Boyan Is Dead. Meet Uncle Ben.

Boyan is dead.

I'm not.

I don't mean that dramatically. There was no ceremony. No grand decision. No morning when I woke up, looked in the mirror and decided to become somebody else.

I just eventually noticed that the person I had been for most of my life wasn't there anymore.

And apparently his name is Uncle Ben now.

I didn't come up with that either. Somebody else started calling me Uncle Ben. It stuck.

The funny thing is that the name arrived after the person did.

Boyan

Boyan was a nice guy.

I'm still a nice guy. That's not the difference.

Boyan accommodated people.

That is the difference.

If somebody had a problem, Boyan started solving it.

If somebody didn't have money, Boyan started figuring out how to make things cheaper.

If somebody needed paperwork done, Boyan helped with the paperwork.

If family needed something, Boyan generally tried to make it work.

If somebody he cared about was uncomfortable, Boyan would often absorb some of that inconvenience himself.

Nobody forced me to do any of this.

It wasn't weakness.

It wasn't some terrible character defect I've finally overcome.

That's simply who I was.

For a long time.

And then things happened.

People behaved the way they behaved.

I behaved the way I behaved.

One thing produced another thing.

Consequences.

Consequences

I keep using this word and people tend to hear something in it that I don't mean.

Punishment.

Revenge.

"You did something bad, therefore you deserve what happens next."

No.

A consequence is simply something that follows something else.

You throw a rock into water.

Ripples.

Consequences.

You spend years behaving a certain way.

People adapt to that behavior.

Consequences.

They behave a certain way toward you.

Eventually your relationship with them changes.

Consequences.

You spend decades accommodating people and one day realize you don't want to do it anymore.

Consequences.

Good and bad have nothing to do with it.

Something happened.

Then something else happened.

That's it.

Handle Your Own Shit

This may be the biggest practical difference between Boyan and Ben.

Handle your own shit.

Your money is your money.

Your paperwork is your paperwork.

Your relationships are your relationships.

Your inconvenience is your inconvenience.

Your problems are your problems.

That doesn't mean I won't help somebody.

Of course I will.

The difference is that I no longer automatically convert somebody else's problem into mine.

That used to happen almost instantly.

Someone I cared about would mention a problem and my brain would start working on it.

Sometimes they didn't even have to ask.

Recently I caught myself doing it again.

Someone had an inconvenient way of communicating with me. It was costing them money.

My immediate response was to make it easier for them.

Then something in my head went:

Wait.

Why am I solving this?

They can communicate with me.

It costs them money.

Okay.

That's their problem.

Not because I want them to spend money.

Not because I'm angry.

Not because I'm teaching anybody a lesson.

Because it isn't my problem.

This sounds embarrassingly obvious when written down.

Apparently it took me fifty years.

Money

Money has never made much sense to me emotionally.

I understand it perfectly well mechanically.

I know how to make it.

I know how to spend it.

I've had very little.

I've had enough.

I've lost large amounts of it.

I've made more.

I've never been wealthy.

But I've also never understood the emotional importance people attach to the number itself.

I lost about fifteen thousand once.

That sucked.

Then eventually my brain went:

Eh.

It's fifteen thousand.

I've made fifteen thousand before.

I'll make another fifteen thousand.

And that was pretty much the end of it.

Recently somebody showed me a beautiful Mercedes.

Really nice fucking car.

"How much?"

Twenty-two thousand euros.

I could buy it.

And my immediate reaction was:

That's too fancy for me.

The guy laughed.

Fair enough.

I'll put on a ridiculous red Lucifer suit and then climb into a 26-year-old camper.

Apparently this makes perfect sense to me.

Money matters because of what it lets me do.

That's about it.

My friend Mario used to complain because I would buy things for him or spend money when we were together.

"I don't like you spending all this money on me."

I looked at him.

"You'll get used to it."

There was no review process.

I had money.

I loved Mario.

The money allowed Mario and me to do shit together.

People matter far more to me than money ever will.

So what exactly was I saving it for?

Fair Doesn't Mean Equal

There's another side to being somebody who shares easily.

For a long time, I tried to equalize things.

If I had more, fine.

If somebody needed something, fine.

We'll figure it out.

Eventually I noticed something extremely obvious:

Not everybody operates this way.

Also fine.

They're allowed.

And I'm allowed to stop.

This isn't scorekeeping.

I don't need a spreadsheet showing who did what for whom in 2007.

But experience is information.

If a relationship has consistently operated in one direction, I don't have to continue supplying my side of that arrangement forever simply because that's what I've historically done.

Boyan did.

Ben doesn't.

Consequences.

The Old Model

One of the stranger things about changing is realizing that people carry models of you.

Of course they do.

I do the same thing.

If somebody has known me for twenty, thirty or forty years, they have an enormous amount of historical information about who I am.

Push this button and Boyan does this.

Ask him this and he'll probably help.

Tell him this problem and he'll start solving it.

Family needs something?

Boyan will figure something out.

It's a perfectly reasonable model.

It worked.

