makes her untouchable and leaps and bounds better than me is her mind. Her mind is brilliant and her actions are selfless.

Paula has been through so much.
Instead of blaming the world or pouting or pointing the finger or giving up, she turns her experiences inside out through pursuing social work, teaching yoga, teaching fitness and now, through blogging.

Before she started blogging, my mind and my heart had opened up 100 times wider than I thought possible due to the level of thoughtful, articulate patience that she's put into telling me her story.
It's not all easy to hear. It's definitely not simple to understand. And THAT'S why it's important to listen.

In her new blog Flirting With Crazy, Paula shares her experiences to engage people who have been through the same struggles. She wants to be an ally to people who struggle with painful vulnerabilities. She wants to help people tell their stories so that they can feel empowered and feel rightfully a part of this cutthroat world. She wants people to know that there are people who understand and more importantly there are people who are willing to try to understand.

In 7 months, I've learned more from my teacher than I've learned in the past 10 relationships.
That isn't a dig at those relationships, it's a tribute to this one. I'm dumbfounded by how much I thought I knew that I absolutely didn't. For starters, I never thought I'd want a partner who was hands down better than me. Now that I have one, I don't want anything else. I don't even need anything else.

#djblove

Protect Each Other Before You Protect The Stage

Bullying happens everywhere. Still.

It doesn't end in high school. 

Bullying occurs regularly on Facebook, in politics, over religious views, because of racial differences.

Bullying is the worst.

Moreover, trying to protect your right to bully is the worst. It's the shittiest thing we as people do and we do it often.

I'm not going to go into all of the niches where bullying happens because I'm not qualified to speak to all of them. However, I WILL speak to bullying in comedy. 

It happens ALL OF THE TIME in the comedy world.

It has happened to me. It has happened to people around me. It has happened to people close to me and people I've never met. 

Recently and most shockingly, I saw a woman bullied in a Comedy Central special.
This woman's name is Damienne Merlina. I don't claim to know her as a person or as a comedian, just that she is both of those things. A relatively well known comedian calls her out by name in his NATIONALLY TELEVISED SPECIAL. He then goes on a tirade about how big she is and how she's missing one of her arms after admitting he doesn't know her well. Here's the punchline. THERE FUCKING ISN'T ONE. HILARIOUS. 

Rather than name this comedian, I'll let Damienne's beautiful response video do the talking.

This infuriates me. This "comedian" will probably fight tooth and nail to protect his freedom of speech on stage. THIS IS NOT WHAT THAT FIGHT IS FOR. If you're fighting for your right to punch down, to bully, I'm going to fight you. (Not physically. I know my limitations, folks.) 

Now, I don't know the context of their relationship but I don't have to. I will never, ever use someone's name onstage in a means of punching down. Nor should you. It's tasteless. It's mean. And yes, it's bullying. The worst kind of bullying. 

I'm sure there's a litany of mouth breathing, open mikers who think this "bit" is hilarious. 

That's a different fight all together. HAHAHAHAHA! Someone is really hurt by this. HAHAHAHA! She's gonna watch this and feel bad for a really long time. HAHAHAHAHA! Fuck that entirely. 

Being offensive or bullying without jokes just isn't comedy. You're breaking an unwritten code you have with your audience who paid to laugh. If you make fun of Damienne by name ANYONE could be next. Way to build a safe bridge to your audience! An audience wants to connect with you through laughter. If you're getting laughs by bullying someone, you're literally asking people to gang up on this woman. And some of them go for the ride with you. You're using your power to hurt people and that sucks. It's cruel and uncreative.

Why protect the stage if you're not going to look out for all of the people that use it? 

Damienne is a comedian. Am I next? Are you next? 

This guy (notice I'm no longer calling him a comedian) has made a career of just calling people out. 

He was involved in calling Carlos Mencia out publicly with Joe Rogan.
While, I hate joke thieves. I hate bullying even more. He called Howard Stern old and got notoriety for that. I guess that's what you do when you don't feel good about your comedy. You piss people off and you make a career out of it. 

If you protect your right to tell jokes because you want to be racist, homophobic, sexist or you want to flat out bully people, fuck you. Comedy isn't going to be enough therapy for you. You need the real thing stat. 

To Damienne Merlina: you are an inspiration to me. Your response video is beautiful, brave, important and spot on. I have your back and I know thousands of comedians who do too. 

Stay the course, my friend. 

#djblove 

Accepting Mistakes and Differences is Accepting Love

"A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new." - Albert Einstein

I'm headed into some uncharted waters. I want to share my process with you in hopes that it will help you in yours. No matter how you know me, I hope you know that I'm OK sharing my process, my logic, my successes and, most importantly, my failures with you all. As a comedian and complete douche, I accept the cynicism that may come from reading posts like these. My hope is that if you listen to my jokes, you'll listen to my heart. I own that vulnerability.

I don't like to make mistakes. They hurt to make. I feel ashamed. I beat myself up about them sometimes incessantly. Until...I learn. And every time I make a mistake, I seek to learn from that mistake. It doesn't always happen and sometimes it takes a long time for me to find that knowledge. (see also my relationship history, OOOF!) What I've found most important (for me) is to acknowledge that inevitable education as soon as possible after I make a mistake.

