Day 65 Night - A Question Of Acceptance, The Reality Of Surrender And Leaving Hollywood Behind

Okay, enough is enough, my friends, as I realize and come to terms with an unpalatable truth, a realization that I have avoided accepting for so many years as I remained a dog chasing an imaginary bone, believing that once it was in my mouth, everything would be just fine. The bone is success in Hollywood, selling the big screenplay, and redeeming the failures of my adult life. And I am the dog. Yes, I am.













Can I find the courage to embrace the reality of this surrender? In the end as well as in the beginning, it is a question of acceptance. If there is a benefit of experiencing this crucible of treatment for Hepatitis C - all the sickness and the pain, the exhaustion and the cramps, the rashes and the itching, the thirst and the dehydration - it is the simple truth that I have been reduced to the bare bones of surviving. I cannot fight and pretend and convince and strut my way into the comfortable delusions of the past. They provide no succor, they offer no consolation, they are reduced to shadows and falsehoods and petty fears.

Who is John Lavitt and what is his value as a human being? This is a question of meaning, and the answer must now reside in a stark truth of my actual talents and the love that makes me whole. If I must abandon the dreams of the past to become a man in the reality of the future coming, then such dreams will and ultimately must be surrendered. Is it a crime to surrender a dream that you have held tight to for so long if one day you realize that it never truly was the dream of your actual soul? Even if it might have been a beautiful dream overflowing with an aesthetic appreciation and a vibrant imagination, if it is not the dream that you were put here on this earth to dream, how can you continue cling to it?

There is a certain fear in this entry in expressing what I am trying to express because part of me is still avoiding the reality of surrender. It reminds me of "Fight Club" where the real Tyler Durden (Ed Norton) falls into anonymity and creates a whole new Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) to follow the path that he believes he should follow. Mind you, I have no plans to set-up underground fight clubs or start a revolution against the credit industry. But I do want to shed the skin of my past aspirations and move forward into the reality of my actuality. Yes, I want to like myself without the burden of the dream of success where I have to succeed in order to validate my soul. My soul is okay the way it is and it never asked for any validation and it grooves nicely in this universe when left to its own accord.

If Tyler likes himself, can I like myself without the burden of destruction?

Honestly, I don't know what's going to happen. My elbow itches and sleep is hard to come by and I am losing weight, but I know I will survive this treatment. But will I allow the crucible of the process to truly change me as I embrace the path of my own authenticity? I don't know the answer, but I know what I want and I know I can do it if I get out of my own way and avoid the pitfalls of self-sabotage. As a drug addict and an alcoholic, even with years of sobriety under my belt, I remain the Picasso of my own misery, an artist of self-sabotage, and this warning lurks in the back of the room. Yet, I do believe in change and the possibility of renewal and I do not have to go farther than my mirror to see the face of my redemption and the truth that I am my own golden ticket if I allow myself to be.

I know this blog has been a bit fractured and a bit inchoate. It deals with a difficult realization and an incredible resistance to change and simple acceptance. I will go into the Golden Ticket disease and analogy deeper in the future, but the message will remain the same. There are no external answers to internal questions. If I want to find the truth of my own soul and the answer to the question of who John Lavitt really is and what is he meant to do on this earth, then I only need look within. I am my own Golden Ticket and, as Jesus said in The Gospel of Thomas, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." I choose option number one.