The Break That Broke Me Open (Highest Excitement Part 7)

I’m writing this email from the hospital.

NOT where I expected to end up after following my inner compass toward what’s most alive.

Yet, I’m seeing my life and my art with vivid clarity.

• • •

This all began when I reclaimed my power.

I said ‘no’ to costly coaches and ditched all the “shoulds.” I followed my bliss.

And that flow got me invited to Costa Rica by Joy herself.

But just as suddenly, the wheels came off my bliss bus.

My passport disappeared.

I ran out of gas driving back from the passport office.

I was actually laughing while doing the red-gas-can-walk-of-shame down the interstate with semi trucks roaring past me.

Of course I’d lose my passport before a trip to paradise.

Of course I’d run out of gas while slaying demons of my own making.

Of course there’d be a price for things going so well.

I have a hard time letting anything be easy.

My subconscious is always looking for jolts of excitement by turning simple situations into do-or-die epics of heroic redemption.

Call it an “Existential Kink.”

But the final stroke came at a price I was never willing to pay.

I watched my daughter go around a corner – her bike suddenly dropped out from under her.

I saw her pitch forward and land on the same wrist that had come out of a cast just two days before.

We were on a wild bike ride through college campus. Charging down grassy hills, snaking through hidden forests, pedaling to the top of the parking garage before coasting back down.

Together we are masters of high excitement – and it has always worked out great for us…

Except this time it didn’t.

And she was the one who ended up in the hospital for surgery on a tiny wrist that had been broken twice in as many months.

• • •

And now here I sit, waiting for the doctor to tell us the outcome of the surgery… feeling like the biggest fool in the world.

I suspect some of you have been thinking all along:
“WTF is the deal with all this ‘highest excitement’ nonsense?” or

“Who does this guy think he is?”

And those are fair reactions.

I recognize that not everyone feels comfortable — or even permitted — to follow bliss over responsibility, or excitement over security.

And yet, friends – I can tell you from the deepest part of my soul that this exciting fray beyond safety is where my best art comes from.

The most beautiful pieces I’ve created have come from shedding the shoulds and embracing the wildness of my soul.

And it’s not an easy place to go. It requires not caring if others approve. It requires the vulnerability of saying :

This is who I am.
This is what turns me on.
This is me at my most alive.

So what went wrong?

How did I end up in this hospital with my sweet baby girl under the knife?

Is this where unrestrained excitement leads?

And… is it all my fault?

I can feel something big shifting in me.

I’ll try to capture it here in these words.

I started this series to share the life behind my art — to open up the experiment of following highest excitement.

And for the first few days, I was firing on all cylinders.

But I hit an “upper limit.”

With the breakthroughs – the freedom and serendipity – my subconscious began to throw flaming barrels and empty gas tanks in my path.

Even writing these emails brought a subtle gravity pulling my excitement story back down to earth – following the old saying “whatever goes up must come down”.

Isn’t it more comfortable to read about someone taking risks, only to crash — and then walk away with a lesson about the virtues of realism, hard work, and playing it safe?

I manifested some big expansive energy, but I manifested some big contractions too.

And here’s the part of my daughter’s crash I wasn’t going to share:

I don’t think the crash was from going big…

I think it was from shrinking.

From the fear I passed on to her at the top of that hill.

“Listen to me: you just got your cast off. Please be so so SO careful. Go slow. Stay in control. Please don’t fall and hurt yourself! We don’t want to end up back in the emergency room!”

Here’s the thing: we’ve ridden this route dozens of times before.

But as she rounded the last corner…

She tried to act safe.

She tried to slow down, like I had told her.

She got scared and hit the brakes.

Experienced racers know: you never hit the brakes while leaned over in a corner.

And in that moment, I saw my worst fear become her reality.

Crash.

Alright – time to bring this long story home:

I am a master of following highest excitement.

It runs in my family.

But there’s a part of me that deeply believes it is not ok.

“Ryan gets to make art, climb trees, go to the zoo… and he gets a dream trip to Costa Rica just for being joyful?”

I feel ashamed. Unworthy. And I fall from flow.

Enter the limiting beliefs – the subconscious struggle – the existential kinks.

Scaring my daughter out of trusting her own intuition, body and balance.

And the karma loop — born of fear, not flow — pulls me out of alignment.

These cycles of expansion and contraction are entirely of my making.

But here’s what I know now:

I don’t have to earn joy through suffering.

I don’t need to trade miracles for mishaps.

And I sure as hell don’t need to hand my daughter a script of fear in the name of keeping her safe.

What I can do is model trust.

Not just trust in the world — but in ourselves.

In the parts of us that act boldly, and the parts that know when it’s time to go home for rest and comfort.

Hadley is writing her own story. She is brave and intuitive and wildly alive — and so am I.

So I’m not here to wrap this up with a tidy moral.
I’m here to say:

** The experiment continues. **

Because even after all of it — the lost passport, the broken wrist, and the karmic tangle of it all — I still believe in the beauty of choosing joy.

Not despite what happened,
but because this is what living fully looks like.

Messy. Magnificent.

And the art that flows from excitement, risk, sadness, and bliss?

That’s the kind I live to make.

And I’ll keep sharing it with you.

Cheers,

Ryan

Image : Detail from an untitled 2024 watercolor, 22×30” — part of a series born from uninhibited excitement: explosions of curiosity, color, and trust.