Accepting my mistakes as soon as I make them is a process that I'm improving. It's really hard.
Somehow, as a comedian and a guy trying to create a career from nothing, I'm still a perfectionist.
Perfection CAN'T exist in my reality. If I expect perfection then my expectations are too high and completely unrealistic. If I expect perfection, I have not factored in enough room for myself to make mistakes. And mistakes are going to happen. I was a mistake. (Hi mom! Love you!) I'm a walking example of mistakes. Do I not want me to exist? Of course not. I'm happy I'm here most of the time.
Hopefully, you are too. If not, we'll talk about it later, OK? Cool.

As I attempt to improve my process of accepting mistakes and imperfection, I'm growing more and more comfortable with trying new things. And to me, that's terrifying. I've already done naked stand up, run a Tough Mudder, been an adult, male flower girl, entered a bachelor auction - I've set the bar WAY too high for myself. Wait! While that might seem true from the outside, my mind is still not as open as it could be. There are still situations and scenarios where I have a hard time opening my mind. I'm certain I'm not alone in this and I'm certain that it's OK.

I believe that as people, we are one. We are different but we are one.
To me, life is a process of denying and accepting that we are one in the every day, in the short term and in the long term. We're trying to figure things out individually when we could be trying to figure things out united. Together. We push differences away because of fear, doubt and insecurity.
When we do that, we cut away our own opportunities to learn, to grow and to unify so to follow our dreams while supporting the dreams of others.

My wonderful girlfriend Paula is a part of a community of wonderful yogis who study and practice Kundalini Yoga. (The Yoga of Awareness) From what I've learned, Yogi Bhajan brought Kundalini to the US in the late 60s. It's a style of yoga that is based in Sikh principles and its practices help your mind experience god. Paula is studying with like minded yogis to become a teacher of Kundalini Yoga. As such, she approached me months ago to ask me to be her partner in a day long, White Tantric Yoga session, a required portion of her training. I was terrified.

I wanted to be there for my girlfriend more than anything but that want hit the wall of distrust.
That wall of distrust was built in thoughts of cults, brainwashing, stereotypes and ultimately some serious ignorance on my part. I pushed back and voiced my strong minded concerns about what she was doing and asked questions about why I needed to be involved. She explained that she needed a male partner for this ritual and it's fairly intimate (8-10 hours of staring into each others eyes / chanting / touching for 31 / 62 minute intervals). She didn't want to experience that spiritual intimacy with anyone other than me. WHY DIDN'T THAT BLOW ME OVER? WHY DIDN'T I PROPOSE TO HER RIGHT THERE? As I wrote that sentence (the one before the all caps), I got teary eyed because I can't believe I STILL resisted her requests because of my doubt, insecurity and some strange sense of self preservation. This woman loves me. She invited me to be a part of something deeply intimate and I pushed back because of my lack of knowledge. Because of my ignorance.

Fast forward a month or so from that push back, I agreed to go. I'll admit I was still pretty skeptical.
What was I getting into? I mean, I know this group changed Paula's life but can I trust that? Why would I buckle to this weird, cult-like practice? I feel like a hypocrite. I'm smarter than this.
Wow. Wow. Wow. I'm not that smart, friends. There are times where I feel like I've got it all figured out and the times when I acknowledge that I don't are the times where I'm more in touch with myself and with reality.

Fast forward to yesterday. I traveled with what seemed like hundreds of yogis from all over the region to experience Yogi Bhajan's White Tantric Yoga. Most importantly, I traveled with Paula with an open mind and an open heart to a place she wanted me to be: sitting across from her for a full day. Uninterrupted.

So there I was, dressed in all white, chanting, holding poses, looking deeply into Paula's eyes learning more about her than I have in 6-7 months. There I was surrounded by kind and beautiful people trying to find themselves and their connection to meaning and god. There I was sitting next to some of Paula's mentors who have had her back for longer than I have and who genuinely love and support the woman I love. There I was surrounded by love, understanding and beauty. There I was, wondering what the hell my problem was. How can I claim to be open minded when I pushed back on love, my relationship and a new experience? I'll tell you how.

I am open minded. What happened to me is a process we all go through. We question difference. We take careful steps to protect ourselves and the ones we love. We're constantly surrounded by fear and anxiety. I could easily succumb to those fears. I think the only reason I don't is because I listen to my heart. I listen to people. I listen to the people who I love and who love me. I want to connect to people. I want to connect to love. I believe if I connect to people, I will connect with a higher love. This experience reinforced that belief. I do my best to let my mind and heart collaborate.

We're all trying to find something. Some of us are trying to find love. Some of us are trying to find meaning. Some of us are trying to find god. We spend so much time judging the process of how others take that journey that we handicap our own journey. In our day to day, we often reject the actions of others because they're so different than our own.

We often judge, reject or straight up attack differences. I can understand that. I've been on both sides of those attacks. I'm human. You are too. But what would happen if we all really tried to listen to those differences? What would happen if instead of judging, rejecting or attacking those differences, we became optimistically curious about those differences? I believe that we'd learn more about each other and we'd learn more about ourselves. We'd learn to love each other more and we'd learn to love ourselves more.

I'm certain, if we truly made the effort to embrace differences, (religious, racial, sexual, career, national) we would grow more comfortable making mistakes and trying new things. We would succeed more often individually and we would succeed more often as a whole.

Because of my experience with Kundalini Yoga, I feel more connected to Paula and our relationship. I feel more comfortable trying new things. I feel more self reflective. I feel more powerful. I feel more love. Because I was open to trying new things and making the inevitable mistakes with that choice, I learned more than I can explain in a blog post.

I want this for all of you. Try new things. Love and listen to differences.

I love you all.

Thank you for reading this.

DJB