The tether begins to loosen as I ascend the steps into my sanctuary, locking my algorithm god into its timeout box. Sliding noise canceling headphones onto my head eliminates the torrential audio stream of life pouring into my canals. It’s quiet. Instinctively, my body unlocks the deepest inhalation of the day. My brain releases serotonin, gently signaling my muscles that it's now safe to loosen their grip on the guardrails they’ve grown so accustomed to clinging to. Life’s neon sign hums somewhere behind me as I turn the first corner of the indoor track—its buzz already beginning to fade.

From the vault….seven years ago:

I told my two year old daughter yesterday "pay attention to me". I like to think she's pretty smart so naturally she stopped talking and looked at me. It's an important lesson I thought  -  I remember my parents telling it to me as a kid.  Later in the day she locked eyes with her three year old cousin and said "pay attention to me!" She didn't have anything  important to follow the demand up with.  Granted she's only two but still I thought "what have I done?".  Turns out it's much easier to demand the attention of others than it is to pay attention to the impact we have on them. I've still got 16 years to impart that wisdom on my little girl.

At its core our attention, (how we choose to focus our energy) derives from our five senses: Sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. We process these things in what can be described as a neurological miracle. Our brains fire off messages and release hormones in milliseconds as part of an organic ballet with body, thus permitting the reliable biological responses that mold our day-to-day actions. Responses so reliable that they helped our ancestors overcome the obstacles necessary for our collective existence.

With the sun rising at his back in his final year of life 133 BCE, Tiberius Gracchus gingerly stepped away from the complex catacomb and onto the most Divine edifice ever known to man. This angle of The Roman Coliseum looked and felt quite different than he had imagined. Surely, he thought, there was a gravitational pull coming from the hardened dirt beneath him, imploring his calloused feet to grip the earth for reasons unknown. As if the coliseum had a mass one billion times the murky roads he grew accustomed to walking in his birthplace of Frascati. The complete silence of the now empty Roman temple was deafening.

We live in a world that shapes our behaviors. For better or worse, our behaviors are responsible for the outcomes we produce in life. Sometimes, we fall into the trap of attributing our failures on factors beyond our control, yet readily take personal credit for our successes. While events outside of our control obviously do exist, this convenient manipulation of personal accountability in the "now", shapes our levels of resilience and drive when faced with adversity in the future.

Act1:

Imagining the meaning of this existence as I personally experience it, with the senses I have available to me had always felt a bit overwhelming to me. As if I was birthed into this dimension with some innate anxiety - digging itself into my mind asking, "Do you think you have the time needed to follow the infinite paths available to you in this place, in this form?" At my core, I always seemed to sense a reality that the sand from my lifes' hourglass was pouring itself ubiquitously onto me until my last breath. Oftentimes throughout my life, I’d ask myself aloud when alone and in a thoughtful state of mind: What is this? All of this?