Over the past few years, I’ve been mentally open to new ideas.

I used to be very closed-minded, sure that no matter what the topic was, I had a firm grip on “the truth,” or at least had very strong opinions about it.

I felt I had the right religion, had the correct political beliefs, and whatever I liked and disliked. I felt as if I were correct in my likes and dislikes.

In many respects, I was what I refer to now as an “asshole.”

Assholes don’t know they’re assholes, by the way. And they are most often not very receptive to being told they’re an asshole, either.

That’s been my experience, at least.

I was told that all humans like to be right, valid, and justified in their beliefs, and that it is vastly easier to fool someone than it is to convince a person they’ve been fooled.

Because what does that make me if you convince me that I’ve been fooled?

A fool.

And no one wants to be known as a fool.

That triggers our own internal instinctual abandonment fears.

So I would resist any wisdom that challenged my own beliefs about life.

I was a particularly stubborn asshole with my beliefs, opinions, and so forth.

And then I ended up at a suicidal ideation detox facility called Save A Warrior.

I have a story about how I ended up at Save A Warrior, and it is accurate, but not worth mentioning right now.

God bless everyone who was involved in getting me there, by the way.

Thank you.

Everyone, from my wife who took time off work, to the people who paid for the seat that Pat Atkinson got me to apply for.

I definitely needed to be there.

What’s funny is that it didn’t even dawn on me where I was until the second hour after I arrived.

That’s when they mentioned:

“You are at a suicidal ideation detox facility. This is basically a mental facility for the suicidally insane. That is where you are. And it was your thinking, and your rigid grip on your beliefs about life, that got you here.”

That sank in as I considered it.

Maybe parts of me were dishonest with myself, and maybe I tried to tell myself that’s not what it was, but when they said that, it hit me in the chest.

I remember thinking:

“I am at a suicidal ideation detox facility. That is where I am. How did I get here? Am I supposed to be here?”

And then:

“You know it’s the truth. They have the right guy.”

I thought I hid the idea that I was suicidal from everyone.

I never sought help for it. I never mentioned it to anyone.

I was afraid to.

I thought that if I ever expressed the demons I fought against internally, the things that I fought against that went through my mind day after day, they would lock me up and throw away the key.

That’s what I thought about myself.

So I never expressed my suicidal thoughts, depression, or anxiety to anyone.

I would just swallow it and move on to the next thing.

The next mission.

So when they said that, I knew I belonged there.

I felt as if I had been caught.

I spent a career hunting down felons of various sorts.

Some of them were in hiding, and I or someone on the teams I worked with had to find them first.

When we did, we would swoop in and round them up. Maybe do a takedown of some sort, but ultimately bring them to justice to face their crimes and accusers.

I know.

That’s exactly how I felt sitting in my cohort listening to them.

I knew I was, in fact, quite suicidal.

I had been my entire life.

I did not argue about that.

I was surprised, though.

I had spent my entire life trying to hide that part of myself.

How did I end up here?

Like a serial bank robber sitting in jail, replaying the arrest over and over.

“How did they catch me?”

“Where did I slip up?”

Then they mentioned that it was my rigid grip on my beliefs and thinking processes.

And I couldn’t argue with that either.

They were right on both counts.

So I listened very closely after that.

I assumed they were going to show me a perspective of life, or something I didn’t already know, that was going to change all that.

But my mind needed to be open to new ideas in order for that to happen.

That meant I had to stop prejudging things as “wrong” before I even considered the possibility that my beliefs were wrong.

Could you imagine the lunacy of that possibility?

Me being wrong about something?

Pfft.

And then cats will start sleeping with dogs.

So my mind became open.

And they did indeed offer me a new perspective of life.

One that I actually enjoy living.

My life went from being an endless nightmare to something I look forward to each morning when I get up.

A mind open to new ideas is what created that perspective for me.

And that’s not even what I wanted to talk about tonight.

I was wanting to write about nutrition.

This was just going to be a couple opening lines about learning to become flexible with one’s internal beliefs, and then somehow transition into nutrition.

But then I just kept typing and typing.

Oh well.

Someone needed to hear it, probably.

Have a good night.

Thank you for reading.

Maybe tomorrow: nutrition.

I don’t know anything actually real about nutrition, by the way, so this might be interesting.

We shall see.