When someone does a thing we think is wrong, we should remember that we have it in us to do the exact same thing. If we were them, we’d do precisely what they did because that’s what they did. We’re no better than anyone else. 

∞

I experience seasonal depression every winter. As the days get colder and longer in this post-election purgatory period, I’m experiencing astral anxiety about a Trumpocalypse. I copped a 24-year-old used campervan and stocked it with freeze-dried vegan meals to help manage the anxiety, and I plan on spending four nonconsecutive weeks in it this winter bopping around the Sonoran desert with my wife to help manage the depression.

I’m not about driving this monster in wintry conditions, so I took Thanksgiving week off to drive it down to Arizona with my wife, where it’ll live with friends over the winter when we’re not using it. Our plan hit a hitch when my wife’s dog’s health took a turn for the worse, and we accepted that she needed to be with him and not travelling cross-country with me. I don’t love driving and avoid doing it, and making a solo trip was a non-starter. Fortunately, my old college buddy stepped up to help me out.

My college buddy and I didn’t run in the same crew in college, but our core crews ran adjacently. Sometimes, we’d join forces, team up, and raise hell between the lines in intramural sports clashes, in the bleachers for old skool Big 12 Conference football and basketball games, and cutting rug at house parties. We’d kick it strong when we’d see each other out and about when we were crewed up—the mischievous twinkle in his eye and melodic mouthpiece that would mesmerize juries a decade later caught my attention and held it—and we’d always make plans to hang sans crews but never did. College buddy was that good acquaintance you hope to make into a full-fledged friend but never quite get there. 

We got there about ten years later when we reconnected as up-and-coming lawyers in a different city in a different state, me getting justice for the people on the civil side, and college buddy racking up NGs as a criminal defense dynamo. We grew closer when we had kids about a year apart and discovered that our wives were so similar that it seemed like they shared a personality. Then we divorced them back-to-back a few years later, and going through family court hell, single-parenting, and dating again at around the same time forged our bond even stronger.

The past several years have been rough on my buddy. Like me, he’s not lawyering anymore, but unlike me, he got disbarred. The series of events that led to his disbarment sound a lot like what I experienced during my Dark Night, only instead of lasting for three nights like mine, my friend’s Dark Night lasted the better part of three years. If you can think of any cliche lawyer bad behavior, my man was into it. College buddy has a big heart, but he made some unsound decisions and paid the professional price. He also lost a bunch of friends when he was spiraling out of control. I almost dropped him a few times when he was on some BS, but I love the guy and can’t quit him. Like me, he’s a dirt dawg with a heart of gold.

Given his BS, my college buddy was not my first-round draft pick to sub in for my wife for the road trip. The guy’s let me down before, but his enthusiasm about helping me when I asked him if he was available made me think this trip was meant to be. As he explained it to me, Thanksgiving week is traditionally not his parenting week, and given that he usually spends it engaging in degeneracy, he believed this trip would raise the level of experience. We locked in plane tickets for the flight home, and he started calling me to talk details and texting me ideas for side quests out in nature. My guy was into it, and I could tell he needed this trip. 

I experience intense separation anxiety when I know I’m going to be away from my wife for more than a few days. This woman nursed me back from death’s doorstep on several occasions, she’s my best friend, and we share a cosmic connection. While I’m not attached, I’m bonded to her on a soul level, and I don’t love being apart for long. But all the good vibes my guy brought to the table mitigated much of the bad ones I felt about leaving my beloved.

I still felt sad about it, though, and when my college buddy sent me a text on departure day kicking back our leave time an hour, I was glad to have extra time to spend with my wife and didn’t think twice about it. I was still glad when he kicked it back another hour, as we planned to stop at my dad’s house in Des Moines, which was only four hours away. We were in good shape as long as we hit the road by 2:00 PM, as I don’t love night driving, especially in massive campervans.

We didn’t hit the road by 2.

When I was about to leave the crib for the third time that day to scoop my friend, he called me to tell me he was still held up. His excuse was weak, and it completely fell apart under mild scrutiny. He switched tactics and encouraged me to drive to Des Moines on my own, and suggested that he could drive down that night or possibly in the small hours of the morning and meet me at my dad’s place.

I pointed out the faults in his logic, especially the part where we were leaving the van in Arizona and flying home and wouldn’t be driving back to pick up his car. I also reminded him that the reason why I asked him to come with me on the trip in the first place was so I wouldn’t have to do any solo driving, especially at night. Finally, I emphasized that my dad, born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, was returning from vacation in a few days, and if college buddy’s fancy Benzito was still at the crib when pops came back, there was a decent chance it would get stripped and parted out. You can take the brother out of South Memphis, but you can’t take the South Memphis out the brother.

The notion of his mayonnaise-colored miracle whip showing up on my dad’s personal boost list convinced my friend to pivot off sending me to Des Moines. We concluded a tense phone call by agreeing that I would show up at his place to pick him up at 3:45, and we would hit the road straight away.  