Until it didn't.

And I don't feel particularly compelled to update anybody's model.

They can think whatever they think.

Eventually reality will provide whatever information it provides.

Or it won't.

Either way, I don't need to manage it.

Blah Blah Blah

This may be my favorite recent development.

People love giving advice.

How I should live.

What I should do.

What I shouldn't do.

What I should worry about.

What I should stop doing.

What I should want.

What I should value.

I've spent plenty of my life arguing about this shit.

I can construct arguments.

I can dismantle arguments.

I can explain why somebody else's experience doesn't automatically generalize to mine.

Increasingly, I can't be bothered.

So lately I've developed a remarkably sophisticated philosophical response:

Blah blah blah.

Not because I didn't hear you.

I heard you.

Maybe I even understand you perfectly.

I simply don't accept the idea that hearing somebody's opinion creates an obligation to reorganize my life around it.

You think I should do something differently?

Okay.

You worry about me?

Okay.

You think I'm making a mistake?

Okay.

Blah blah blah.

The Philosophers Keep Showing Up

This is where things have become weird.

Over the last several months, I keep running into different philosophies saying things that sound suspiciously like the way I've already started living.

Stoicism.

Buddhism.

Taoism.

Alan Watts wandering in from somewhere.

They're not the same philosophy.

I know.

I don't care.

I'm not writing a comparative religion thesis.

I'm talking about living.

Don't fight what already happened.

Don't try to control what you cannot control.

Don't force everything.

Act where action is yours.

Let other people own their lives.

Let things unfold.

Accept.

Move.

Again and again I hear some lecture and think:

Goddammit.

I've been saying this.

Recently I heard something I've told myself many times:

Whatever decision you made in the past, you made with the information and ability available to the person you were then.

And suddenly the question becomes very simple.

Was that a good decision?

I don't know.

Was it a bad decision?

I don't particularly care.

Would I make that choice now?

Maybe not.

Okay.

I'm not that person anymore.

There is nothing to retry.

The decision isn't available.

Move on.

Forgiveness Isn't Restoration

This one took me a while.

I've forgiven people who are no longer part of my life.

Those statements don't contradict each other.

Forgiveness doesn't mean I forgot.

It doesn't mean trust magically regenerated.

It doesn't mean the relationship returns.

It doesn't mean somebody gets access to my life again.

It doesn't mean we have to sit down, hug, cry and rebuild something.

It means I'm not carrying the fucking thing anymore.

I can see somebody who did things I haven't forgotten and still smile.

I can laugh.

I can say:

"Hey. How are you?"

"Have a nice day."

And mean it.

Then continue walking.

That's actually much easier than hatred.

Hatred requires maintenance.

Not Forcing It

I used to think detachment would be frightening.

Like becoming cold.

Not caring about people.

Not caring about anything.

I'm discovering something completely different.

I can care and still let go.

I can like somebody and not chase them.

I can love somebody and not organize their life.

I can hear advice and not follow it.

I can lose money and make more.

I can have a house and walk away from it.

I can want something without requiring reality to provide it.

And sometimes, while you're busy not forcing anything, some guy casually says:

"I've got three acres in the mountains. If you want, put something there."

And suddenly you're looking at insulated containers with bathrooms for a few thousand euros and thinking:

Huh.

Forest.

Dog.

Internet.

Container.

I could live there.

I wasn't looking for it.

It just appeared.

Maybe I do it.

Maybe I don't.

That's becoming a surprisingly common answer.

We'll see.

Boyan Is Dead

For years I had this strange feeling that genuinely becoming somebody different might require losing almost everybody who knew the previous version.

Not because they're bad people.

Not because I'm better.

Because relationships contain history.

History contains expectations.

And sometimes the relationship belongs to people who no longer exist.

I didn't intentionally test this theory.

I just looked around one day and realized that most of those relationships were gone.

Oh.

Apparently we're doing this.

And I'm okay.

More than okay, actually.

There are fewer people.

There is considerably less noise.

Meet Uncle Ben

I didn't create Uncle Ben.

I noticed him.

Other people named him before I understood what they were naming.

Uncle Ben wears ridiculous suits.

Uncle Ben drives an ancient camper.

Uncle Ben talks to strangers.

Uncle Ben will spend money on somebody he loves without thinking twice.

Uncle Ben doesn't care whether the Mercedes would make him look successful.

Uncle Ben occasionally issues manifestos.

Uncle Ben can be incredibly kind.

Uncle Ben can also say:

Handle your own shit.

Those aren't contradictions.

Maybe that's the part Boyan never quite understood.

Being a good person doesn't require becoming everybody else's solution.

Caring doesn't require carrying.

Forgiveness doesn't require restoration.

Listening doesn't require obedience.

Love doesn't require possession.

And change doesn't require an apology.

Boyan had a good run.

I don't regret being him.

He made the decisions he made with what he knew and who he was.

I wouldn't make all of them now.

That's fine.

I'm not him now.

I'm Ben.

Sometimes Uncle Ben.

We'll see what this motherfucker does.