Tighten Up? Or Lighten Up? How Accessing the Trickster Can Heal Ourselves and Our World

Joe Rogan is both humorous and human, which means he crosses the line to help us lighten up.

When the news of the world gets too heavy, sometimes we just need to lighten up.

There are two ways we can lighten up. The first is by going to the shallow end, enjoying the simple pleasures of life such as watching a sporting event, going out on the town with friends or taking in a silly movie with a loved one.

The second is by diving deep, exploring one’s own inner world, or exploring the patterns we find in the world around us. Such activities often show us that the in-the-moment experience we have in our fast-paced, intense world may not be as important as we thought it was.

And if you look around the caverns, mazes, valleys and vistas of your vast inner world, eventually you’ll discover there’s a part of you that may be longing for attention, a part of you that is both playful and mischievous.

It’s a part of you that, as a child, you had access to on the regular but as an adult you may have repressed for all sorts of reasons — -strict adults growing up, workforce regulations, expectations, cultural norms — -but it’s still a part of you and, if you’ve done a really good job of hiding it away from yourself, you’ve most likely been projecting it onto the world around you.