At 3:45 he sent me yet another text asking to give him an extra 15 minutes. I arrived at his place at 4, knocked on the door, and got crickets. The door was unlocked, so I barged in like a wacky 90s sitcom sidekick and yelled my college buddy’s name. I’ll never forget the words he yelled back from his upstairs bedroom: “Oh, hi Josh! I’d like some privacy now, as I have company over. Would you mind calling back later?”

My man talked to me like I was a door-to-door solicitor who interrupted a Tinder Netflix-and-chill date, and not his homey of over 25 years whom he was in the middle of flaking out on in spectacular fashion. The alpha version of me would have recognized that my dude was so far gone that there was no value in being upset at him or anything else. But the alpha me didn’t show up in that moment. Instead, I took it back to South Memphis and cussed his monkey ass out.

“Privacy?! Company?! Call you back?! Mf, we ‘sposed to be on a roadie to ‘zona! Have you lost yo’ mf mind!”

(And I didn’t say “mf” either. I hit him with the real mamma jamma.).

My friend shakily replied that he’d call me back later, and revived his invitation to send me to Des Moines where he assured me he’d meet me as soon as he wrapped up his hang. I was done with this assclown and stormed out of his crib to embark on what was now a solo campervan caper.

Driving overtaxes my brain and gives me headaches and anxiety. The first hour of the drive was miserable, and receiving a text from college buddy admitting that he’d been lying to me all day and had been out partying the night before didn’t make me feel any better. Nor did the fast-setting sun, as I really don’t love night driving. Night driving feels like I’m playing a night course on a video game racer, only I’m way better at video game racers than I am at real-life night driving. And I’m not good at video games. I was in pain, scared, and royally pissed at college buddy for completely letting me down.

After I cooled off and got into a soul power warrior groove on the driving piece, it hit me that I had it in me to do exactly what my friend did to me. I’m no better than him, and no one’s better than anyone else. If I were in his shoes, I would’ve made the exact same dopey moves he made that defied all rational explanation. I would’ve been dealing with the same stuff he was that caused him to malfunction. None of us ain’t no better than nobody else.

I thought about how bad I’d feel for letting my friend down, and that I’d only do something like that if I were seriously going through it. I realized my friend must be in a world of hurt. My upset quickly turned to intense concern, and I knew what I had to do.

During my Dark Night, I underwent a metamorphosis that unlocked a mystic energy that lies dormant in all of us that’s associated with the sacred feminine. Like everything in nature, this energy expresses itself differently in different people, and in me, it expresses itself as empathic abilities and stuff like that.

I always got strong vibes from people since I was little, but now the vibes are John Henry-strong. Especially when someone close—physically or spiritually—is experiencing high- or low-vibrating emotions. Sometimes, the vibe is so strong that it feels like I go into people on a soul level. I don’t love doing it because it overtaxes my brain and gives me intense headaches. I believe my body is telling me to stay in my spiritual lane, so I do. By practicing the stuff detailed in my second book, Good Vibes, I learned and got good at tuning out the cacophony and staying present in the here and now.

But sometimes, the moment requires me to dial the vibe up and go into people. In these situations, I don’t get headaches, and Source tells me everything I need to know about a person. I can read them like a book. Sometimes, I even get vibes about DNA stuff and future events.

I went into my friend spiritually, but not too deeply given that I was driving. I sensed that he’s dealing with intense, heavy negativity that’s manifesting biologically and rendered him unfit for the trip. Most of us have been involved in road trip meltdowns, and the mega one he had coming would’ve popped off at the worst possible moment like a human Chernobyl. That’s how things go when you run with shaky folk, and I dodged a bullet when he flaked on me. On some level, that boy probably knew he was doing me a favor by doing me like he did. 

I feel called to help this man, but I don’t know what that’ll look like. For now, I connected him with some trusted friends he knows who can help him if he asks. As fate would have it, I have a mega-long roadie to think this through with no conversational partner to distract me, so I’m confident I’ll come up with something.

Humans have been doing dopey things since Adam and Eve tried to pull a fast one on God. It’s natural to get upset when we’re on the business end of someone else’s dopey move. We’re only human, too. But there’s no value in staying negative, as doing so serves no useful purpose and is therefore unintelligent. If we regulate our emotions and manage our negativity, it’s easy to see ourselves in the dopes who do us dirty. 

When we see ourselves in others, our anger melts into loving awareness, forgiveness, and concern. We come to recognize that we have no idea what’s going on with the other person that led them to behave how they did. We just never know what someone else is going through. 

When someone does a dopey thing, it tells you everything you need to know about where their head is at: they don’t know any better. If they knew better, they wouldn’t have done the dopey thing. When this awareness sets in, we view the dopes that come into our lives as wounded children.

When someone’s behaving like a dope, no matter how dopey, we should treat them like we would a child who did the wrong thing and didn’t know any better: with love and justice.